We Are Strong and We Will Keep Fighting Until Freedom Is No Longer Just a Word By Miriam

I have been a domestic worker for one to five years. I rise each day to do work that keeps a household running, drawing strength from my family alone, and on the hardest days, I turn to the thought of my children's future. I have chosen not to share my name publicly, but my experience is as real and as important as any name could make it.

What I carry is what many domestic workers carry: the knowledge that I am strong and that my dignity matters, held alongside the daily reality of a system that does not always reflect that truth back to me. I want the world to understand that I am strong. Not just resilient in the face of difficulty, but strong as a characteristic, as a defining feature of someone who chooses this work and does it well.

I am completely hopeful that things will improve for domestic workers, giving that hope the highest rating. Yet I rate the respect currently given by employers, the government, the general public, and the media as not at all across the board. That combination of hope and honest assessment is striking. I see exactly where things stand, and I choose to believe in better anyway. That is a particular kind of courage.

The rights I believe must be restored are the right to change employer without restrictions, the right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa, and the right to stay and settle in this country. I identify the inability to stay and settle as the loss that has hurt domestic workers most. That is the one that breaks the possibility of permanence, of roots, of belonging in the place where years of work have been given.

I rate the urgency of restoring pre-2012 rights at the absolute maximum. All of the rights I identify are important to my daily life.I spend thirteen and a half hours each week worrying about my job and visa situation. Nearly a full day and a half each week, absorbed by uncertainty. By the mental weight of not knowing whether the ground will hold.

Workers must speak up. Governments must make laws. That is my call to action. Short, clear, and direct. The responsibility lies with those who can change things, and it is time for them to act.

If these rights were restored, my word is freedom. One word, but it holds a world. Freedom to stay. Freedom to choose. Freedom to plan. Freedom to belong. VODW fights for every unnamed worker, every person whose story has not yet been told publicly but whose experience is woven into the fabric of this movement. My voice, anonymous but real, matters just as much as any other.

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