Even with these painful steps, the traverse to capitalism is only half complete.

Bent over, he made his way up a short staircase, three painful steps to a wall of wood.

Moving a painful step closer, she realized it looked like an old mine shaft.

With the tennis year about to end, it was a doubly painful step in the wrong direction.

Meanwhile with slow and painful steps he sought for a church.

I took one painful step and then another into the home of the people whose child I'd helped kidnap.

One reason may be that those companies took the painful steps to become competitive in the early 1980's, when times were tough.

I need the center because we have to take painful steps.

But it has dragged its feet on the more painful steps.

He began to think things through, slowly; one small, painful step at a time.