When she rewrote reality to cast herself as the victim, I let it go rather than fight, because fighting was exhausting and she was family and I told myself that keeping the peace was a kind of love.

And what I finally understood, watching her burn through the wreckage of her own choices and blame everyone but herself, was that my rescuing had never once helped her, and had in fact done the opposite.

Because a person cannot change until they face the truth of what they have done, and my constant rescuing had spent decades protecting Gwen from exactly that truth.

Every time I smoothed over a consequence, I removed a chance for her to learn.