Carole, I love Pema Chodron. Comfortable with Uncertainty got me through a tough period when we thought Frank had cancer. I’m looking at the subtitle: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion!

I remember in one of her books she uses an example that if we were on a lake in a boat and another boat banged into us, we would immediately turn, perhaps angrily to see who did it. If we noticed the boat was empty our anger would most likely dissipate. I think my work often is just this, to see the boat as empty, to not take it personally. Then I don’t feel so much as if I’ve been sacrificed.

Other Buddhist (though not Zen) women I love to read are Tenzin Palmo and Tsultrim Allione and of course there’s the prolific Pema Chodron.

My own path – if it is that – had a lot to do with at last treating myself with the same compassion I showed others. And I find it isn’t fear of getting hurt that is uppermost; it is fear of hurting. By simply interacting and engaging others, another inevitability is causing pain, without malice, by simple virtue of being, because of the expectations or needs of others not being met. Those things are simply uncontrollable. You remind someone of someone that abused them…someone falls in love with you, and you can’t reciprocate…you try to be a good parent, which often involves consistency and the upholding of discipline…all hurtful. Behind this is not just a shallow need to be liked or loved, but a real regret that simple interaction is so potentially painful. Still, a bit of pain only makes for a full life.

There is very little I would label sacrifice, unless it’s the valuable time I spend picking up my husband’s dirty socks!