Shoulder Layer: The Inheritance We Carry
What We Pack Without Knowing
You're already carrying your mother's wounded worry, your father's $300-in-his-pocket immigrant dream that built an empire, and your culture's expectations of where a man pushing 50 (a couple more years) should be. It's like getting hit with unexpected baggage fees at the airport of life. And you didn't even know you packed them!
The Weight of Other People's Stories
Most of our heaviest burdens aren't ours—they're inherited patterns disguised as personal failures. I remember the day I decided to break the generational burden I'd been learning about on my father's side. Learning the family history about my grandfather and his brothers—how they all turned on each other, took businesses from each other. Now I see myself and my brother in the family business and my father's temper (calling me a huevón daily didn't help the cycle or my mental health), and I could see how it could lead us down that same path. So I had to break that cycle.
These aren't just my struggles—they're inherited patterns, fears, and responsibilities handed down without our consent. Our parents did the best they could within the programming they knew—it was all they knew how to be. The question is: which parts of their best am I carrying forward, and which parts am I just carrying on?
The shoulder layer of our lives holds both the strengths and struggles of previous generations. We inherit our grandfather's work ethic along with his inability to rest, and I didn't even know the old man. We carry our mother's protective instincts alongside her anxiety about never being enough. We shoulder our culture's definitions of success while our souls cry out for something entirely different.
What If You Only Carried What's Actually Yours?
Imagine walking through life carrying only what serves your actual journey, not the unhealed wounds of previous generations. Picture yourself with the strength of your father's determination but without his fear of vulnerability (or the sting of bad Chilean words like 'huevon culiado'). Feel the lightness of honoring your mother's care without absorbing her worry as your own responsibility. What would it feel like to carry forward the wisdom of your lineage while leaving behind the wounds that were never yours to heal?
The Shift Happens Now
Right now, as you read this, something is shifting —work with me here. You're beginning to feel the difference between what's yours and what you've been carrying for others. Notice how your shoulders might actually relax when you realize that your father's fear of not being enough doesn't have to live in your body. Feel how your breath deepens when you understand that your mother's anxiety about the future isn't your responsibility to solve.
The inheritance audit isn't about making lists—it's about this moment of recognition. It's the sudden awareness that you've been apologizing for dreams that aren't even yours, stressing about standards that were programmed before you were born —geez. You can love your parents deeply and still choose differently. You can honor your culture while writing your own story. You can carry forward their resilience without carrying on their suffering.
The goal isn't to reject your heritage—it's to feel the profound relief of conscious choice (let's go streaking). To experience what it's like when you stop carrying everyone else's unfinished business and start carrying only what serves the person you're becoming. That shift? It's already happening. You can feel it —be gentle.
What inheritance are you ready to audit? What family pattern is asking to be consciously chosen rather than unconsciously carried?
"Be the ancestor your descendants will thank." — Anonymous
Being Coached Layers: Unfreezing Your Shoulder Layers
This week, Dr. Goodman says: It's no coincidence that we say we're 'carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders." That phrase holds a deeper truth for our "onion layers." Think about it: when you try to protect yourself from pain by accommodating what you're holding onto, you can eventually develop what's called a "frozen shoulder." Here's how this "shoulder layer" stiffens: you have a movement that hurts. In an attempt to avoid that pain, you do less. It doesn't hurt as much when you do less, but by the next day, it hurts even with that reduced movement. Eventually, you wake up and feel like you can't do anything at all. You're in pain even when attempting to do nothing, trapped by what's known as adhesive capsulitis—the physical manifestation of holding onto lineage so tightly you can't let go. You feel like there's nothing you can do to be comfortable; everything hurts.
So here's the good news: with proper coaching and guidance, you can move past that pain and restore your full range of motion. You can shed the burden you've been holding onto, and your life gets lighter. This isn't about rejecting your heritage; it's about embracing it, moving beyond its limits, and allowing your personal capacity to grow. Just as orthopedics uses "manipulation under anesthesia" to free a joint beyond its perceived limits, proper coaching helps you do the same for your inherited burdens. It's how evolution happens, both physically and personally.
Bookshelf Peeled - Your Periscope’s True Mission
This week, as we tackle those invisible burdens we unknowingly packed, a question resonates deeply for me, and it's powerfully explored by Mark Wolynn in his book "It Didn't Start With You." What if these weights aren't truly ours?
Wolynn, an author and expert in inherited family trauma, reveals how our persistent challenges often stem from unresolved issues in our family history. As he states, "It's not enough to say that the past affects us. The past actually lives on in us."
This insight is a powerful mirror to our Rebel Onion theme this week. Just as the onion's shoulder layer supports its growth, it can also carry the hidden imprints of generations past. Wolynn's work illuminates how these inherited patterns, whether a grandparent's unspoken grief, a parent's unfulfilled dream, or a family conflict, can subtly dictate our own "shoulder burdens." He provides a framework for recognizing these inherited patterns, understanding their origins, and ultimately, finding pathways to release them. It's about consciously auditing our inherited baggage, allowing us to carry forward the strengths of our lineage while respectfully, and with a profound sense of relief, setting down the suffering that was never truly ours to begin with.
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Design Rebel: The Weight Off My Shoulders
This one got wild, but after many prompts and attempts, it added pig features I just had to live with! Here's our rebel farmer, getting the old burdens off his shoulders and doing the polka. It was created in Leonardo.ai, the voice was edited in ElevenLabs, and I handled the final editing and assembly in Wondershare Filmora. Enjoy! You can check out the YouTube Reel here.
Taking the weight off my shoulders dance.
Weekly Inspired Insights I liked or found useful this week:
P.S. If this resonates with you, share it with someone whose periscope might need permission to surface. We're all submarines in this ocean together, scanning for the courage to be ourselves.
The Root System: What Grounds Us (Tentative title)
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