The harsh reality of unexpected career break challenges hit me like a freight train last spring. I found myself caught in that most brutal of limbos: watching my 89-year-old mother struggle with supposedly “accessible” government services while my professional identity crumbled around me.

After decades creating digital accessibility solutions for vulnerable users, I now witnessed firsthand the yawning chasm between what we claim to deliver and what actually works for those most in need.

This wasn’t the career break I had planned.

Since March 2024, I’ve existed in professional purgatory that defies neat categorisation.

My father died on 1 April after years battling cancer and Alzheimer’s, leaving my mother alone after seventy years of marriage. Meanwhile, my husband waited in France, growing increasingly anxious of my absences.

Between caring responsibilities, grief work never properly started and the constant anxiety of mounting tax bills against dwindling income, my supposed “break” has been anything but restful.

Yet it’s been profoundly educational.

When you’ve spent thirty years in digital transformation, particularly creating accessible services for vulnerable users, you develop theories about inclusion. You conduct user research, build personas, and run workshops with people who represent your target audiences. You believe, genuinely, that you understand.

Then life thrusts you into becoming the support person for someone truly vulnerable and you realise how thin that understanding actually was.

The parade I can no longer join

There’s something strangely alienating about watching former colleagues celebrate the launch of services like GOV.UK One Login while sitting beside my mother as she tries to comprehend instructions that might as well be written in Sanskrit.

I read glowing blog posts about extensive user research and accessibility considerations, then watch as she’s instructed to take taxis to post offices or somehow submit photos of identity documents and scan QR codes despite barely seeing them – and with a special OAP phone without camera.

The digital transformation community parades past, congratulating itself on work well done, while I stand on the sidelines with my mother, increasingly certain that the emperor has no clothes. The gap between claimed inclusivity and actual digital accessibility reality has never felt wider or more personal.

This hasn’t just been a break from my career; it’s been a break from the professional identity I constructed over decades. I can no longer participate in the collective fiction that we’re genuinely addressing the needs of the most vulnerable.

Even the Government Digital Service (GDS) admits that – despite over 150 research rounds involving more than 2,000 participants – the new system “does not work for everyone yet”. 

The impossible arithmetic of modern work

Meanwhile, the practical reality of returning to work has become a complex equation with no viable solution. Remote work opportunities that once seemed promising now come with rigid restrictions against working outside the UK.

My security clearance – essential for government contracts – has lapsed because I spent lockdown in France (with full permission from the Cabinet Office, ironically).

Contract opportunities inside IR35 mean effectively becoming an employee without benefits, while those outside IR35 have virtually disappeared.

The options narrow to impossible choices: leave my husband and dogs for months to work hybrid roles in London, or abandon my career entirely to care for my mother.

Technology that supposedly enables remote work has instead created new barriers as organisations retreat from pandemic-era flexibility.

The AI elephant in the professional room

Throughout this limbo period, I’ve continued exploring how AI impacts content design and strategy. I’ve written thoughtful articles examining both the potential and limitations of AI-assisted content creation. I’ve tested tools, developed workflows, and identified where human expertise remains essential.

Yet publishing these insights creates its own professional risk. Being known as “that content specialist who uses AI” is viewed with suspicion bordering on treason in some circles.

The same industry that posts job descriptions requiring AI experience simultaneously shuns those who develop it. I watch younger colleagues fearlessly embrace these tools while my generation debates whether acknowledging their utility diminishes our craft.

Without an existing following, these articles reach virtually no one. The platforms that once democratised professional voice now throttle it for all but the already-established. The algorithms that control professional visibility have become yet another system that excludes rather than includes.

Navigating unplanned career transitions while caregiving

For others facing similar professional identity crisis situations while caring for elderly parents, I’ve discovered a few hard-won insights:

First, recognise that your caregiving experience is developing profound professional skills. According to Age UK’s 2023 research, nearly 5 million older people in the UK struggle with basic digital tasks, creating a massive accessibility gap that few services genuinely address. Your frontline experience navigating this reality has immense value.

Second, document everything. Keep a journal of accessibility failures you encounter while helping your elderly relative navigate services. These observations become powerful evidence and examples when you eventually return to professional settings. The Government Digital Service Accessibility Blog may celebrate successes, but your lived experience reveals critical gaps that need addressing.

Third, find your micro-tribe. Traditional networking becomes nearly impossible during intensive caregiving periods, but connecting with even two or three professionals in similar situations creates a powerful support system.

Look for online communities specifically for career professionals caring for elderly parents. They understand the unique professional and emotional challenges you’re facing.

Finally, be ruthlessly realistic about your capacity. I tried maintaining a full professional development schedule alongside intensive caregiving and quickly burned out. Setting boundaries around what you can realistically achieve during this period isn’t giving up; it’s strategic resource management.

Finding value in the invisible spaces

What I’ve come to realise during this unplanned career interruption is that genuine expertise often develops in the spaces between formal roles.

Caring for my mother has made me a far better vulnerability-aware content specialist than any government training programme could. I now understand viscerally what happens when systems designed for inclusion fail those most in need of consideration.

This knowledge isn’t easily quantifiable on a CV or in a LinkedIn profile. It doesn’t fit neatly into skill assessments or job descriptions. Yet it’s precisely the perspective that organisations claim to value when they speak about user-centred design and accessibility.

The question becomes whether I can translate this deepened understanding into a new professional identity – one that acknowledges the limitations of our current approaches to digital inclusion while offering something more authentic and effective.

Navigating forward without a map

I don’t have neat conclusions to offer about this career transition. I’m still very much in the middle of it, trying to balance competing responsibilities and reimagine a professional future that accommodates the complex reality of my life.

What I can say with certainty is that career breaks are rarely the refreshing pauses depicted in professional literature. They’re often messy, unplanned periods where multiple life forces collide – death, caregiving, geographical constraints, technological disruption – happening simultaneously without regard for our carefully constructed five-year plans.

Perhaps the most valuable skill I’m developing now is the ability to sit with this uncertainty, to recognise that careers rarely follow linear trajectories and to trust that the knowledge gained during these invisible periods may ultimately prove more valuable than what comes from our most visible professional successes.

If you’re navigating your own invisible career break while supporting vulnerable family members, I’d love to hear your story. Have you found ways to maintain professional identity while caregiving? How are you thinking about the return to work? There’s power in knowing we’re not alone in these professional wilderness periods, even when the algorithms ensure our voices rarely reach each other.

About the author: With over three decades of experience in digital transformation, I’ve helped organisations create accessible, user-centred content.

Today, I’m navigating the complex intersection of professional reinvention, caregiving responsibilities, and the changing landscape of remote work while advocating for genuine digital inclusion.