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It's a gloomy October day in 2023, and I am walking along hiking trail number 10 - spectacularly unspectacular: no colour, no dimension, no fun. When I get back home, I write a little "x" on the page of the Franz-Karl-Effenberg-Wanderweg , which means "Did not enjoy it". More than a year later, I take my daughter there. After an hour on the public transport, we finally reach the starting point. “Mum,” she says, “I don't feel well.” We sit on a bench next to the graveyard for

I often ask myself how she does it, and sometimes I will let her know I wonder that, but I never asked her directly: how can you be so much of a woman?

But my goal was never that - I did not write all of this to try and change the opinion of someone who would never be in that position. I wrote it for the mother who feels like she failed; for the mother who measures herself to the highest standard; for the mother who is labelled by society as a failure because she does not have a paycheque to prove how valuable her contribution actually is.