Of course, getting a rescue in Winchester was not a popular choice. Almost everyone else in our neighborhood had some kind of doodle mix—because they don’t shed!—like a peer-pressure puppy. I took pride in my small act of suburban rebellion.

I walked upstairs, into my bedroom, to the small desk next to my bed. Our bedroom wasn’t really big enough for both a nightstand and a desk, so I had taken the nightstand out and shoved the desk next to my bed. On the corner sat a glass of water and ChapStick. I opened my laptop with a click and waited for my email to load.

No new messages, save for a few online retailers to whom I had relinquished my email for a “20 percent off first purchase” coupon, and then never bought anything.

I sighed and my shoulders slumped forward. A month ago, I had applied for two different social work jobs at nearby hospitals, but it had been radio silence since I hit Send.

In my former, childless days, I’d been a social worker at St. Mary’s Hospital in the city. I’d fallen in love with social work when I was in college, leaping at the chance to actually make someone’s life better. At helping in a way that was tangible, real, goal-oriented. After college, I completed my master’s in social work and was hired nearly instantly at St. Vincent’s. I worked with all kinds of people, assisting with geriatric patients all the way to parents whose children were in the NICU. I organized home health care, medical equipment rentals, transportation to doctor appointments. I made sure patients knew their rights and comforted families when their loved ones received a devastating diagnosis like cancer or Alzheimer’s.

It was often emotionally difficult work, and there were many nights I drove back to the apartment I shared with Mark and cried to him about what I had seen and had to do. But I never felt like I wasn’t making a difference.

And I loved it.

Except it wasn’t exactly conducive to having children, or really, a life at all. The patients I worked with required so much attention—well-deserved attention—that their needs superseded mine. When I got pregnant with Jack, I had visions of Making It Work, of proving that I could have it all. I could not. I couldn’t keep up with the demands of a job that required me to put my work first and a newborn with more than a few fussy moments. After a year of stretching myself so thin that I was nearly transparent, I took a leave of absence. I reasoned that I could go back to work when Jack was a little older.