“I always try to strive to be a better person than I was yesterday. I always want to be kind. I always want to help where I can,” Malerie Norwegian shares. She is from Jean Marie River, a community of fifty people just south of Fort Simpson. She went to school there until grade eight when she became a teen mom, then moved to Fort Simpson for high school.

After she graduated, Norwegian went to a nursing program at Aurora College in Yellowknife. Her daughter inspired her to want to be a pediatric nurse. She was also motivated to study nursing because of a family member who needed medical care and she learned to help care for her at a young age. As a nurse, she felt she could be there for her more.

At first, Norwegian took the nursing access program, then the four year degree program. In the third and fourth year, she became a University of Victoria student at the college and her degree was granted by the university. After graduation, she worked at the territorial hospital, Stanton, until her grandmother’s advanced age and her mother’s dementia diagnosis prompted her return to Fort Simpson. Now, she works in a management role for the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority.

Her advice for Indigenous students that leave their home communities to pursue their education would be to not be afraid to explore, to try new things to come out of their comfort zone, and work hard, but also try to live life to its fullest. She recommends using technology to stay in touch and to network.

When it comes to obstacles, Norwegian struggled with the intergenerational effects of residential school, between drinking, violence and other challenges. “I think it's our generation where we really need to try to break those cycles, to provide safe, healthy, loving environments for our kids,” she offers, reflecting how that is the goal she and her husband set for their home. She also struggled financially in school but found there were many scholarships and bursaries. She found there were many people willing to help if she asked and that many people struggled if they didn’t ask for help.

If Norwegian could give a message to her younger self it would be, “There is a light at the end of the tunnel and all the hardship you're enduring now is going to be worth it at the end of all those hardships.” It’s the message she needed when she had a heavy workload while raising a child without enough money. Sometimes she wanted to quit and just get a job so she didn’t have to worry about school or being food insecure. She would want to tell herself, “When you're done, you just gotta keep on pushing yourself, even on those hardest days, and reminding yourself a lot of times that it's just a bad day, it's not a bad life.”

To balance her mental health and wellbeing, Norwegian was fortunate to have had a lot of staff and administration support at Aurora College if she needed help or to vent. She also had the support of her family, her sisters and parents who pushed her to succeed. Reaching out for help when needed, finding support and resources was important to her.

“I try every day. That's all I can do. That's all anybody can do, really, is try your best.”

As far as inspiration goes, Norwegian looks inward. Raised with good work ethics, she is helpful by nature, something that led her to nursing and healthcare. “I want to help our people in our region. I want to improve, or try to help improve our health care to our people in our region and that's why I came back,” she reflects.

Striving for self improvement, for kindness and to help where she can, nursing is an ideal fit for Malerie Norwegian. Inspired and encouraged by her family, she pursued her dream even as a young mom and brought what she learned back to her community. Wanting to improve healthcare for her people, she tries every day to do her best, even on the hard days, remembering it’s just a bad day, not a bad life.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.