THE REGISTRANT

LISA NDEJURU, PhD

How the legacy of genocide paved a path for this inspiring Quebec psychotherapist

The Registrar staff

[Content/trigger warning: The following article includes information on genocide, structural racism, and systemic discrimination that some may find upsetting. Readers are encouraged to seek support if needed.]

Dr. Lisa Ndejuru’s paternal grandfather was assassinated in Rwanda on March 26, 1962. Her maternal grandfather and mother were imprisoned.

This occurred some thirty years prior to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Ndejuru’s father, exiled from their home country, reunited with her mother after she was released and raised Ndejuru in Germany when she was just two years old. Later in life, she found herself struggling with issues of meaning and belonging.

In spite of these hardships, Ndejuru has always felt that empowerment could result from spoken history. By integrating life experiences into her psychotherapy practice from her 20 years spent as a leader in mental health advocacy, and using improvised theatre to create individual and collective significance, she has effectively transformed pain into power.

A whirlwind of an upbringing

Ndejuru was born in Huye, one of Rwanda’s southern districts. Raised in Cologne, Germany, she studied French, a legacy of Belgian colonialism, which, until the 1994 genocide was widely spoken in the central African country. In a move to heal the nation of the conflict that claimed almost one million lives, the Rwandan government dumped French and adopted as the country’s western language.

At the age of 12, Ndejuru’s family immigrated to Montreal, Quebec in search for a more stable and secure life after Germany rejected their application for citizenship.

From Rwanda to Germany, and now Canada, the constant movement at a young age caused Ndejuru to question her identity, especially about her ancestral homeland and culture. The enduring pain affected many from the Rwandan community who were still coming to terms with the ethnic cleansing that saw almost one million people die in a few months.

“When I was 16, there was the passing of my first cousin, who committed suicide,” Ndejuru said. “This was a moment that enlarged the questioning of my environment, which led to much pain.”

Ndejuru earned her BA in religious studies and psychology at L’université du Québec à Montréal. Through this program, she learned how to make meaning out of life and death and situate herself in a way that made sense out of one of the world’s great atrocities, Not being particularly religious, her education encouraged her to pursue healing that was holistic by design.

“I knew that there were many things [in my life] that felt too precarious,” Ndejuru said. “One of the first things that I learned in this program was the feeling of ‘I was going to be the first tool.’ There was a lot of learning about myself, as well as the craft, which led to my love for theatre at the age of 17.”

Finding meaning from tragedy

The genocide reminded Ndejuru a lot about her pursuit of identity in past years. After obtaining her MA at L'université de Sherbrooke in 2007, she sought to help provide healing strategies and closure with trauma survivors. Thereafter, she noticed that there were many political and social dimensions within psychotherapy that were taboo. “Since these topics couldn’t be touched, I wanted to express myself in different forms of theatre,” Ndejuru said. “Improvisational theatre proved to be a therapeutic outlet for me, which eventually allowed me to work with difficult stories, including my own.”

Ndejuru worked with colleagues to create a multi-year-long oral history project based at Concordia University entitled ‘We are Here: Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and Other Human Rights Violations.’ From 2005 to 2012, Ndejuru used her own story, and stories from her community, and channeled them into something educational and accessible.

“It was hard for my own family to express themselves about the trauma they faced during the genocide, as no one wanted to talk about it. Finding out more about these experiences not only allowed my community to express their thoughts, but also allow Cambodians, Haitians, Jewish, and Indigenous groups to talk about their own, respective feelings [on traumatic experiences].

In 2007, Ndejuru started her private practice in Montreal after becoming licensed with the Ordre des psychologues du Québec, which she continues to this day. She services clients from diverse walks of life, and notes that true power comes from knowing about where and what people come from, recognizing every life circumstance faced, and deciding what to make of them.

“Black and Brown communities have a lot of differences and commonalities, all of which can be supported,” Ndejuru says. “Using psychotherapy and life coaching, I help my clients reconcile with their entire life stories. Then, using tailored techniques such as psychodrama, which is a guided form of role-playing incorporating elements of theatre, people gain brand-new perspectives on their emotional conflicts.”

Putting all of her endeavours and learnings together, Ndejuru obtained her transdisciplinary Ph.D at Concordia University in 2017. In her dissertation ‘Oral History and Performance in the Aftermath of Organized Violence: An Epistemological Contribution,’ Ndejuru discusses how deep listening to difficult stories can lead to long-term healing from intergenerational trauma.

Throughout her work, Ndejuru says the most important thing to recognize is having benevolence towards ourselves. While demand for mental health services remains high, she wants to ensure that people do not suffer needlessly. “We need to educate people more on how to take care of their wellness, so that it eventually becomes a habit aided by other servicing.”

Long-term project building

Ndejuru works with three community organizations at Concordia University to run a multi-year research project centred on Black wellness in Montreal and beyond. It resulted from the realization that racialized communities oftentimes hold back from seeking help. She believes that the ways in which licensed professionals are trained in culturally sensitive ways at the community level need to be rethought, so that every level of care provided is improved.

“Our systems right now are really good, but, many times, traditional forms of training need to be altered when it comes to appropriately servicing our communities,” Ndejuru said. “There’s a lot of thinking that can done on this area, to determine if the ways that we are working with people is truly helping. If it doesn’t work, we should be changing.”

Reflecting on her storied past, and now looking ahead, Ndejuru returned to Rwanda in 2023 to support her husband and son's projects. She says she has developed a unique toolkit over the course of her career to service people not just in Montreal, but beyond. “I’m back home, and recognize that some core issues are global,” Ndejuru said. “I want to be able to work here, and in different places, to share what I have learned about my own history with others and simply give back.”

“There’s a lot of thinking that can done on this area, to determine if the ways that we are working with people is truly helping."