On the Stories We Inherit

Every family hands down not only names and features but explanations — about money, about trust, about who people like us are and what we are allowed to want.

Some of those stories are gifts. Others are contracts we never signed. The work of adulthood is not to reject them all, nor to obey them blindly, but to read them carefully and decide which to keep.

You are allowed to rewrite a sentence you have been reciting your whole life.