I was talking with a 29-year-old woman recently. She told me how she was changing and how happy she was that her life was going well. She shared all the victories and good things. In the course of our conversation over lunch, she said she was glad to be alive as a person. Things were going her way for the first time in a long time. She was a happy person.

And as I listened, it became clear that she always referred to herself as a person and never once as a woman. After about twenty or thirty minutes, I said to her, "You've been talking about yourself, and in every case you refer to yourself as a person. Are you glad you're alive as a woman?"

When I asked that question, she began to tear up. That led to a long, tearful discussion of the fact that she had been sexually abused, and as a woman, she felt useless and dirty. As a woman, she had no joy, but on the outside she was doing super. At the core of her being, she was not the happy woman she seemed to other people.

I suspect when most of us have problems in our lives, we simply try harder.