Today was rainy and cold, the kind of day that settles into your bones before you even step outside. I woke up feeling like a machine, moving through a routine packed with tasks, applications, forms, agencies, diplomas. Diplomas that cost me years of my life, my savings, my joy, and too many sleepless nights. Languages learned, cultures understood, experiences gathered across different fields… and still, there’s a hole on my CV. A “career gap.” Motherhood.

That gap closes doors before I even knock.
The language of this new country demands fluency, and I’m almost there, almost C1, but “almost” isn’t enough. My age doesn’t fit the market’s idea of “fresh.” And the unspoken question hangs in the air: If your kids get sick, will you have to leave work to care for them?

Door after door, closing.

Later, I took my bike and rode through the rain to pick up my kids from school. They ran toward me shouting “Mama!” And inside, I felt unworthy, knowing my worth, knowing my capacity, but still feeling the sting of not being young enough, fluent enough, “market-ready” enough.

But in my kids’ eyes, I was the most qualified person in the world to be their mother.

We biked home together in the cold rain, their little faces smiling. I asked myself why we didn’t take the car today. Why we chose the hard way. But then my youngest, only six years old, looked up at me and said:

“Mama, today is the best day ever.”

And that’s when it hit me.

The challenges we face, the sacrifices we make, the world often calls it laziness, or lack of ambition. But it’s not. It’s compensation. It’s resilience. It’s the quiet strength behind every “no” we receive.

And still… we show up.
We ride home in the rain.
We keep going.
We’re still here.

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