When I was in Grade 3, my mom managed to do something that felt like a major breakthrough for our family.
She found us a small two-bedroom house.
It wasn’t far from where my kokum lived, and it wasn’t big by any means. But to us, it was stability. It was a step forward.
Inside that house lived four kids—myself and my three younger sisters.
I remember looking at old photos of us from that time. In one of them, I’m trying to look cool. I’m still not exactly sure what “cool” meant back then, but I was trying my best.
What I didn’t understand at the time was the depth of the sacrifice happening inside that little house.
The Bed My Mom Never Had
When we first moved in, my mom showed us how the rooms would work.
One room for me.
One room for my sisters.
And where was her room?
There wasn’t one.
Her bed was the couch in the living room.
From Grade 1 until I graduated high school, my mom slept on that couch so her children could have bedrooms.
As a kid, you don’t always recognize those sacrifices.
But as an adult, I see them clearly.
Someone Sacrificed for You Too
When I share this story, I often ask people to pause and think.
Someone sacrificed for every one of us.
Maybe it was a parent.
Maybe it was a grandparent.
Maybe it was someone you never even met—someone who made decisions years before you were born that created opportunities for you today.
And now many of us are doing the same.
If you’re raising children…
If you’re mentoring young people…
If you’re leading a team…
You’re making sacrifices too.
That’s how communities grow stronger.
The Kitchen Table Office
Right around the corner from that couch was our kitchen table.
That table became my mom’s office.
Not the kind of office with computers and meetings—but the kind where survival plans were made.
There weren’t entrepreneurs in our community.
There weren’t professionals to look up to.
There were very few vehicles.
Getting to work in the city was difficult. Higher education was almost unheard of.
No one in my family had ever earned a university degree.
For generations, many Indigenous communities were pushed onto small parcels of land after treaty agreements. Our people were separated from the broader economy and opportunities that many Canadians take for granted.
Those systems shaped what people believed was possible.
Watching My Mom Make the Numbers Work
I remember sitting near that kitchen table as my mom tried to budget our monthly welfare check.
She would carefully write numbers down.
And sometimes the numbers didn’t work.
When that happened, she had to make impossible choices.
She would pawn our belongings just to buy school clothes.
To make sure we had lunch for school.
Sometimes we collected cans and bottles and brought them to recycling depots for spare change.
These weren’t stories the world saw back then.
There was no social media.
No cameras documenting daily life.
Many communities were struggling quietly.
Even Water Was a Challenge
Basic necessities weren’t always guaranteed.
Our community spent years under boil-water advisories.
Sometimes the water coming out of our taps turned discolored.
For days we couldn’t drink it.
These were realities that many people outside our communities simply didn’t see.
But those experiences shaped the way I understood resilience.
The Bus That Opened a Door
Then one day, my mom made another important decision.
She put me on a bus.
That bus took me off the reserve for school for the first time.
It took me to a small town called Cut Knife, where about 600 people lived at the time.
Students from three different First Nations communities were bused there to attend school.
For me, that bus ride represented something much bigger than transportation.
It was exposure to a different world.
Different people.
Different possibilities.
Why I Carry This Story
Today, when I stand in rooms speaking to audiences across the country, I never forget where my journey started.
It started in a small house.
With a couch that was never meant to be a bed.
With a mother who refused to give up on her children.
Everything I’ve been able to accomplish since then is built on those sacrifices.
And because of that, I carry a responsibility.
To honor those who came before me.
To create opportunities for the next generation.
And to remind people that leadership often begins in the quietest places.
Final Thought
When people talk about success, they often focus on the outcome.
But behind every success story is a foundation built by someone else’s sacrifice.
For me, that foundation was my mother.
And it was built on a couch in a little two-bedroom house.
hiy hiy
