For twelve years my worth had been measured entirely inside the walls of my own home, in meals cooked and appointments kept and a child raised, real work, important work, but invisible work, the kind no one hands you a contract for or a paycheck or a title.

I had not realized how much I had come to doubt my own competence in the wider world until I was back in it, in a room full of adults who valued my opinion because of what I could do rather than because of whom I was married to.

It is a strange thing to have to relearn that you are a competent adult, but that is exactly what those first weeks were, a relearning.

I would solve some small ordinary problem at work, untangle a client’s confused brief or find the flaw in a plan everyone else had signed off on, and I would feel a little jolt of surprise, as though I had discovered a muscle I thought had atrophied still working perfectly well.