The problem had never been that she gave.

The problem was that she had given without a valve, had let her giving become automatic, expected, structural, a permanent fixture of other people’s lives that ran whether she chose to run it or not, until it was no longer generosity at all but a resource, like plumbing, that the household drew on without thanks.

What she built, in the end, was not a wall against giving.

It was a valve.