What We Carry

What We Carry: Lived Experience and Mental Health in Smaller Centre Communities

Keynote Address – “What We Carry: Lived Experience and Mental Health in Smaller Centre Communities” brought together personal stories and sector expertise to explore how migrant families and frontline workers navigate care, responsibility, and wellbeing in smaller Canadian towns.

In the first half, keynote speaker Linh Huynh shared her family’s journey of arriving in a small Alberta community, highlighting how community support, visibility, and quiet expectations shaped her experience of growing up as a newcomer and how care is remembered and carried across generations. In the second half, Farah Kotadia, MBA, CPHR, MACP, RCC, a mental health professional in the immigrant integration sector (Wellness Works Counselling | https://lnkd.in/gKnNFwwd), drew on Linh’s story to unpack the emotional and systemic realities faced by people working in community and settlement services today, emphasizing invisible labour, structural limits, and what it takes to sustain wellbeing in relational work.

The conversation reinforced a key takeaway: wellbeing cannot rest on individuals alone—it must be collective and supported at a systemic level. It ended with gratitude for the care, presence, and hope that people continue to bring to this work, and for the role it plays in shaping a sense of belonging.