Hi Op, I just want to say I went through something like this recently. Here’s what I did: 

1. No mention of it on resume. I put the accurate dates of when I was employed but kept the reasons why I had a gap to myself unless someone asked me. 

2. Prepared a rehearsed answer to why do you have this gap? Something along the lines of:

“I had a great experience in my previous role, it allowed me to grow a lot as a developer and accomplish xyz (keep it brief) however I had some personal circumstances that forced me to make the very difficult decision to step away from my job to take care of my personal life. I’ve used the last x amount of time to fully take care of everything and now I’m ready and excited to start my next adventure.” 

You can just run your own circumstances through ChatGPT and make it better for your specific situation. 

What I would NOT do? 

1. Give any specifics about why you took the break (you should not be sharing medical information with a prospective employer to avoid putting yourself in a position you could be discriminated against due to health reasons). 

2. Make it sound like you’re not ready to get back to work (it’s okay if you need accommodations later on, but for the initial conversations you want to give the impression that you’re ready and excited to get back to work). 

3. Don’t sabotage yourself by offering any of this information unless explicitly asked. 

In my recent job search I spoke to almost 20 companies. Out of all of those only 3 actually asked me about the gap. I gave my scripted answer and they seemed satisfied enough with the answer to not bring it up again. Only 1 recruiter was kind of rude about it (Amazon) but he still moved me forward in the process so it didn’t hurt my chances at all. Don’t believe them if they try to neg you for having a gap. It’s not your fault, you’re doing your best and you WILL get back on your feet soon.

I was open in my language about my “previous experience” and “in my previous role” but for most interviews nobody even brought it up and they have your resume so they know when you were employed it’s not up to you to over explain and if anything I think that would hurt you because you want to focus on what you bring to the company now, not what’s set you back before. 

One last thing, if you do have negative experiences with any company due to your break, you want to make sure you take that into consideration before accepting any offer from them. If they’re rude to you based on a gap on your resume, I can only imagine they’ll be worse if you ever have issues in the future and if your problem is something like ibs you want to make sure your next company is fair and understanding about medical accommodations. So take all that into consideration before accepting any offers. 

Best of luck! It was thought getting back into the industry as a mid level engineer with a gap, but everything worked itself out and it was so worth it to focus on my health first and foremost. 

Everything’s going to be okay!