By Amanda Nordstrom, Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College Dean of Student Services
2025-2026 Indigenous Visionaries: Women’s Leadership Program
Being better. It’s not about perfection. It’s not about doing more or accomplishing more. It’s something so much greater than that. It’s a quiet commitment I’ve made to myself over the years after deep reflection of the past. It’s a journey.
I wasn’t a traditional college student. I went to school with life already in full swing, married with babies, a career, and responsibilities that didn’t pause for homework. I was juggling every part of my life, sitting at the kitchen table late at night in silence after everyone was asleep, wondering if I could keep up and if I even belonged after years away from a classroom. But I stayed in that first class, then the second, then the third. I stayed until I reached my goal, earning that first degree and then another. I realize now this is what leadership looks like for us as Indigenous women, not recognition, titles, or pay, but how we carry ourselves when life is heavy and how we keep showing up for our families, our students, and our communities, even when we’re tired and even when we’re grieving.
This is my reality. One of my best friends took her own life and that changed me in ways I’m still trying to understand. I found grief doesn’t just come and go, like it might for others. It has settled in. It’s now intertwined into daily life. Some days I feel I’m healing, productive, focused, and present, but then there are moments that hit me out of nowhere. A memory. A smell. A color. A question that will forever remain unanswered. The “what if” becomes unbelievably loud.
And yet, I’m a mother and I have babies to take care of.
Motherhood doesn’t stop when your heart is getting ripped out of your chest. Life still goes on, even when I feel completely drained and empty. Hockey games to drive to, homework to help with, a son who just graduated who’s trying to find his path. Helping each one of them to recognize and handle their feelings, all while I’m trying to figure out my own. It’s a lot at times.
The one thing about kids, or at least my kids, is that they’re always watching. They’re watching when we least expect it. They’re watching and they’re learning what real strength looks like, even when I’m not paying attention. Not the strength from lifting those heavy weights, but the strength that shows up every single day, keeps moving forward, and chooses to be better. My role as their mom shows me the most important version of strength. Strength sometimes means silence and going on with life and being better.
The entire experience has taught me courage. It’s taught me that growth happens when we least expect it. Growth happens when you’re pushed so far beyond your comfort zone, running on empty, but unwilling to quit.
Now, let’s layer grief on top of grit, and it forces you to take a long look at yourself in the mirror. For a long time, I thought “be better” meant I had to push harder. Accomplish more. Do more. Take on all the things.
Now I know better.
As Indigenous women, we carry so much. Family. Culture. Employees. Students. Expectations. But at the end of the day, we are still humans who may be navigating real pain, exhaustion, and sometimes, grief.
If my journey as a mother, wife, teacher, and a woman who has experienced a heartbreaking loss has taught me anything, it’s this:
Leadership starts with how we treat ourselves. It starts with honesty. With courage. With grit. Being better doesn’t mean we have to be perfect in every way, shape, or form. It means we must be real. We must be real with ourselves.
And sometimes, being real, and choosing to stay anyway, is the strongest type of leadership there is.
With their hands in mine, I choose to keep going.
For her, we are better.
