Gigs DO IT NOW! [arm twisting emoticon] I cannot tell you how much this studying has kept me sane the last nine years , it opens up a new world. I actually went back to work part time when my girls were about the same age as yours and though I had loved the five years I had taken off with them and I hadn't missed work in the least, when I did get back I really loved being good and competent at something and being challenged intellectually (not that DD didn't always challenge me intellectually, and in every other way) . Uni is even better for that.
I see what your therapist means about being a part of a mainstream uni, I do love being part of the institution and the face to face interaction and debate. However I think with online forums etc the distance learning options are very good and certainly a really low risk way of getting back into study (On my first MA module there were a lot of 20 year olds who were reluctant to get involved in debate and coming from a work background where I had done a lot of facilitation I felt obliged to pitch in out of sympathy for the poor tutor, so my rustiness was made blindingly obvious and I had to endure lots of withering glances being cast between the alpha girls. However we still meet up, I am much valued now that careers and babies have come along, so that taught them!) Going over old ground may be a big confidence booster. Also can you not at MA level as with U/G level, use your module credits against the various sorts of courses, distance, physical, mix of both, at other continuing education institutions such as Birkbeck and Oxford, where you might be able to fit the physical course around your life? I would not really have liked to do my MA at a mainstream uni when I had younger children because of the lack of flexibility (and my institution at least is back in the dark ages as far as flexibility around childcare is concerned, essays and diss all due at end of holidays etc. )
Birkbeck is across the concrete from the academic world's answer to Kowloon, or possibly at the moment Gaza 
, and a wonderful place. In my area Julia Lovell is there, and she is lovely, recommend all her books, which make it on to mainsteam shelves in bookshops.
How was the new coffee shop, just had a cheeze souffle from the new Cook place, I knew it would be a disaster when the instructions said that the extent it would rise would be in the hand of the "soufflé gods" and once again they proved absent in my kitchen, still nice enough and better than the usual ready meals.
HerNextDoor Welcome in, we could do with that sick bucket, what with all the throwing up that goes on in here and the smell of stale wee. If you saw my comment below a friend had annual DCIS traumas and lumpectomys for five years and was very relieved to get a mastectomy in the end. We have lots of experience 
smee Sounds like friend's rads damage. On my good boob I can display age damage, including red blobby things and the beginnings of old lady's freckly cleavage, which had me reaching for Dr Google, so you don't even need to have had radiotherapy .....