The part of immigrating that nobody prepares you for
The practical challenges of moving to a new country are the ones people expect: paperwork, credentials, finding somewhere to live, understanding how things work. Difficult, but nameable, and they eventually resolve.
What tends to catch people off guard arrives later, often once the practical crisis has passed. The apartment is sorted. There is work. And in the middle of that relative stability comes a loneliness that feels disproportionate and, for many people, shameful.
Community is not the same as belonging
Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan have large, well-established immigrant communities. There are groceries that stock what you grew up eating, places of worship, and people who speak your first language. This is genuinely protective, and it is one of the reasons many families settle where they do.
But proximity to people who share your background is not the same as being known. Clients often describe a specific kind of double isolation: not quite at home in the culture they have arrived into, and no longer entirely at home in the one they left. Visits back can sharpen this rather than soothe it, when the place you remember has moved on without you.
This is grief, even when the move was chosen
One of the most useful reframes I offer is that migration involves real loss, and loss produces grief, even when the decision was voluntary and even when the new life is objectively better.
What is being grieved is usually not the country in the abstract. It is more specific: the version of yourself that existed there. The person who was fluent, who understood the jokes, who had a professional reputation people recognised, who could call a friend without calculating a time difference.
People frequently apologise for feeling this way. There is a strong internal rule that says if you chose this, and if your children have more opportunity because of it, then sadness is ingratitude. That rule keeps a great many people silent, and silence is what allows the loneliness to settle in.
What tends to help
- Let it be named as loss. Grief that is not permitted does not go away; it simply goes underground and often re-emerges as irritability, numbness or physical symptoms.
- Distinguish adjustment from depression. Adjusting to a new country is hard and takes years. But persistent hopelessness, loss of pleasure in everything, or difficulty functioning is not something to wait out.
- Invest in a small number of real relationships. Belonging is rebuilt through depth rather than volume. One or two people who know your actual situation will do more than a wide but shallow network.
- Keep hold of your first language deliberately. Especially in families with children growing up here, language loss between generations is its own quiet grief and worth being intentional about.
- Consider therapy in the language you feel in. Many people can describe their situation accurately in English but can only feel it in their mother tongue. Working in Farsi often reaches material that English sessions circle without touching.
Working in Farsi and English
I am a psychotherapist practising in both Farsi and English, working with individuals, couples and families across Richmond Hill, Newmarket, Aurora, Markham, Vaughan and Toronto, with online sessions available throughout Ontario.
Culturally responsive therapy means you do not have to explain the basics first: what is expected of a daughter, what it costs to disappoint a parent, why a particular decision carries weight in your family. Starting from shared understanding leaves more of the hour for the work itself.
If you are carrying something that is hard to put into English, you are welcome to get in touch.
This article is for general information and is not a substitute for individual clinical advice. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please call or text 988, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, or go to your nearest emergency department.