An inheritance is usually thought of as something of value passed on to someone –
either a financial or material possession, a genetic trait, or
behavior, attitude, physical characteristic, etc.
that is identifiable to that person, group, or family

An inheritance is often much desired, even fought over
and the cause of broken relationships—but sometimes
it is a burden, as in the case of an asset that
carries a tax liability or has a debt attached to it
or has a risk attached to it as in the case of the
genetic predisposition to a particular disease.

The area of inherited emotional baggage is
one that seems mainly to be ignored, perhaps
because it is an area that is hard to explore and
challenging to view objectively, but sometimes is
mentioned after some explosive event or tragedy
occurs and the search for causes and a desire to
assign some responsibility comes up empty.

The importance of what is passed on to others
cannot be overemphasized because awareness of
what has been passed on to me by others can help
me gain insight into who I am and guide me to
understand more about why I make certain choices
which might be confusing to me without a
review of what has been passed on to me –
very often without my realizing it.

Inherited emotional baggage—a view, without
assigning guilt to myself or anyone else, can help
me in many ways.

If I explore where my feelings and my beliefs come
from, I can make choices to keep or discard certain
pieces of the puzzle that is me.

I remember a story I heard often when I was
growing up about
a woman who always cut a corner off the roast
she was cooking before she put it in the pan.
When her daughter asked her why she did that,
she said her mother had always done that, but
she did not know why. So the daughter asked
her grandmother why she cut the corner off her
roast before cooking it and her grandmother said
it was because she always cooked her roast in the
same pan and the shape of the pan meant she had
to trim off one corner to make the roast fit in that pan.
After the daughter told her mother the reason that
her grandmother cut the corner off the roast,
her mother stopped cutting off the corner of her
roasts because the roast fit in her pan without
cutting off the corner . . .
finding out “why” changed a way of doing something
that was being passed down as the way to do
the task but was not needed once the reason
was understood –
a multi-generational way of doing something
that was totally not needed was passed on until
someone stopped and asked “why”—WOW!

What could I discover about me and my life
just by asking “why” and
then making a conscious choice
to accept or reject,
grow or discard one concept and
how would that affect
what I pass on to others?
Choosing my inheritance
and my legacy . . . WOW!