'Our pandemic in Canada': Grandmothers step up to raise children orphaned by premature deaths
CBC
Joan Okemow watched both her parents suffer the trauma of residential schools and the impact of alcoholism.
"That was normal, because we saw it every day," she said, adding she herself started drinking at the age of 10. "It was normal for me to do the same thing. So I became an alcoholic."
The dysfunctional patterns of her childhood would play out in her own parenting.
"I didn't even know that I didn't even know how to love my children, because my parents never said I love you or hugged me," she said.
That alcoholism had her in its grip until she hit her 40s and dedicated herself to sobriety.
"One day, I just woke up. It was like waking up one day and thinking, you know, there's a better way of life. There's gotta be a better way."
It took years for her to open up and tell her children that she loved them, but she didn't have the same reservations with her own grandchildren.
"It's just a different kind of love. It just melts your heart."
Unlike her generation, however, the dangers surrounding those children are much more fierce than alcohol, with crystal meth and opioids claiming lives prematurely, she said.
She likened the drug crisis in the Indigenous community to the HIV/AIDS crisis that orphaned countless children in Africa.
"This is our pandemic in Canada, and that's the reason why we stepped up as parents for our grandchildren," she said. "Because there's nobody there for them."
She's now raising three grandchildren and one great-grandchild, all of whom know her as their mama. She's trying her best to be a bulwark for them, to shelter them from the pangs of hunger and dysfunction that she faced herself as a child of residential schools.
"We want to turn this around. My grandchildren, they deserve better than their parents," she said, adding she can only pass on the lessons she's learned, and the rest is in the Creator's hands.
"You can only take them so far and they have to take themselves the rest of the way."