I'm 63 and raising four of my grandchildren. Money is very tight, and I haven't once thought about retiring.

• Cindy Chiasson, 63, is raising four grandchildren while working full-time without a retirement plan.
• Chiasson's daughter struggled with addiction, leading her to gain custody of her grandchildren.
• A tight housing market in her part of Canada has made caregiving harder.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cindy Chiasson, 63, who lives in Canada's Yukon Territory. Chiasson is raising four of her grandchildren who range in age from 9 to 24. She works full-time and has no retirement plan. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I have four daughters whom I raised myself. They were 3, 2, 1, and my last I was six months pregnant with when I became a single parent.

I dated on and off throughout the years, but having four daughters, I was very careful about who I wanted to bring into their lives. I decided that I didn't want anybody who wasn't ready to commit to raising them.

I went back to school as an adult and got a degree in criminal justice. When my kids were in their teen years, I worked in corrections, which kept me out of the home for 12 hours a day, probably at a time when they needed me the most. I worked from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. I would go home and say, "I don't want you hanging out with this person or that person." I got a lot of resentment from them.

I remarried, when the girls were 11, 10, 9, and 8, but that marriage only lasted two years due to severe abuse. That really triggered a lot for my daughters when they were teens. They started getting into alcohol and drugs.

I worked in corrections up until 20 years ago and decided that wasn't my calling. I started at the Yukon Women's Transition Home for women escaping domestic violence. I work full-time managing a building for second-stage residents, meaning they're over their trauma but still are in need of safety before going out into the community.

By 18, my first daughter had her first child and clearly wasn't ready.

She struggled with addiction for years to come after that. She had three children, and I tried as best I could to assist her with her parenting and substance use. She was living in Vancouver to start a new life, but she missed the Yukon and wanted to come home for support.

I had moved into an apartment to downsize. At 3 a.m. one morning, she arrived on my doorstep with her three kids and one bag of clothing. We got the kids situated. I asked her how things were going, and she said she wanted to be reintegrated and missed all of us. By 9 that morning, she said she was going to go out for coffee with a friend and would be back.

That night at 10, there was a knock on my door. There were two police officers and a social worker, and they were there to apprehend the children for safety reasons. A policeman informed me that my daughter had been involved in a domestic violence situation where my granddaughter had gotten hurt. They needed a statement from her to keep the perpetrator in jail.

I told them they were not going to take the kids at this hour. I told them that they have safety in my apartment. There was no way they were going into foster care. It just so happened that the one officer knew me from working in corrections and let the social worker know that he felt it was a safe place. I said that all of my children know not to come to my house if they've been drinking or doing substances.

Their mom didn't come back for two weeks. She apologized, came over, and spent 10 minutes with the kids before walking out. It was months before she saw them after that.

I got custody of her children when they were 8, 6, and 4. They are now 24, 22, and 21. They lost their father due to addiction, which was really hard for them. They didn't have a lot of contact with him over the years, but since it's a small town, they often saw him around.

I was angry and disillusioned with the fact that my daughter could have this addiction that takes her away from her children. I raised them to be family first, and children are important because they're our future. All the morals and values that you teach your children just went away when they walked out the door.

However, with the education and training that I received in my job, I have compassion, patience, and understanding for people struggling with addiction.

When I first took them in, I thought, am I really prepared to do this?

What's this going to look like for them? As grandparents, we do slow down in life.

I went to the social worker to ask if I could get some beds because I wasn't set up to have children in my home. The government wouldn't help at all with any finances. I was left on my own. The apartment didn't allow children, so I told the landlord that I was going to have to move out. The landlord didn't make me vacate the unit and stuck through it with us.

In my part of Canada, a reasonably priced rental to accommodate all of us was almost non-existent. There were places charging $3,000 to $4,000 a month, and that didn't cover the utilities. I didn't qualify for low-cost housing. I helped women find housing all the time, and I couldn't find any housing for myself. But Habitat for Humanity came north, so I applied and was accepted. We hit 13 years there this month.

Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of help for people struggling with addiction. We have a very small community, which makes it really hard to get any help. You could be related to individuals who are trying to help you. When you don't want anybody to know your business, everybody does. People often fall through the cracks here, especially if you're a single parent.

My daughter had another child in the midst of all of this.

I've now just taken in their younger sister, who is 9, due to safety concerns. We're trying to balance that lifestyle with a young one in the house again.

I was hoping that it would only take a few months for either of their parents to step up and become sober. But after the first year, I knew I was in this for the long haul with the grandkids. It's affected my relationship with my other children and their children. I was too tired by the end of the day to have anybody else in my home, so I couldn't take any other kids for a sleepover. It caused resentment between the sisters.

I had to take sick days if my kids were sick. Everything is so expensive here. Utilities companies are charging whatever they want because they have no competition.

Some people may ask why the 24-year-old hasn't moved out. We have a major housing crisis, and it's even worse today than when I first got them. The two older kids are working full-time, but it's not enough to be able to pay rent on their own.

It's chaotic since we have different schedules. The youngest of the three has social issues and high anxiety being in public. He received some counseling but prefers not to go out because the crime rate is really up right now. But they all graduated, the oldest one with honors, which is incredible after all she's been through. They have First Nations heritage, and I want to see them keep that.

If I had to do it over again, I would do it.

We're just making it work. Every day is a new challenge. We all have a really good and open relationship. I want the kids to know that they have a grandma who doesn't quit on anything. I'm not quitting on them, and they're not quitting on me.

I am getting to a point where my health is starting to break down. There will be a time when they're going to have to help me out. My oldest boy says that as long as he doesn't have to change my diapers, we're good. If I had to quit tomorrow, I would really need all the kids to step up and probably get some help from my other daughters for us to keep the home.

More and more grandparents are taking custody and raising grandkids. But I just love my babies. It's more important for families to take care of kids than to put them into systems that people just look at for financial gain instead of the mental health of the children.

Chiasson's granddaughter Sierra, whom Chiasson has cared for, told Business Insider: I would say that it was a huge honor to be raised by my grandmother, there's not a whole lot of people who are privileged enough to be raised by an older generation. It also gave me a whole lot of insight as to what parents give up for their children as my grandmother and I had a very close relationship where she would tell me stories of she went through with her children and the jobs she previously had raising her children and the struggles of a single mother.

When I was growing up I did miss out on things such as my friends going out on girls day dates with their moms or having their dads come on school outings with that class. But looking back, my grandma was always there being my biggest cheerleader. I could never count on my parents being there, she was always cheering the loudest, telling me to do my best and that she would always be proud if I knew I did my absolute best.