Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

Overcoming the Trauma of Erasure

by Shumaila Hemani

On January 4, 2025, I fell out of immigration status in Canada—a country I have called home for seventeen years.

Since that day, something inside me has broken. It wasn’t just the expiry of a work permit—it was the unraveling of safety, dignity, and belonging. The system didn’t deport me, but it made sure I felt like I didn’t belong. I stopped going out. I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want to be witnessed in this state of suspension—vulnerable, anxious, afraid.

My coping mechanisms are tender and fragile. Emotional eating, sugar cravings, compulsive scrolling—these became daily rituals. My nervous system braced for impact constantly. Even simple tasks—checking email, making a decision—felt enormous. My body stayed tight, tense, always preparing for something to go wrong. And yet, I kept showing up. I wrote. I taught. I created. I dreamed of a life where I could root somewhere without fear.

As North American immigration policies become increasingly hostile and unstable, it is critical to say this out loud: cultural belonging without structural inclusion is a form of cruelty. It offers you community, only to deny you security. It tells you to thrive, but takes away the ground beneath your feet. It invites your contribution, but withholds your protection.

I’ve applied for immigration four times:
– Through the PhD Stream, which refused me eligibility as it failed to recognize the work I did as a Research and Teaching Assistant in Canada on the grounds that it was not continuous and it did not meet the hours requirement.
– Through Express Entry, where my PhD and accomplishments were undervalued and my points were low because I did not have a full-time job—that in itself was difficult for post-graduate work permit holders to obtain because their permits were expiring.
– Through the Independent Self-Employed Artist category, which continues to drag on; even after two years, the IRCC has not confirmed eligibility.
– And recently, I applied under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Two years later, I still don’t know if I’m even eligible.

Each of these applications wasn’t just a process—it was a test of my humanity. The PhD stream made me feel invisible, as though years of academic work and teaching were unworthy of recognition. Express Entry devalued my art and intellect, reducing a life’s worth of contribution to a number too low to count. The Self-Employed Artist stream has left me in limbo for two years, with no confirmation, no refusal, just silence. And the humanitarian and compassionate application, which was meant to account for the trauma and complexity of my life here, has offered nothing but more waiting. Each pathway has chipped away at my nervous system. I live with chronic tension, migraines, and waves of dread. I’ve stopped planning for more than a few days ahead. I’ve lost sleep, lost relationships, lost years of my life to a system that treats people like paperwork. And still—I keep hoping. Still, I keep trying to belong.

It means living with a constant undercurrent of fear. It means not being able to plan more than a few weeks ahead. It means watching your savings disappear while your emails to immigration consultants go unanswered. It means being reminded that no matter how much you contribute—how many awards you win, how many communities you serve—you are still, somehow, not enough.

This phrase of not being enough is a contradiction that lives in my body every day. Within the Canadian public sphere, I am seen as highly qualified, but in the eyes of immigration system, it is not the case. And how this contradiction shows up in my body is devastating; last night, I had a breakdown. My heart was racing, my thoughts spiraled. What if Canada punishes me for speaking? What if I lose my allies? What if the memoir ruins me? The fear was real, physical. I couldn’t sleep. I imagined people whispering behind my back—that I was too much, too angry, too public.

But I have formed inner allies over the course of helping myself heal from trauma, and I heard Gabor Maté’s voice in my mind: “If you don’t speak now, they will keep you small.” I heard from my Ph.D. mentor: Regula B. Qureshi’s guiding voice too: “Trust. Say it anyway.” So, I understand that those who do not understand this precarity would just talk, but they talk negatively anyways whether I speak up or not.

And so I write—not because I feel brave, but because the alternative is silence, and silence is a slow kind of death. I want to believe I am enough, but how do you believe that in a system built to prove otherwise? This isn’t just an essay. It’s a fight for dignity. For breath. For the right to say: I was here.

As Hannah Arendt wrote, “The most fundamental human right is the right to have rights.” Without structural inclusion, nothing else can follow—not safety, not belonging, not peace. To be undocumented is to exist in a space where no right is guaranteed. It is not just a legal condition. It is a psychological exile.

Does it embitter me or embolden me to be told, again and again, that I am not enough? The answer is both. It makes me bitter at times—especially when I think of how long I’ve been here, how much I’ve contributed, and how little I’ve received in return from immigration systems that still keep me suspended in limbo. There are moments, especially while writing my memoir, when I’ve thought: Enough is enough. Maybe I should just leave.

But then I remember everything I’ve built here—the voice I’ve found, the music I’ve made, the residencies, awards, community work, and public recognition I’ve received—things I never could have imagined in the country where I was born. Canada, as a society, has given me space. I’ve experienced belonging here—through my relationships, my creative practice, and the communities that have embraced me.

My fight is not with Canadian people or public culture. It is with the immigration system. I have known cultural belonging. What I have not known is structural inclusion—the right to stay, to grow, to plan a future without fear. I want permanent status not as a stamp of approval, but as the ground from which I can expand my work. Because right now, I live in contraction. I live in anxiety. Opportunities pass me by not because I lack the skill, but because I lack the papers.

When I considered going back to Pakistan—even applied for a university position in my field—the thought alone retraumatized me. Yes, the job aligned with my PhD. But the prospect of returning to a deeply patriarchal context, where my independence would be constantly under surveillance, where even walking freely is policed—I couldn’t bear it. I remember how little I went out when I lived in Karachi. I remember how unsafe it felt to simply exist as a woman in public space.

Here in Canada, I can sit by the river. I can walk alone. I can grieve, breathe, and be. That is not nothing. And it is why I stay. Because despite everything, I still believe there is space here—for me, for my work, for this story.

One of the most painful aspects of immigration precarity is how it corrodes the relationships closest to you. After seventeen years of living in limbo, I’ve become almost a jinx in my family’s eyes. All of my immediate family members are still living in Pakistan. My brother is actually a Canadian citizen—but he chose to return. His relationship to Canada is very different from mine. He had the privilege of leaving after securing his status. I, on the other hand, stayed—building a life here, contributing in every way I could, yet never receiving the same structural recognition.

He has not gone through what I’ve experienced with immigration, so they don’t fully understand the emotional weight of living in limbo. At first, they were supportive—or at least trying to be. But after seventeen years of watching me struggle without resolution, their compassion has worn thin. I don’t blame them. It’s exhausting to witness someone you love stay stuck. But their growing detachment has added another layer of pain. I’m not just without a country—I’m slowly becoming without a family. My brother recently told me that if I return to Pakistan, I’ll have to find my own place to live. My mother barely speaks to me anymore. It’s like I’ve become a ghost in both places: too visible here to be accepted, too changed there to be understood.

I’m now at a point where I feel disowned without the language to grieve it. There is no room for me back “home,” either. And the thought of trying to rebuild a life in a country where gender roles are rigid, patriarchal control is normalized, and women living independently are seen as anomalies—it’s too much. I simply don’t have the capacity to start over, unsupported, in a place that no longer feels like mine.

This is what structural exclusion does. It doesn’t just deny you paperwork. It unravels your sense of belonging—everywhere. It isolates you from your past, your people, your future. You’re no longer rooted in any country. You are suspended in between, building a life on quicksand.

Out of desperation, I even applied for a job back in Pakistan. I went through three rounds of interviews at a renowned liberal arts University. In the end, they didn’t move forward with my application. It felt like another rejection—but in hindsight, it was a blessing. Returning to Pakistan after nearly two decades of acculturation in Canada would have been another kind of trauma: a re-entry into a patriarchal society where women living independently are often met with suspicion, not support.

My trauma was activated by a visit from my mother and brother, who had come to Canada from Karachi in May. I hadn’t seen them in years. When I met with my mother and finally told her about the depth of my immigration precarity—how I had lost status, how I was surviving without protection—she simply said, “One can only pray for you!” Maybe she meant it as comfort. Maybe she didn’t know what else to say. But in that moment, it felt devastating—like she had given up on me, like there was no hope left. I know my mother is carrying her own traumas, her own mental health struggles. But still, the dismissal stung.

It confirmed the sense I was already drowning in: that no one could help, that I was alone. I wasn’t making plans to end my life, but I was in a very dark place. Everywhere I looked, I saw only dead ends. I needed something—someone—to anchor me. So I called three different crisis lines in one day: Unison Benevolent Crisis Line, Suicide Prevention Canada, and Calgary Eastside Mental Health Distress Line. The counselors from Unison said gently, “You need to tell your story.” And something in me shifted. It didn’t make things better, but it opened a door.

The next day, I began writing my memoir. Not to heal, not yet—but to name what I was living through. To say, I am still here. It poured out of me like a cry—part grief, part resistance. It has been one of the most painful things I’ve ever done. Each word is a wound re-opened, each chapter a confrontation with a system that has failed me. And maybe that’s why I keep procrastinating on the edits—because returning to those wounds has given me migraines. Because this story hurts. It’s in my body now. And, I titled my memoir: Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma, and Music.

And while it has also brought release, clarity, and moments of healing, I carry a deep fear: that my story will once again be erased, that it will be appropriated, misunderstood, or ignored. That I will pour my soul into these pages, only for it to disappear into the silence, just like I did when I became undocumented. The voice of fear creeps in—again and again: Don’t publish it. Canada won’t like you for what you’re doing. You’ll lose allies. The system will find a reason to punish you. Your applications will be denied. That fear is not theoretical—it lives in my body, and I have trouble going to sleep. I write not because I know what will happen, but because I refuse to let fear have the final word.

When I’ve shared pieces of my story online, there’s been some support—but mostly, silence. In person, some people have visibly withdrawn, uncomfortable that I’m writing a memoir about this. Even among allies, there is anxiety. But there’s also encouragement: If you don’t write this, no one will ever know what you’ve endured. No one will learn what this system does.

I write not because I feel safe, but because silence hasn’t saved me either. Censorship—internal or external—only extends the violence. So even as fear tells me that telling the truth could cost me everything, I write. Because the cost of erasure is greater.

During this immigration precarity, I have also written two songs in exile: Oh Canada and Under Control.

Oh Canada,
You broke my heart
And left me in the dark.
I gave you my heart, my art, my song,
But you left me wondering, if I still belong!

I recorded one line on an iPhone and uploaded it to TikTok on Canada Day, and it had a wave of hate comments before people began listening to my story and showed support.

Another song I wrote is called Under Control.

I am under control
Of IRCC
Canadian tor—(torture cell)

I stop there and start the song again:

I am under control
Of IRCC
Canadian Waiting Game
One drop drips every three months to remind me
My application is in process.

Writing songs about my immigration precarity and my memoir: Writing in the Wound has become an act of survival. But it has also become an act of reclamation. With every page, I stitch back pieces of myself that the system tried to erase. The fear of being appropriated is still there. The fear of not being heard is still there. But so is the will to speak. So is the will to live.

Even in invisibility, I reach for visibility. Even in silence, I write. Even in fear, I create. This, too, is recovery. Recovery is not a straight line. It is a practice. Some days, it means calling a crisis line three times and still waking up the next morning. Some days, it means writing a single paragraph in my memoir and crying through every word. Some days, it means walking by the river, letting the birds remind you that you are still breathing.

Recovery, for me, is not about resolution. It is about resistance. It is about refusing erasure. It is about claiming a place in the world—even when the world refuses to make room. I don’t know what comes next. But I know this: I am still here. I am still writing. My voice is alive. I am breathing. And I will not let seventeen years of contribution be erased by silence or bureaucracy.

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / EDITOR: Gabriel Nathan | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman

See Related Recovery Stories: Mental Health First Person Essays, Trauma