Looking back, Sandra Phipps has come a long way from the Grenadine Islands, her birthplace before immigrating to Canada at the age of 19.

Faced with career limitations on the islands, Sandra left her teaching job and followed the customary path of going abroad to explore and learn. After a family member sponsored her to come to Canada, she quickly realized that it wouldn’t be as easy as applying to teach, as her qualifications weren’t recognized here. Much bureaucracy and frustration followed and Sandra turned to babysitting to make a living.

Unhappy and ready to go back home, her life took a turn when she met her future husband, got married and gave birth to daughters Renee and Allana. Although it quickly became apparent her marriage was not working out, Sandra put all of her focus on her family and instilling good values in her children.

“Many times you will see, culturally speaking, when migrating to another country that values and self identity get lost,” she says. Her philosophy of “remember my value system and embrace the one I chose to live in” has helped her find balance while trying to fit into a new culture.

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It’s not just on the outside; superficial stuff can easily fade away. The people who are close to you and care about you will each have 15 different things to say about you. You probably won’t see any of those 15 things on the outside, but these things can’t get lost, that’s who the person is. What’s inside of you is who you really are.

In 1986, she made the difficult decision to go back to school for her nursing degree with two girls under five years old and a husband who didn’t approve of her decision.

For nine years, she took her nursing degree part-time while working as a health care aide and raising her daughters. “People would say, ‘Why are you working so hard?’ ” she recalls. “I said, ‘I’m not working hard, I’m doing what I have to do.’ “

This fierce determination and self challenge got her through those hard times, stretched to the limits financially, averaging four hours of sleep at night. It was a strong sense of family values that got her and her daughters through her eventual divorce, when her children were grown.

This sense of drive has kept Sandra from staying in one place for too long, both literally and figuratively. “When I’m not challenged personally, I shut down in every sense of the word,” she explains. This strong sense of self has cycled her through different areas of nursing, from community, to observation, to surgery, to emergency and her hard work is now motivated more by personal goals than by necessity.

Now 48, Sandra has worked her way up to resident care manager at the Misericordia Health Centre, and teaches two nights a week at the Winnipeg Technical College. “I don’t see it as work,” she says. “As much as I’m delivering, I’m also learning.”