# 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.

- Source: https://mesgalem.com/en/inspiration/two-lives-in-one-day
- Language: en-GB
- Author: Uzm. Dr. Meliha Özyalvaç
- Published: 2026-09-22
- Category: Mother & Baby
- Tags: Working mothers, Motherhood, Four children, Guest writer

This piece is by my friend Meliha — a specialist physician and mother of four who fits her white
  coat and her motherhood into the same day. We publish it as she wrote it, in her own voice, with
  this English rendering alongside the Turkish original. — Merve

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…

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.