A mother is one who loves. A woman who steers her dependents, cares about their well-being and social contribution. A mother is love. If she provides love when in their presence and struggles with the desire to improve the world for her loved ones, she is a mother. (written by neice, Amy Mcleish)

I was lucky to have three wonderful women in my life who gave me the strength to become who I am today.

The first was my grandmother,Jenny Christmas,whom we fondly called Gage ( pronounced Goggy.) Her strength was remarkable as she was married with children, living in a remote area in British Columbia with a husband who was ill. He died four years after they were married. Gage had the strength to carry on and bring up her children as a single mother. I often think of her and the stories she told me. Without her in my life I would not have learned resilience.

My mother, Ruth McLeish ( and father) brought my brothers and I up in a happy home, and loved us unconditionally. She was the epitome of what a mother should be, often sacrificing her wishes for the sake of her children.

And then, there was my mother in in law, Elsie Burch who had the strength to live through the tragedies in her life. She greeted each day with optimism and wanted to be strong for all of us. She was a role model to me and to my children.

As I think back to my life in Kivalina, there were two women there who provided me with love when I was in their presence. I was a young woman and didn’t realize this at the time but as I wrote my memoir: Journey through Fire and Ice, I realized what a profound influence they had on my well-being. 

The first was Ruth Adams. Because she shared my mother’s name, I could have called her Ana, the Inupiaq word for mother. She was a mentor in a way to me, teaching me the ways of the native life in Kivalina. She helped me make my rabbit skin parka and we would sit in her house and talk like mother and daughter. 

The second woman was Mildred Sage. She lived behind me and was like a mother to me as well. When I was alone ,she came to check on me making sure I was all right. When Tiger and I came  home from our fateful camping trip she arrived to find I was freezing. Seeing this, she lifted her skirt and made me warm my feet against her body.

Another time, I rushed into our house which was full of smoke after the men had come to carry Tiger who had been badly burned out. I was in shock, and unable to move. Despite the smoke, Mildred arrived, found my parka and hurried me out of the building. After our return to Kivalina, she continued to be one of the best neighbors I could have asked for. I remember her saying to me after she saw Tiger’s scarred face “We don’t care how  he looks as long as he has the same smile.”

I think of so many of the women elders there, most of them long gone. and how they welcomed other children into their home and became a mother to them. To Mildred and Ruth, I was not a child but I was a young naïve woman who was in need of a mother at that time and both of them welcomed me into their life as one  of them. How lucky I was to have had them at what was for me a time when I was far away from home and in need of a mother. As my niece, Amy McLeish said on Facebook today, a mother is one who loves and both these women showed me love when I needed it.