At Strive, you'll hear us talk a lot about transformation. That's because, time and time again, a Striver's story reminds us what that word actually means.

Beyond a dramatic before-and-after or a physical change, the real thing is usually smaller and runs deeper. It can be something that changes everything underneath while the surface stays quiet. Edwina Daher's journey to Iceland is an example of this; a loosening, a quiet unclenching of the hands.

The fact that Edwina made it to Iceland at all feels remarkable. She only heard about the trip because she was in London (unable to return to Lebanon during the war) and her summer commitments made the dates impossible. Two months later, she mentioned it in front of her mum, Marleine, who immediately said, “I’ll go with you”. Then a wedding was postponed, the dates opened, and everything fell into place.

So, when Edwina arrived in Iceland alongside her mum, she was carrying a question she’d held all year: Am I strong? To add a layer of complexity, just ten days before the trip, she fell down stairs and sustained a herniated disc. It's safe to say most people would have cancelled, but Edwina felt an undeniable pull to show up, so she got on the plane, quietly determined not to let the injury define her time. And while the Edwina of old thought strength meant pushing harder, Iceland had other plans.

For those of you who've experienced them, Icelandic landscapes are stunning and humbling. Challenging in a way that commands respect but never quite lets you feel like you've conquered them. That's how Edwina felt, and on those first evenings, she wondered if she'd be able to do it all again the next morning.

This is the part of the story that belongs to all of us, because Edwina didn't get through it alone. Strivers carried her pack. Helped with her tent. Played music to lift her spirits. The expedition physio team stayed close, tending to her with real care. And her mum, the person Edwina would normally call when things got hard, was already standing beside her. Often, she was somewhere further up the trail, ahead of Edwina and quietly showing her what was possible. “Strength isn’t holding on tighter,” Edwina wrote on her final night. “It’s the opposite… And the moment I stopped fighting, everything opened.” That's the ripple effect in its purest form. One person softens, and a whole group rises to meet her.

The ripple followed her home and kept growing. In Iceland, Edwina got the final encouragement she needed to commit to a name for the business she’d been building all year: isshq, a natural-fibre activewear brand. On one of the final evenings, she discovered that fellow Striver, Sage, was a lawyer. He immediately offered to help and, soon after the trip, ran the trademark search that confirmed she could move forward. Time spent with Strivers working in e-commerce also opened her eyes to what else might be possible.

Her work with young people evolved too. Before Iceland, Marleine had publicly committed to creating Qiyada, a youth leadership fellowship under the Michel Daher Social Foundation, but its shape was still unclear. During a conversation on the trail, Edwina realised that if she was going to help build it, she needed to truly own it. Further conversations with Hannah (who heads up Development & Partnerships at Big Change) helped her begin thinking through who the fellowship could serve and how it might work.

Iceland also created ripples within her family. Inspired by what they had experienced together, Edwina and her mum began encouraging the rest of the family to spend more time hiking, camping and embracing challenge. As Edwina put it, “Somewhere along the way, we got too comfortable.”

Some people talk about mountains testing them, though in Edwina's version, the feeling is that it multiplied her. This is why we do what we do, because adventure with the right people strips away the performance and gets us to something real. As she puts it best: "The strength I was looking for was never something I could find alone. It showed up in the group." That's Strive. That's the whole point.