Thank you, mom, for paving the way for us girls

Every Sunday I write an email to my team on different topics varying from our business, life, and the world. I call it a "Sunday Updates for Monday". Today I devoted a big part of my message to my mother Astrid Hindriks. I asked mom if it would be ok to share that with the world and she said it was ok so here it is:

"Just like our own kids, we often take our parents for granted. The stark realization of that occurred to me the moment I heard that my father had died in 2006. Another hard reminder was last summer when our mother was diagnosed with fast progressing Parkinson's disease. Since she was not able to cope alone anymore then we brought her to a care home near Tallinn where she has had a good recovery thanks to medicine and science. This summer she will be moving back to P?rnu again. Today I took our mom to a seaside restaurant in Viimsi. It was her first time out in a restaurant since last summer when the progression of the illness started. We talked about life and her childhood looked at the stormy waves of the Baltic Sea and concluded that we must treasure absolutely every day ?

Today I want to devote the Sunday email to our mom, Astrid Hindriks, the woman behind me, and my co-founder Ronald Hindriks (and our sister Kristine Hindriks).

Astrid was born on November 25th, 1950 five years after the end of WWII. Her mother Esta was only seventeen years old when she became pregnant. That would be hard today. It was insanely hard back then. Esta herself had a harsh childhood since it was only a few days after her 12th birthday in March 1944 when the Soviet troops bombed down her whole hometown of Narva. The images of what we are seeing from Mariupol, Ukraine today, were my grandmother's childhood in Narva. 1944 she and her mother spent most of the time living in underground shelters. Her father was killed. After the bombing ended they had no home so they moved from house to house living behind someone's wardrobe. Soon after the bombing ended Esta needed to go to work as a 12-year-old to support her mom and herself.

But let's go back to Astrid. Despite the fact that Astrid's childhood was also full of challenges and they lived in harsh conditions after the war then my mother has always been the most optimistic person I know. She is full of wonder and joy about life and never shies to push boundaries a tiny bit. One of the funny stories from our childhood was when my mother could not stand how heavy the books were that I and Ronald had to carry to school. So what did she do? She collected three hundred signatures from parents to support the cause of lighter books that would not harm children's backs. But the campaign did not end there. She organized backpacks full of rocks proportionally as heavy as kids had to carry and sent them with a public letter to then sitting President Lennart Meri and Prime Minister Mart Laar. A few years later a law was passed to have a weight limit on school books. This is our mom!

As one of the founding members of the Estonian Liberal Democratic Party (predecessor of the current Prime Minister's Reform Party), Astrid started to see the underrepresentation and discrimination of women in politics. That is why she took her life mission to help to train and prepare more women to enter politics. This is what she and her NGO did over the past two decades and her work has touched the lives of many many people who either are or have been leading our country. Astrid got an Honorary Citizen reward from the P?rnu Mayor for her life work in contributing to the development of civil society.

Mamma Astrid was also the force behind me throughout my entrepreneurial journey from my first high school student company. When it turned out that I at the age of sixteen was the youngest patent owner in Estonia then it was she who notified the Minister of Economy's office and told them that it is such a big thing that the Minister should give me that patent certificate himself. And he did - there was a whole ceremony around it with media present.

Astrid always encouraged me to take a stage, to aim higher, and always reminded me that absolutely everything is possible for me even though I am a girl.

When I was fifteen and told her that I am not sure if I still have the courage to go to hitchhike through Europe with my older sister then what did Astrid respond?

“If you will not go then I will go instead of you!”

I did go and we traveled all the way to Puerto de Santa Maria in Spain, near Portugal. It was an absolutely amazing trip full of challenges and so many discoveries.

Thank you, mom, for everything you have done for me and for women all around! ??

Hurray to all the mothers out there ????