Adult learners globally face a multitude of challenges in learning and obtaining educational degrees. This can be due to a variety of reasons including academic stress, as well as additional responsibilities with managing families, childcare, household duties, careers, and jobs. Different cultures may face unique barriers in education; however, across cultures and socioeconomic divides, education has historically been valued as a way to improve one's circumstances in life. The purpose of this inquiry is to share from a narrative research methodology perspective the experiences and stories of different men and women in the United States, Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Italy, and Japan. Through their challenges they also recognize strengths as adult learners, students, and educators and transform gender barriers in their own lives. To gain a deeper understanding of how learning is impacted by physical, environmental, cultural, and psychological barriers and limitations, the practitioner researchers examined their individual pedagogical practice through a critically reflective lens and shared stories of the adult learners and teachers with whom they encountered through their efforts. Accounts were collected through verbal and written responses. In this way, considerations included how teachers in Nigeria, adult general education students in Virginia, and adults in ten countries, using a virtual mental health counseling platform, are not only unique, but also how they share similar challenges and barriers to educational matriculation and success. In considering gender differences, access to programming, time and childcare constraints, cultural expectations, the impact of mental health and domestic violence, and the commitment level required to complete an educational degree, it is easy to see how discouraging a process the capitalist educational system can be for adult learners and educators. In capturing the stories of adult learners as varied as the world is large, can bind one another from across great divides through our individual and collective fragility and vulnerability, while demonstrating persistence and resilience, we can better learn how to bridge the deep chasms that keep adult learners from achieving their educational goals. Practitioners will attempt to show, globally, that female adult learners have unique challenges to education and professional development compared to their male colleagues. [For the full proceedings, see ED665621.]