Moving from Gabon to Canada was the kind of shift that leaves a permanent mark on your spirit. When I think about it now, there’s always a heavy feeling in my chest. I miss my home so much — the air, the rhythms, the pieces of me that belong to that soil.

But even in that missing, I carry a complicated gratitude.
I’m grateful for the care and support I’ve been able to access here — care I might never have received back home. And yet, that gratitude sometimes stings, blooming into sadness for my country. Sadness that can easily slip into guilt, like I’ve betrayed my roots by leaving. I have to remind myself: my country wasn’t working for me, but leaving doesn’t erase my Gabonese blood, or the culture stitched into my being. I am, and will always be, my ancestors’ dreams in motion.

I was just a few weeks shy of 13 when I moved. At that age, mental health wasn’t something people around me even had the language for. Where I grew up, emotional pain wasn’t acknowledged — it was ignored, punished, or simply seen as part of life you needed to “get past.” You learned quickly that there wasn’t time or space to fall apart. You just got your shit done.

Canada, for all its flaws, gave me a new outlet. It felt weird at first — talking about emotions, unpacking mental health openly — but the weirdness didn’t scare me. I leaned into it, because I knew it was important. I became passionate about what I’d never been allowed to name back home.


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The Culture We Carry

One thing I wish more people understood about mental health in the diaspora is this:
The majority of people of color have undergone some form of colonization or forced assimilation.

Our ways of being were violently stripped away, erased, through centuries of cruelty — and we were never offered support after. Instead, generations were taught that pain was deserved, inevitable, normal. And so today, we are still living inside those ruins, often without realizing it.

Western mental health frameworks, well-meaning as they can be, don’t always fit. Family dynamics are different. Generational trauma reshapes how we love, survive, and heal. Trying to adopt “individualistic” healing methods when you come from a deeply collective culture is bound to clash somewhere. And the cost of that clash often falls on us — the ones trying to stitch two worlds together.


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The Weight of Healing

Healing while being part of the diaspora is a strange kind of grief.
It’s the grief of realizing that in order to care for yourself, you might have to unlearn parts of your culture — and that feels almost like abandoning it. Like betraying it. Even when you know you have to choose your own well-being, the ache of that choice stays heavy.

There’s also the guilt.
I was taught that struggling was weakness.
Suppressing emotions was survival.
Appearing strong was non-negotiable.
It shaped how I moved through the world — and how I judged myself for simply having emotions.

When I moved here, I also realized something I never had to think about back home:
I was Black.
In Gabon, everyone was Black.
Here, race became a constant factor, an invisible wall I could feel even when no one said anything. I found myself polishing my accent, taming my hair, erasing parts of myself — not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t want to give anyone another reason to judge me harder.


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Being Seen (and Missed)

Therapy, even when accessible, wasn’t a perfect fix.
I learned quickly that most Western therapists are trained to see mental health struggles through their own cultural lens — and that lens didn’t always recognize what I was carrying.

I once met a counselor who told me to “just set boundaries” with my family.
But in Gabonese culture — in so many non-Western cultures — boundaries aren’t that simple. Family isn’t something you can just section off neatly. The advice felt hollow because it missed the foundation of where I came from.

Healing for me is not just about trauma work — it’s about identity work.
It’s about navigating how I dress, how I wear my hair, how I speak — constantly aware of how Blackness is policed, how stereotypes are waiting to devour me the second I misstep.
It’s hard to explore who you truly are when survival demands so much performance.


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Dreaming a New Way

I dream of a world where mental health spaces actually open their doors to international and cultural perspectives.
Where therapists understand that healing looks different across continents, histories, and identities.
Where survival doesn’t have to come at the cost of softness.

If I could tell my 13-year-old self anything, it would be this: The road ahead will be long and painful, but it will also be worth it. Keep going. Keep pushing. You are not weak for needing help. You are not wrong for feeling lost.



My hope is that Diaspora Dreams becomes a place where others carrying this same weight feel seen. Where their experiences are heard, honored, and held.
If you ever need a space to be understood, know that you are always welcome here.
And if you need support — my door is open.


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– Georgina Rosaly Nzang (Robin)