When Mechmechia arrived in Canada, she was hoping to find mental health support from an agency who would understand her experience as an immigrant coming from a country affected by war and conflict. She couldn’t find it. So she built it.

Today, ABRAR Trauma and Mental Health Services is a national not-for-profit organization based in Hamilton, Ontario. It offers free, trauma-informed, culturally safe mental health support to newcomers, immigrants, and refugees across Canada. Many of the people who find ABRAR arrive with complex trauma in addition to the challenges of starting life in a new country. Mechmechia hopes to offer them a place where they can be themselves, and where their story makes sense to the person listening.

Understanding trauma before and after migration

Mechmechia was born in Hamilton and raised in Aleppo, Syria. She was 17, and just beginning her psychology degree, when civil war broke out. She stayed in Syria to volunteer and work with SOS, UNICEF, and UNHCR, supporting children and their families with trauma-informed mental health care.

Supporting young people through active war and conflict showed her the limits of what one person can do alone.. “There are so many moments you feel like you’re helpless, like you’re not able to change people’s lives, especially people who go through grief, or complex trauma, or wartime,” she says. “But at least they’re able to feel lighter about the pain that they’re going through. I think that’s so important for us as humans.”

By the end of 2017, after years of living through the war, Mechmechia moved to Canada. She has a name for part of what she and so many other newcomers experience: migration trauma.

“You’re still leaving your roots, your childhood memory, and part of who you are, and your family and friends and community,” she explains. Add learning a new language, unfamiliar systems, and for some, the lasting effects of war, and building a new life gets much harder.

Filling the gap and founding ABRAR

Once she arrived, Mechmechia joined an existing organization, but it didn’t take long to see a gap in the care available to newcomers. It was one she had lived herself. “I went through the gap personally,” she says, “and I couldn’t find any organization that was able to support me.”

Part of what she saw missing was an understanding of the unique experience of migration. Canada has strong mental health organizations doing their best, Mechmechia shares, but many aren’t set up to relate to the trauma newcomers bring with them. “If you’re exhibiting certain trauma symptoms, they understand that as depression or anxiety,” she explains, “which dismisses your own story and your own narrative and the trauma that you bring with you.”

In 2020, she founded ABRAR to help close that gap. People now find their way to the organization from as far as Saskatchewan and Montreal, and they often say the same thing. “They tell us, ‘We didn’t find an organization that looks like you,’” she says.

What culturally safe care feels like

For Mechmechia, cultural safety starts with a feeling. “It’s about being able to be who you are in your own skin,” she says. “Being able to feel that you’re seen, understood, respected, and not needing to be changed.”

Speaking someone’s language is only part of it. A therapist can share your language and heritage without ever having grown up in your culture, or even visited the country you come from. That’s why ABRAR looks for clinicians who bring lived or working experience with the communities they serve, along with training in trauma-informed approaches.

Mechmechia adds one more layer. “Sometimes you’re able to feel safe with people who have that cultural humility, even if they’re not from your culture,” she says. “It’s also about the other person being able to provide that safety in the room.”

The details that make a difference

At ABRAR, cultural safety shows up in details most people would never think to plan, like the snacks served during sessions and the colours and symbols in a program’s graphics. When the team began working with a group of Spanish-speaking women, for example, they learned the women had a particular fondness for roses. So they wove those flowers into all of the group’s designs. Roses have a deep connection to Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is often seen as a miraculous symbol of hope, and that meaning became part of the care the team put into the group’s experience.

That same care runs through Brave Spaces, ABRAR’s non-clinical support groups. Each one is tailored to a specific community “from A to Z,” as Mechmechia puts it, from the name and the graphics to therapists who speak the language. There’s Unidas for Spanish-speaking women, Akhawat for Arabic speakers, and Walalo for the Somali community. For the Afghan community there’s Dil Ba Dil, which means heart-to-heart.

Strangers who become family

Alongside free one-to-one counselling and Brave Spaces, ABRAR also runs arts-based groups like Needles & Narratives. Mechmechia has noticed the same pattern in nearly every group that comes through. People arrive unsure of what to expect and by the last session, which the group marks with a celebration, they’re looking for ways to keep meeting. “They create a family within the group,” she says. “Seeing how people are able to develop those relationships in a short time, and how powerful that is for their own healing, is magical to see.”

The groups also chip away at stigma. In many immigrant communities, Mechmechia explains, mental health isn’t talked about at all. The education built into each group often surprises participants, who learn that talking about mental health can feel as natural as talking about daily life.

For Mechmechia, connection is at the heart of healing. “When a community goes through a major trauma, what really brings them back is the ability to connect [with each other] to heal,” she says. “Humans really heal through connection.” Why she still makes time for counselling

These days, most of Mechmechia’s week goes to running her growing organization: fundraising, building relationships, and keeping operations moving. Every so often, the weight of that admin work makes her wonder whether it’s time to step back from counselling. Then she meets someone new.

“When someone tells you, ‘For the first time, I feel seen,’ or ‘I feel my story is making sense to the other person,’ it’s a major moment,” she says. “That’s what keeps me going,” she says. “Being able to provide a space for people to carry the weight of their pain lighter, or not at all.” It’s the reason she still makes time to counsel on top of managing her organization.

Steady support for a mostly volunteer team

ABRAR moved to Jane about two years ago. The software the team used before had limited features and fell short for their virtual care needs. With Jane, Mechmechia says, the people she serves have an easier time joining video sessions. They open the link and they’re in, with nothing to download first.

For a team of mostly volunteer counsellors, reliable and easy-to-use software matters for the work Mechmechia and her team need to get done. Counsellors use the schedule and session links to connect with participants. When you’re running an organization on volunteer time, the best tools are the ones nobody needs to talk about. “I think it’s working really well,” she says, “because nothing has been reported to me so far.”

ABRAR’s one-to-one counselling program isn’t funded yet, so it runs mostly on volunteer time, for both admin and counselling. Jane’s Bursary Program offers free and discounted subscriptions to nonprofits like ABRAR, so they can continue their meaningful work.

“Having that support from Jane was so critical for us to keep being able to provide the service,” Mechmechia says. Even without funding, ABRAR’s counselling program already has a waitlist for free one-on-one sessions.

Healing happens at ABRAR

Since 2020, ABRAR has directly supported more than 1,200 individuals and families, and Mechmechia suspects the real reach is much larger, because when you support a mom, that care travels through her whole family. Even after five years, she sees this as only the beginning.

She hopes ABRAR can one day be there for every newcomer, immigrant, and person seeking refuge across Canada and the US, and eventually beyond. For now, the team is focused on building stability through Healing Happens Here, ABRAR’s first signature fundraising campaign. Mechmechia is inviting community members to get involved as ambassadors, fundraisers, donors, or partners. Funds will go toward one-on-one counselling, so more people can find the kind of support she couldn’t find when she first arrived.

Mechmechia arrived in Canada looking for support from a place that understood her story. Today, people across the country are finding that place in the organization she built.

Resources

• Connect with Mechmechia and the ABRAR team through their website
• Follow ABRAR on Instagram
• Learn more about the Healing Happens Here campaign

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