Sometimes insight comes ten years later.
This is a longer story than usual, but stay with me — because it illustrates something important about what I call intergenerational legacy.
Not trauma.
Legacy.
There is a difference.
The Christmas That Changed Everything
Twelve years ago, my daughter was six months old. My son was two. At the time, our family Christmas routine had been the same since I moved here in 2005:
- Christmas morning at our house
- Then to my mother-in-law’s house
- Then to my husband’s aunt’s house for the extended family gathering
It was a lot, but it worked — until the next generation started having children of their own.
That year, with a baby, a toddler, and a recent move, we decided it made more sense geographically to skip my mother-in-law’s house and go straight to Auntie Pat’s.
My husband called his mom.
Her response?
“If you don’t come to my house, I won’t go to Auntie Pat’s.”
In other words: If you don’t see me on my terms, you don’t see me at all.
We said okay. That’s your choice.
But here’s the important part.
It didn’t end there.
The Part That Wasn’t About Christmas
Two years later — the next time that “every other year” rolled around — I felt anxious.
It wasn’t just about logistics.
It was about her reaction.
Her upset.
Her disappointment.
Her potential fit.
Something in me couldn’t tolerate the idea of her being unhappy. I wanted to prevent it. Fix it. Avoid it.
So I went to my husband and said, “How do we stop this from happening again?”
His solution?
“What if we host?”
And that’s what we’ve done every other year since.
We host everyone.
Immediate family. Extended family. All of it.
And at the time, it felt like a solution.
But ten years later, I realized something.
The Cost I Didn’t See Coming
Hosting solved her reaction.
But it created a new problem.
On Christmas morning — the one day my kids want to relax, play, linger — we open gifts, and then we rush.
We clean.
We prep.
We transition from intimacy to performance.
I didn’t realize until this year how much time I’ve lost with my children on those mornings.
All because ten years ago, I couldn’t tolerate someone else’s emotional discomfort.
That’s the part that matters.
First Consciousness vs. Integrated Brain
The first year, when we skipped her house, the energy was:
“Fine. Don’t show up. That’s on you.”
That’s what Terry Real calls first consciousness.
What I call an unintegrated brain state.
Protective. Reactive. Survival-based.
We didn’t feel her feelings.
We didn’t regulate ourselves.
We just drew a hard line.
And then two years later, instead of doing the internal work, we fixed the situation externally by taking over hosting.
But here’s what I wish had happened.
What I Would Do Differently Now
If I could go back, I wouldn’t try to fix her reaction.
I would regulate myself first.
On the inside, I would say:
I get that she’s upset.
That doesn’t mean I have to fix it.
I can survive someone else’s disappointment.
And externally, the tone would have been different:
“Mom, we understand you’re upset. It doesn’t work for our family to come over first anymore. We hope to see you at Auntie Pat’s. We’d love to see you. And we understand if you decide not to come.”
Do you feel the difference in energy?
Not:
“Fine, don’t come.”
But:
“We care about you. And we’re still holding our boundary.”
Then we would have opened gifts at home.
Stayed an hour or two.
Let the kids play.
Then gone to Auntie Pat’s.
Same boundary.
Very different nervous system.
Intergenerational Trauma vs. Intergenerational Legacy
Here’s where the distinction matters.
To me, intergenerational trauma is when the same behavior gets passed down.
A parent who was verbally abusive becomes verbally abusive.
A parent who was physically abusive repeats physical abuse.
Same wound. Same behavior. New generation.
But what happened here is different.
My mother-in-law struggled with emotional rigidity and needing control.
That activated my pattern of appeasing and fixing.
My husband’s trauma response? Fix the problem.
So her unresolved stuff triggered my unresolved stuff, which triggered his unresolved stuff — and we built a whole new system around avoiding discomfort.
That’s what I call intergenerational legacy.
The behavior isn’t identical.
But the unprocessed emotional material ripples forward.
The Subtle Ways It Shows Up
No one yelled.
No one was abusive.
No one cut anyone off.
And yet, the ripple cost us something.
Ten years of Christmas mornings shaped by anxiety instead of integration.
Would we be hosting now anyway? Probably — the elders are in their late 80s and can’t host anymore.
But it would feel different.
It would come from choice.
Not from avoidance.
The Invitation
This story isn’t about Christmas.
It’s about what happens when:
- Someone else’s dysregulation triggers you
- You rush to fix instead of regulate
- You make structural changes to avoid emotional discomfort
What if the work isn’t rearranging the holiday?
What if the work is tolerating someone else’s feelings?
When one generation doesn’t process their stuff, it doesn’t disappear.
It shifts.
It mutates.
It finds a new expression.
That’s intergenerational legacy.
And the good news?
We can interrupt it.
Not by controlling others.
But by integrating ourselves.
If this resonated with you, consider what family patterns you may be reorganizing your life around.
Sometimes the biggest shifts happen not in what we change externally — but in what we learn to tolerate internally.
If you’d like to chat about working together on these patterns, contact me to book a free call. I work with clients in the Boston area (Norwood, MA) and online.