This martyring of self takes a toll on us, as Virginia Woolf described in her speech to the National Society for Women’s Service on January 12, 1931: She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draft she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others . . . I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be
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