You didn't inherit your mother's recipes. You inherited her patterns

That moment when you hear your mother's voice come out of your mouth. Today we name the inheritance — and who gets to put it down.

In this episode:

→  What the inheritance actually is — and it goes deeper than behaviour

→  Bessel van der Kolk on what the nervous system carries across generations

→  The cost of carrying patterns you never chose

→  The compassionate practice of seeing before releasing

 Listener question this episode: Can you name one pattern you carry that you can also see in your mother or grandmother? DMs are open.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

There's a moment a lot of women describe to me. It's usually ordinary. They're in the middle of something completely unremarkable. Driving, cooking, saying something to their child, and they stop. Because they just heard their mother's voice come out of their mouth. Not a quote. Not a phrase they're aware of borrowing. Their mother's voice. Their mother's responses. Or managing something or going quiet when things got hard. And for some women, the moment is funny. And for some women, it's devastating. And for all of them, all of us, it is the inheritance showing itself. Today we talk about what you actually got handed down and what you get to decide to put down. Hey gorgeous. Welcome back to the Good Girls Talks. I'm Sonia Figueroa and today we are going somewhere that I want to hold with a lot of care. We are talking about generational patterns, about the inheritance, about the things your mother and her mother and the women before them handed to you without knowing they were handing you anything at all. And I want to say this clearly before we begin. This episode is not about blame. Not for your mother, not for yourself. What it's about is understanding. Because you cannot put down something you cannot see. And you cannot see something you have not named. So today we name it. And I promise you, this one is going to shift something. My grandmother was a remarkable woman. I mean that completely. She was capable and warm, and she worked hard and she loved fiercely, and she had almost no language for her own inner world. I watched her for years manage. That was her word and her practice manage. She managed her emotions. She managed the household. She managed difficult situations with a kind of elegant efficiency that my mother and I absorbed as. She didn't fall apart, she didn't make a fuss. She didn't, as far as I could see, have needs that were inconvenient or expensive, or that required other people to stretch. She was, and I say this with such love, the original good girl. And I learned from her because of course I did. Children learn what they live, and what I learned was that the way to be loved, to be safe, to be a woman worth having around was to need very little and give an enormous amount. I did not know I had inherited this. I thought it was just who I was. It took me many years to understand that what I called my personality was actually my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's before her coping strategy. Handed to me so gently and so completely that I never questioned it. She gave me the best of what she had. She also gave me the thing she couldn't heal in herself. Both of these things are true. And they can both be true at the same time. And I know I'm not alone in that. Because if you're listening to this show, chances are you know exactly what I mean. So let's talk about what the inheritance actually is. Because it's not just emotional style, it's not just communication patterns, it is significantly more fundamental than that. The inheritance is a nervous system's response you were wired with before you had language for it. Here's what the science tells us. And I'm drawing on the work of Bessel Vanderkog, whose book The Body Keeps the Score is one of the most important books written on trauma and the body in the last thirty years. He shows us that unresolved emotional experiences, particularly around attachment, safety, and relationships, are not stored at memories in the way we think of memories. They are stored in the body, in the nervous system, in the automatic, below conscious responses that fire before thinking can intervene. So when your mother learned as a little girl that showing vulnerability was dangerous, that didn't just become a behavior she chose. It became a bodily posture, a nervous system setting. And that nervous system setting influenced how she held you. How she responded when you cried, what she modeled about what feelings were allowed, and which ones required management. And your nervous system exquisitely attuned to hers from your earliest moments, learned from it. You didn't inherit a behavior. You inherited a bodily knowing, a set of automatic responses about what is safe, what lab looks like, what a woman is entitled to feel. And here's what nobody tells the capable woman. You are not your mother's patterns. You are not obligated to carry what she carried. The fact that it was handed to you with love unconsciously, by a woman doing the very best she could does not mean you are required to keep it. The cost of carrying it forward is that it becomes invisible. When you don't name the inheritance, you mistake it for character, you think this is just who I am. I don't like conflict. I manage my emotions, I need very little, I hold things together. And you pass it forward to your children, to your daughters in the same quiet, unconscious, loving way it was passed to you. And it ends with you if you decide it does. I want to sit with something for a moment before I give you the invitation. Because when women first really see the inheritance, really see how much of what they thought was their own personality is actually their mother's wound. There can be a grief in that. And also, honestly, some anger. And both of those are completely entirely legitimate. You are allowed to be sad that the woman who loved you most also handed you her limitations. You're allowed to feel the weight of what it cost you to carry something that was never yours to carry. And then when you're ready, I want to offer you this. You are the woman who gets to put it down. Not because your mother was wrong for carrying it, not because she failed you, but because you are standing at a point in history with access to language and understanding and support that she simply did not have. And you have a choice she may never have had. What if the patterns you've been running are not evidence of who you are, but evidence of what you survived? What if they are not your ceiling? But the floor you're standing on as you climb? Your one practice this week? Think of one pattern you recognize in yourself that you can also see in the women who came before you. Just one. Name it, not with blame, but with curiosity. Where did it come from? What did it serve in her? What has it cost you? You don't have to do anything with it yet. Just see it. Because you cannot put down what you cannot see. The inheritance, the generational threat, this is woven through almost every page of the Good Girl Be Gone. My own story with my mother, with her mother, with the lineage of women I come from. The pattern I didn't know I was carrying until the weight of them became impossible to ignore. If this episode has moved something in you, I think the book will too. Link is in the show notes. And my good girl and mass webinars, this is where we go into the generational material live. Where women sit in a room or on a screen, and for the first time name the thing they've been carrying that was never theirs to carry. It is some of the most powerful work I do. Come and do it with me. Link is in the show notes. And my question for you this week is this Is there a pattern you carry that you can see also lives in your mother? Or your grandmother? Something you used to think was just you. You don't have to share the whole story. Just name the pattern if you can. DM me on Instagram. Comment wherever you're listening. I read every single one, and I hold every one of them with care. And if this episode found you, please share it. There is a woman in your life who is living inside an inheritance she hasn't named yet. She needs this conversation. The woman who came before you carried what they carried because they had no other choice. You have a choice. And making it consciously, with compassion, even imperfectly, is the most radical act of love you can perform for both the woman who raised you and the woman who will come after you. That's it from me, gorgeous. Until next time, stay messy, stay real, and remember, the good girl has left the building. I'm Sonia Figueroa. This is the Good Girl Talks, and you, you're right on time.