Hi. I’m a cisgendered white girl from the rural rocky mountains in the U.S. 

My mom was a waitress, my dad a carpenter. They were high school graduates, estranged from mormon upbringings. Plagued by mental illness, emotional immaturity, and trauma, they still managed to raise us children and keep food on our plates, albeit leaving us hungry for emotional support. I had an older half brother. He possessed limitless energy and his voice always dominated the room. He, like my mother, was very talkative and outward. I, like my father was avoidant and passive, but I had my mother’s courage. 

Despite being more interested in what my brother was doing, I was given the “girl things” to do. As with many young girls growing up in the 90s, I was also sexualized at an early age. I was taught that my value was directly tied to my physical appearance. Britney Spears wasn’t helping my cause.

Intellectual curiosity and skill building were not important. My brother was given a Super Nintendo for example. He let me try to play the games, I loved the idea of it, but when I made mistakes, he would force the controls from me and mock my failure. No encouragement, no assistance, no self esteem when it came to anything technical or more than superficially rewarding. High school was ending and I was doomed to live my parent’s fate, soon I would be on my own with no money and no skills in a rural town with no opportunity.

When I turned 18, I visited my rich boyfriend who was studying abroad in Germany. I stayed there a year. My mom thought I’d been kidnapped! I had not actually been kidnapped, I was there willingly. However, I was quickly alienated from everything I’d ever known. The association with this rich boyfriend and living in a foreign country caused a lot of uncomfortable conflict in my relationship with my parents and my friends, but to me, his educated, growth-minded and cosmopolitan family may have been the nurturing I needed at the time. It made me realize a more fulfilling life was possible, women could go to college! Not everyone lived in rural America serving tables and building houses. At this point I knew I wasn’t cut out for either option, I was a cleaner mostly, the closest I’d come to working in an office. I could never have guessed that one day I would become a software engineer.