She knows what it’s like to be helped and now she’s a helper in her community. Vanessa Fehr was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba and has ties to Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation. For the past five years, she’s worked in social services and before that she worked in administration while she tried to figure out what she wanted to do as a career. These days she puts her skills as a social worker to work at the Aboriginal Community Campus as an EIA Support Liaison and at the Neeginan College of Applied Technology as a Program Essentials Instructor.

Growing up, Fehr went through the Winnipeg public school system for her formal education and then for her informal education, she connected with her culture, engaging in ceremony and learning from cultural teachings. She’s continuing to learn in both formal and informal settings to grow personally and professionally.

Thinking about what motivated her to take this career path, Fehr reflects on her own family life and how she was adopted at a young age. She is very familiar with the foster care system and the struggles it can involve. Her foster mom who fostered over twenty kids in the years she was active in the system was a big part of why she wanted to work in social services. “Just the compassion, the love and support that she emulated really kind of resonated with me, and it made me want to just help people, and just do what I can,” she recalls.

As someone who loves talking with and meeting people, social work was a natural fit for Fehr. “The people I get to meet every day, seeing their strength, their resilience, everything like that. It's just the daily motivation that kind of helped me,” she continues. Watching her clients succeed and overcome barriers is a source of inspiration in her life.

Even when she isn’t seeing change, she knows there might still be differences percolating below the surface. “That also inspires me just knowing that it's a journey for most people, like it was for myself, and I'm just honoured just to walk alongside all the people I work with,” she beams.

When it comes to Indigenous students thinking of leaving their home community, Fehr’s advice based on her experiences moving to the States for school when she was 18 is to try to stay connected with friends and family. While distance can make maintaining strong connections challenging, it’s something that she finds often works out when you try your best. She recommends exploring resources like your school's Indigenous centre and to take good care of yourself, since moving away can take a toll on your mental health.

Overcoming mental health challenges was something Fehr dealt with early on. With the help of resources and strategies, she’s been able to reduce the stress associated with those difficulties. The financial hardships of post-secondary were hard to overcome, too, with many resources she wasn’t familiar with until later on. By asking lots of questions, she was able to find what she needed to succeed.

If she could give a message to her younger self it would be, “Just to stay true to who you are, and who you want to be in this life and stick to your path. If you don't like the path that you're going then change it. Sometimes you can get sucked into different areas of life that may not be suitable for you so if that's the case, sometimes reaching out and just sticking true to what it is that you want to do in this life would probably be my advice to my younger self.”

Thinking of the tools, strategies and outlets that she uses to balance her mental health and wellbeing, Fehr recommends mindful meditation, something that helps her go with the flow. She has also benefited from counselling and participating in fitness, even if it’s just a five or ten minute walk to break up her day. Staying connected to family and friends and attending ceremony has also made a difference in her life.

The message she would like to share with someone who might be struggling on their path is to reach out to and lean on their support network of relatives, friends or acquaintances and to take time for themselves. “I think self care is a really large part of finding out who you are as a person and what it is that you want,” she explains, recommending starting even with just one self care activity a day as a starting point. She suggests taking things day by day to avoid the stress of thinking too far ahead.

Knowing what it’s like to be helped inspired Vanessa Fehr to become a helper in her community. Dedicated to her clients and to walking alongside them on their journey, she takes care of herself so she can be a strong guide. The love of a foster mom sparked a love of social work as a career path, though she knows firsthand the system has its challenges.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.