Alfiya Alpysbayeva grew up in a home filled with the soft hum of a sewing machine. Her mother stitched Quraq Korpe for neighbors, piecing fabric into comfort and tradition. As a child, Alfiya played alongside the fabrics, cutting tiny outfits for dolls. But sewing was never something she imagined for herself. She dreamed of bigger stages, sketching dresses and interiors in her school notebooks, dancing since she was four, imagining a future where creativity and movement defined her path. “I always thought I’d become a designer,” she recalls. “And then I thought I’d become a choreographer.” Life felt wide open then, a journey she would walk with two lungs, a dancer’s stamina, and the future shining in front of her. In 2019, she left for China, carried by ambition and a scholarship she earned through her own determination. The world was expanding, new cultures, new languages, the thrill of being away from home. But within a semester, everything collapsed. The pandemic shut the borders, and she and her classmates were forced to return home at their own expense. “We flew through South Korea, and it ended up being extremely expensive,” she says. She came home thinking the worst was behind her. Instead, nine months later, her life turned sharply. Tuberculosis. She was first placed into the mild treatment category. But two months passed, no progress. Weight fell from her body unnoticed. “I lost 14 kilograms… I was so thin … it was terrible.” Eventually, doctors moved her to the most severe category. A year of medication, a relentless fight to breathe, and still, her left lung failed. They prepared her for surgery. On January 26, 2022, everything she knew about her body and her identity changed.
During surgery, her heart stopped. Doctors paused, waiting between life and death. “Either it would start beating again… or they would pronounce me dead.” A miracle, her heart beat once more. She woke into a world where one lung carried the full burden of keeping her alive.
“They took away my lung,” she says, “but they gave me new opportunities.”
Instead of seeing disability as a limitation, she reframed it as part of her destiny. When she returned home, she needed a way to continue life, to earn, to rebuild. Bags with bold prints had begun trending. “I saw them and thought, I want to try making them.” She sat at her mother’s sewing machine, a tool she had never learned to use, and created a shopper bag on her very first try. “I thought, I must have talent!” she laughs, that spark of wonder still fresh in her voice. A forgotten childhood dream, to be a fashion designer, resurfaced. Creativity flowed through her fingertips. She added ornaments, unique fabrics, her own prints. And slowly, bags expanded into clothing, children’s ensembles, dance costumes, custom designs bursting with individuality. Her mother teased her, saying, “Usually, shoemakers are without shoes, but in your case, you make things for yourself first.” Deep inside, even while lying in a hospital bed, a single conviction kept her anchored:
“No matter what I do, I will become a businesswoman.”
That was her qairat (will), the part of her that refused to surrender. Entrepreneurship didn’t appear by magic. With one lung and a fragile heart, she worked and studied simultaneously. Her first attempts to win grant support failed, twice. Friends doubted. People whispered, “What if you fail again?” But Alfiya never believed she had anything to lose. “Why should I be afraid? If I win, great. If not, I’ll try again.”
She won her first grant from Bastau Business, 1,380,000 tenge, and bought her first professional sewing machines and materials. No longer dependent on her mother’s equipment, she felt the thrill of independence swell inside her. Then came the biggest turning point, the TalpynUp project, business training with a psychological foundation. Over six months, she poured herself into learning, implementing, growing. Out of 450 women from Qazaqstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, only 15 were honored at the final graduation ceremony in Shymkent. Alfiya stood among them, receiving a diploma from the U.S. Ambassador, and a confirmation that the girl with lung scars and a fierce heart had earned her place. “I already knew I’d be on that list,” she smiles. “I worked hard. I put in everything.” But burnout also found her. Perfectionism can be exhausting. “Sometimes one piece just wouldn’t turn out right several times… every day, and you start to burn out.” The incredible pressure of working alone, deadlines stacking up, pain in her ribs during cold seasons, long hours at the sewing table, eventually led her to a breaking point. She cried. She felt weak. She felt stuck.
Then she learned something that changed her life: “You have to take care of yourself first. You are the person you need the most.” She learned to rest without guilt. She started boxing again, then fitness, “not for fights, just to train for myself.” She went to therapy, ten sessions that brought emotional stability. She prayed Tahajjud in the quiet of night. Her ability to regenerate, mentally and spiritually, became a form of heart strengthening.
“As an entrepreneur, you are the driving force… but you can also be the one slowing yourself down.”
Today, at 25, Alfiya is unstoppable in her dreams. She teaches Chinese and Korean at a private center, saving money to open a studio where customers can walk in, see her work, and where she can employ older women, to sew, to teach, to earn with dignity. She listens to Qazaq ethnic music when she designs, especially the composition “Orleu.” “It felt like they created that piece for me,” she says softly. “Like it was telling my story.” Culture is her inspiration, her grounding. She loves her people “even with all the stereotypes,” and she wants her fashion, uniquely “ethno-modern,” to celebrate them. Disability, she says, has helped more than hindered: “It’s like a reward for the challenges I’ve gone through.” She sees grants not as charity, but as recognition of struggle and perseverance, mind learning how to navigate an imperfect system. Alfiya is not shaped by others’ expectations. She hates stereotypes that confine women to housework. “Even if I got married, I wouldn’t just sit at home,” she laughs. “And I hate cleaning!” She refuses to be boxed in, not by gender, not by disability, not by fear.
“I don’t want to be like everyone else…I want to be myself … unique.” She has survived what many never face. She lost part of her body, but gained a sharpened sense of purpose. She became her own protector, her own motivation. She dreams not only of business success, but of lifting others with her, financially, emotionally, spiritually. In ten years, she imagines her sewing studio as a network across Qazaqstan, and maybe internationally. Perhaps she will open an educational center. Or even a pulmonology clinic, a nod to those who share her scars. She dreams of becoming a UN ambassador, protecting children and women’s rights.
“I am already successful … Despite my young age, I have gone through so much. I didn’t give up. I didn’t break. And I am still standing.”
Success, for Alfiya, is not fame or money, it is the ability to breathe life into others while continuing to breathe through one lung. Her narrative is not of disability, it is a narrative of harmony: of aqyl (mind), jurek (heart) and qairat (will). A Tolyq Adam, becoming whole through struggle, through creation, through love for her people. And she’s only just beginning.