My mother fell chronically ill, and at only 10 years old, I had to learn how to be an adult. This meant that throughout my higher and further education, I was a full-time carer and, most of the time, also worked part- or full-time. 

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I'm also a supporter for generational abuse survivors. As a young boy, I was held against my will in the Middle East, and my own mother (whom I provided full-time care) would beat and berate me. When I was very young, she used to threaten to send me up for adoption, and as I got older, she said: "I owed her my life; anything I earned was hers". She put me into a lot of debt and set me up to fail, only to cut me off for a month. When she tried to reconnect, I had already started healing, and I blocked all of her accounts and numbers.

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ATSs and recruiters often miss this kind of information, but it's central to who I am and why my career history is so spotty and my grades so fluctuating.