The Day I Lit a Candle for Myself and Remembered How Far I Have Come By Ma.Annalyn

There are days that carry more meaning than a single calendar page can hold. June 7, 2026 was one of those days for me. It was Migrant Workers' Day, a day set aside to honour the sacrifices, the resilience, and the quiet dignity of people who have left everything familiar to build something better in a country that was not the one they were born into. And on that same extraordinary day, I stood in a room full of people who understood exactly what that journey costs, and I accepted a certificate that told me something I needed to hear. That I am still growing. That I am still becoming. That no matter how many years of difficulty have passed, I am not finished yet.

I graduated from a Candle Making Training Program. To some, those words might sound modest. But to me, standing there with that certificate in my hands on Migrant Workers' Day, it felt like one of the most significant moments of my life here in the United Kingdom. Because it represented something that goes far beyond candles or certificates or training hours logged. It represented the part of me that refuses to be defined only by what I do in someone else's home. The part of me that reaches for new skills, new possibilities, new versions of myself that have nothing to do with the role that brought me here.

Being a member of the Voice of Domestic Workers has opened doors I did not know were available to me. When I first came to this country, my world was small by necessity. The household I worked in, the duties I was expected to perform, the invisible boundaries that so many domestic workers know without ever being told where they are. The VODW expanded that world. It introduced me to people who saw me not as a worker fulfilling a function but as a person with potential, with creativity, with a future worth investing in. The candle making course was one expression of that investment, and I am grateful for it in ways I am still finding words for.

The training itself taught me things I did not expect. Patience, yes, because candle making does not rush. Creativity, because there is genuine artistry in something that seems simple until you are actually doing it. But more than the practical skills, it taught me to sit with something, to give it time and attention and care, and to watch it become something beautiful as a result. I could not help thinking, as I worked, that this is also what domestic workers do every single day. They give time and attention and care to the households they tend, and those households become places of warmth and beauty and comfort because of the invisible labour poured into them. The difference is that a candle, when it is finished, is celebrated. It is displayed and admired and lit with intention. Domestic workers deserve that same recognition for everything they create and sustain.

The graduation ceremony was filled with smiles and encouragement and the particular warmth that comes from celebrating alongside people who truly understand what the achievement cost. We had all taken this journey together, fellow migrant workers who had shown up week after week, learned something new, supported one another through the unfamiliar, and arrived at this day with certificates in hand and pride in our hearts. The applause we gave each other was not polite or performative. It was genuine and full, the kind that comes from people who know exactly how much strength it takes to keep adding to yourself when the world has sometimes seemed determined to subtract from you.

That strength is at the heart of why the right to change employer without restriction matters so profoundly. A domestic worker who is trapped with one employer, unable to leave without losing their legal status, cannot easily access training programs or community events or any of the opportunities that help them grow beyond the confines of a single household. Freedom to change employer is also freedom to participate fully in your own life, to take a course, to join a community, to stand in a room one day holding a certificate that proves you are more than the job that brought you here.

Migrant Workers' Day exists because the contribution of people like me needs to be named and honoured. We work in some of the most intimate spaces of people's lives. We care for their children and their elderly parents and their homes and the delicate rhythms of their daily existence. We do this work with dedication and love even when we are far from our own families, even when we are uncertain about our own futures, even when the system we navigate does not always treat us with the fairness we deserve. The right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa is the most basic expression of respect for that contribution. It says that the work being done is valued enough to allow the person doing it to stay, to continue, to build rather than always being forced to start again from nothing.

I thought about my family as I held my certificate. About the sacrifices that brought me to this country and the sacrifices I have continued to make every day since arriving. About the gap between the life I am living here and the life I left behind. That gap is something every migrant worker carries, a quiet ache that sits alongside the pride and the determination and the hope. The right to settlement would begin to close that gap in a meaningful way. It would mean that the years already given have been counted, that the future here is not permanently uncertain, that the life being built has a foundation solid enough to build upon with confidence.

And the right to British citizenship would mean something even deeper on a day like Migrant Workers' Day. It would mean that the recognition being celebrated is not symbolic but structural. That the country whose children we have cared for, whose households we have kept running, whose economy we have quietly supported, has looked at us fully and said, you belong here. Not as a guest worker. Not as a temporary presence. But as a citizen, with every right and every protection that word carries.

I lit a candle that day, in the most literal sense. I made it with my own hands, shaped it with patience and care, and watched it hold a flame. But I also lit something else. A small but steady light inside myself that reminds me, on the harder days, that I am capable of more than surviving. I am capable of learning and creating and growing and celebrating. I am capable of standing in a room on Migrant Workers' Day with a certificate in my hands and genuine joy in my heart.

Every achievement, no matter how it appears to the outside world, is worth celebrating. I believe that completely. And I believe that the woman who arrived in this country years ago, uncertain and far from home, would look at the woman holding that certificate and feel something she did not always allow herself to feel. Pride. Deep, quiet, unshakeable pride.

Thank you to everyone who made that day possible. Thank you to the Voice of Domestic Workers for reminding me, again and again, that I am worth investing in. And thank you to every fellow migrant worker who celebrated alongside me that day. We did this together. As we do everything. And we will keep going together, all the way to the future we deserve.

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