Joti’s Story

I come from an immigrant family. My parents left their homeland of India, and went abroad in 1973. I am the youngest of three children. My two older siblings are almost 15 years older than me and I was the only one born abroad. My mom doted on me and my childhood was filled with a lot of love from her being raised in a farming community.

My mom worked extremely hard as a berry farmer and provided everything she could for me. When I was 19 my parents were involved in a very serious car crash and my mom succumbed to her injuries almost 3 weeks later. After this happened, the glue of our family was gone and I was extremely devastated. I had lost the most important person in my life and had to keep moving on, but was very traumatized.

Four years later, my sister and her three children also tragically passed away in a house fire. This now meant that my entire female support system was completely obliterated. Fast forward a few years, I moved provinces, got married, and had two children. My mental health started to severely struggle when my youngest child was just months old. After about a year of struggling, I finally found a psychotherapist and started grief counselling.

In the Punjabi culture, mental health was never really spoken about but changes have definitely been happening in the past few years. I had to be strong, brave, courageous, and take a step forward, so that I could be the best mother to my two children, and be a good partner to my husband, and most of all take care of myself. I know that God has always carried me when I have fallen down but the attributes of strength, bravery, and courage are something my mother instilled in me as I was growing up.

She was one of the hardest workers I have ever known and lived life to the fullest and was a social butterfly in our small town. She would have get togethers every weekend, and in our small Punjabi community growing up when there were no Indian sweet shops in our town all of the ladies would get together and make sweets and make savory snacks for different festivals etc.. It all seemed like it was second nature to her, and seemed so easily done. She made the best Indian food ever and the most important thing I miss about her is the sound of her strong but gentle voice.

It has been over 30 years and I have healed but what I really love to hear from her friends whenever I do meet them is how much I look like her. I have for the past couple of months been trying to pay forward my healing through my Instagram page and would like to help as many people as I can with what I have learned through my own spiritual healing journey.