“Sometimes the life you build must begin with the courage to imagine a different one.”

When I think of my mother now that she’s gone, I always picture her watching me spread my schoolbooks across the floor, absorbing every page as if the future itself depended on it. In many ways, it did.

Growing up in a village in Bogor, the expectations for a girl like me were heavy, yet painfully small. When I decided to choose the science track—chemistry, physics, and biology—some people actually laughed. “You’re a girl,” they reminded me, as if that alone should steer me toward something softer. I heard the whispers: that higher education would be wasted on a girl, that the world wasn’t waiting for someone like me, and that I would end up in the kitchen anyway.

There were no guidebooks for girls like me—girls from humble, complicated backgrounds who studied not out of comfort, but survival. The work was exhausting. Some nights, after hours of homework, the numbers and formulas would blur in front of me until my eyes ached.

But the more challenging it felt, the more determined I became. To me, choosing science wasn’t just about passing tests; it was an act of quiet rebellion. I didn’t want a future determined by the patterns I saw around me—marrying early and sacrificing dreams.

That rebellion followed me to university when I chose to study Information Technology—an unfamiliar field for most girls at the time, especially those from humble backgrounds. The struggle didn’t magically disappear. I sat in university lectures feeling painfully aware of what I didn’t know. My English wasn’t strong, and when classmates spoke easily about concepts that felt foreign to me, imposter syndrome settled in quietly. At night, in my small rented room, I would Google terms I was too embarrassed to ask about in class.

I had to constantly remind myself: no one starts ahead by accident. Everyone begins somewhere; I had simply started further back.

It was in those lonely, exhausting moments of persistence that I discovered my natural instinct for software testing. I learned how to notice gaps, to look at systems critically, and to ask “what if” when everyone else assumed things would simply work.

Today, when I sit at my desk in Australia, building a business alongside my husband and navigating the complexities of remote work, I often think back to that girl studying on the floor. The world of software testing and entrepreneurship can be unpredictable, requiring you to constantly look for gaps and ask “what if”.

But every time I face a system that isn’t working, or a challenge that seems too big to solve, I realise I am still using the exact same tools I learned back in Bogor. The title has changed, and the country has changed, but the mindset is exactly the same. I don’t back down when things get complicated, because my entire life was built on defying the odds, solving hard problems, and refusing to take the easy path.

Over to you: What is a struggle from your early years that unexpectedly became your greatest strength today? Let me know in the comments.

-EG