Neha Juwale knew her journey to Canada in 2019 would be a learning experience but she couldn’t have predicted how a series of unfortunate events would profoundly change her worldview and inspire her to establish an online platform that helps others from the South Asian community overcome mental health challenges.
“My plan was to essentially, come here to study and work then after the completion of my studies, to go home,” she said.
She admits she had developed some cinematic preconceptions about life in Canada before she came here.
“The dreams back home that we see are about driving in fancy cars, wearing expensive clothes, going to high end shopping malls and life is a party,” she said. “That’s what Bollywood does to us, and I was a huge fan of cinema. I had those dreams.”
Those dreams motivated her to apply for a student visa and enrol in the sustainable business management program at Conestoga College’s Doon Campus in Waterloo.
“I made this plan because, I wanted to learn skills that no book or classroom could teach me,” she said. “I planned to build my career and to carve out a niche so I could give back to the community.”
She quickly learned that the care-free images projected on the silver screen back home in Mumbai didn’t accurately reflect the full reality of student life in Waterloo Region.
“I realized upon me landing here that I am not on a vacation,” she said. “I have to pay my bills. I have to make sure that my student loan is taken care of and build a future for myself. That is my new reality.”
She had to do all those things by herself for the first time with little support from her parents and sister back home in Mumbai.
“I didn’t want to trouble them with my problems,” she said. “I was trying to be mindful that they were 15,000 km away and they might experience a sense of helplessness because they’re not able to be here to help me.”
She was determined to embrace her independence and make it on her own, but the ever-present sense of distance and cultural isolation only amplified her feelings of loneliness.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to be in a country that is accepting and open,” said Juwale.
“I did, however, feel lonely because everyone I knew, including my friends, were back home.”
She even felt alone among the other Indian students on campus.
“Although all of us were from India we didn’t share the same culture and for me to understand, accommodate and adapt took some time,” she said.
Juwale came to understand that many of her fellow students were quietly struggling with similar feelings of loneliness and other mental health issues.
“Mostly they don’t talk about it and I believe this is because in our culture there is a lot of stigma associated with asking for help or support of any kind,” she said.
The ultimate test for everyone’s mental and physical health came in early 2020 with the global COVID pandemic.
“All of us were locked down and we had a lot of uncertainty about the future,” said Juwale. “Everyone was frightened, and we didn’t know if we would ever see our families again.”
If things weren’t bad enough already, Juwale received word from her family back home that her grandmother died.
“I was filled with grief and guilt for not being there for her during her last days,” she said. “It was so intense it left me in a state of freeze for months to follow.”
She shut down emotionally and shifted into a kind of mental autopilot.
“I was a fully functional person,” she said. “I woke up at the same time. I had breakfast at the same time. I worked at the same time. Everything, but I could not name what I was feeling. That was a turning point when I first accepted that I need help.”
Her therapist helped her overcome the cultural stigma and process her grief.
“When I stared seeking therapy, I clearly understood that grief and guilt were walking hand in hand,” said Juwale. “She was my sense of belonging, and even now I miss her. There is no shame in asking for help and I needed to help myself regardless of who thinks what.”
The experience inspired her, with some help from her sister, to establish an online platform, https://www.bookmytherapy.ca that connects South Asians living in Canada with therapists and mental health support in their mother tongue.
“That is where I would like to start from because I am South Asian myself,” she said. “We offer support in nine languages including English and in the near future I do intend to expand it to different parts of Asia and move to other countries as well.”
She also has plans to expand the types of services available.
“For now, it is mostly individual counselling, couple’s counselling and life coaching,” said Juwale. “We also intend to start offering support group services and talking circles. We did that in the past and have plans rolling out for March.”
Managing the platform and helping people get the support they need is very rewarding for Juwale but she hasn’t completely abandoned the Bollywood dreams that brought her to Canada in the first place.
“I had those dreams and I still do,” she said. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with driving fancy cars, going to high end shopping malls and wearing expensive clothes, nothing at all.
But the reality is, to achieve that, you have to pay some costs.”
