[image error]My sabbatical year started two weeks before the adoption of our foster girls became final, and in everyone else’s mind but my own the two were related. A sabbatical year, however, was not code for maternity leave. 

It was how I would become MYSELF. 

Long before I met our children, like a whole three months at least, I had begun telling people at dinner parties that retirement was “bunk” and scheming how to dedicate one year out of every seven to rest, reboot, and renew my sense of purpose. Pa...