Two lives in one day

A day that starts with four children’s voices, continues in a white coat and comes home again to four small hearts. Meliha Özyalvaç, a specialist physician and mother of four, on the hardest part of working motherhood — and the thing without a name that rises through all the tiredness.

By Uzm. Dr. Meliha Özyalvaç · September 22, 2026 · 1 min read

A hallway in morning light: a white doctor’s coat on a wooden rail beside four small school backpacks, four pairs of children’s shoes lined up below; a woman’s hand reaches for the coat

Sometimes I wonder how many lives can fit into a single day.

A day that begins in the early morning with the voices of four children…

Packing one child’s bag while fixing another’s hair; checking one’s homework while looking at the drawing another holds up with “Mum, look!”…

Then closing the door and stepping into another world.

I put on my white coat.

This time I try to touch other people’s lives.

I listen.

I try to understand.

I decide.

Sometimes a single sentence of mine puts someone at ease; sometimes I simply stand beside them in silence.

And then the shift ends.

But my day does not.

When I get home I take off the white coat, but I cannot take off being a mother.

Four separate worlds are waiting for me at home.

Four characters, four needs, four stories…

One has so much to tell.

One just wants a hug.

One needs help.

Another only wants their mother to listen…

And I try to be enough for all of them.

Some days I honestly don’t know whether I am.

Because perhaps the hardest part of being a working mother is not how much there is to do…

It is not wanting to leave any of it undone.

That is what wears a person out most.

At work I think about the children.

With the children, I think about the work that still has to be done…

And while hurrying to be somewhere, about the time I left behind somewhere else…

Four lunch boxes side by side on a kitchen table with a glass of milk, a child’s drawing, a hairbrush and an open school notebook; a mother’s hands close the last lid — The early hours of the morning.

A quiet consulting room seen through a doorway: a white coat over the back of a chair, a stethoscope, a closed notebook and a cup of tea on a wooden desk, daylight through sheer curtains — Closing the door and stepping into another world.

A dim hallway at night: children’s bedroom doors left ajar, a small lamp glowing on a bookshelf, a cardigan hung over the banister and a pair of slippers on the runner — When everyone is asleep, in the quiet of the house.

And sometimes at night, when everyone is asleep and the house is quiet, I ask myself:

“Was I really enough of a mother to my children today?”

Then I look at their sleeping faces.

Maybe I couldn’t play with them for long every day.

Maybe I couldn’t answer every question the moment it was asked.

Maybe, out of tiredness, I sometimes raised my voice.

Maybe on some days I didn’t have a single minute for myself.

But I was always there.

Inside their lives, trying to carry on my own at the same time…

Being a doctor taught me to touch a person’s life.

Being a mother taught me to share my own life with my children’s.

Now I understand that being a working mother is not living two separate lives.

It is carrying two lives at once.

Sometimes it is heavy.

But then I hear four small people calling “Mum”.

And out of all my tiredness, something I cannot describe rises up.

Maybe its name is happiness.

Maybe gratitude.

Maybe simply love.

I don’t know.

The only thing I know is this:

Every morning I begin again.

As a doctor, to touch other lives; as a mother, to reach four small hearts…

And, for all my shortcomings, doing the best I can.

Because some women’s lives carry more stories than a single day can hold.

A small gift for a tired mother

If a mother came to mind while you were reading — perhaps yourself — let us make her a small keepsake with her name on it. A thank-you at the end of the long days.

Add their name

— Uzm. Dr. Meliha Özyalvaç

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