As you pass through transitions that make up the stories of your life, you encounter teachers.

Maybe at the time, you didn't think of them this way. But in looking back,  often there is a book, a person, a mentor or a model that gives you some insight and smooths the path at a particular time.

I remember after my husband, Mike, died I met some new friends who are Buddhist. There was a monk staying at their house and one evening after his regular teaching that he gave, I went to speak with him. I explained that my husband had just died and this shadow that had fallen over my life. I wanted to know what insights he had about this.

He told me a story.

At one time, long ago and far away, there lived a woman. This woman's child had just died and she was beside herself with grief. She went to her teacher and told him no one ever had experienced what she was experiencing and asked him to please help her. The teacher told her, "Go to every home in the village. Ask them if they have lost a loved one. Then come back here and tell me what you found."

The woman went to every house. She knocked on all the doors.

At every home, the people she met told her of a loved one who had died.

She came back to the teacher, "I went to every home," she said. 'I learned that, like me, everyone suffers grief. I am comforted by this," she said to him.

And that story helped me to understand that we all suffer these things in our lives. The story was a teacher for me during that time, although I didn't think of it that way until later on.

I supposed it is as they say, "when the student is ready, the teacher will come."