Because the cost was worth it to her, she had become a self for another self. “Like valuing children first,” she said, “the family unit being the priority above career and personal identity.” She defined her purpose and meaning by other persons—not things, not goals, not accomplishments. And not persons in general, “mankind in general,” as Dostoyevsky said,1 but specific people: her own children. They were the meaning of her self.
