Helen Essay

My name is Helen Florencia Sugiharto. I was born in Semarang, Indonesia on August 10, 1997. When my mom was pregnant she got an ultrasound and the doctor told my parents that I was going to be a boy. My parents had planned to name me Daniel after my great grandfather. Since I was born a girl my parents did not have anything prepared, so my dad named me Helen after a famous singer who sang about dogs. My grandpa was a full Chinese when he married my grandma and he didn’t know how to speak Indonesian at all, so my grandma had to learn Chinese just to communicate with him. My ethnicity is now Chinese Indonesian. My family has not had an easy live for a long time. My mother was married after high school and was pregnant when she was 22. My mother didn’t get to finish her degree in financing because she now has my older brother Nico. My father also did not finish college due to insufficient funds since they now have a child. My parents received their income through an egg farm they invested. Eggs didn’t make lots of money they would have to be delivered to their home. So they can live an hour away and my parents have to still drive back and forth. When my mom was pregnant with my 2nd older brother and due any day she still had to work. My father had to get an extra job because they knew they don’t have enough money for another child. My mother always tells me stories of how when she was pregnant with her big stomach she still had to drive the big truck up a hill she said it was so hard to turn the steering wheel due to her big stomach. It also wasn’t easy for my parents because My dad's side of the family never accepted our family because my mom was not born from a rich family. By the time I was born my parents knew that we didn’t have a bright future ahead of us because we didn't have money just laying around. So my parents took up courage to leave behind their children to look for a better future for us. My parents had to left me at 2 years old to live