Namaste, I'm a returning-to-work mother of two from Faridabad, originally Aligarh. I may be older than most of you here and slower with the tech, but I make excellent chai and I'm a very good listener. Happy to be somewhere I can just be Sunita again.

For years my whole identity was 'someone's mummy'. Now that the children need me less, some days there's a strange empty silence at 11am that nobody warns you about. I'm slowly learning that I am still a full person, not just a role that's ending.

No gym, no fancy shoes, just a 40-minute walk around the Faridabad sector park every morning at 6. My knees complained for a week, now they thank me. Ladies my age, please don't wait for the 'right time', your body is listening even now.

When I said I want to work again, my mother-in-law asked 'ghar kaun sambhalega'. My husband, to his credit, quietly started making his own morning chai. Small shifts, but after so many years even a shared kitchen feels like a revolution.

First day back after 12 years

Rejoined work after 12 years at home and on day one a colleague half my age had to teach me the attendance software. Beta, my hands were shaking, not from the computer but from feeling like a beginner in my own life. But I stayed, I learned, I came home proud. Re-entry is scary, not shameful.