And then she asked me a question that landed harder than any of it.

“Do you have an independent income?” I shook my head.

I told her I had stepped back from my career in marketing twelve years earlier, when Leo was born, and had not worked for pay since.

I braced myself, I think, for her to tell me that this weakened my position, that a stay-at-home mother was somehow on shakier ground.

She did the opposite.