111 ~ Lineage Gifts: Embracing What's Passed Down

Have you ever noticed how easily we focus on the difficult patterns inherited from our families while overlooking the beautiful gifts passed down through generations?

In this heartfelt mini-episode, Brenda and Catherine expand the conversation about lineage beyond trauma to celebrate the treasures our ancestors have given us.

Brenda shares the story of her family’s chicken soup recipe, passed from her grandmother to her mother, to herself, and now to her daughter. This tradition is more than food. It is love, care, and wisdom carried through generations. Making the soup connects her to the women in her family and offers a sense of healing and continuity. She also reflects on inheriting her family’s sense of humor, recalling a Passover celebration where her uncles tossed her grandmother’s dense matzo balls across the room, a reminder of the gift of laughter even in imperfect moments.

Lineage gifts come in countless forms: culinary traditions, resilience, artistic abilities, communication styles, celebration rituals, or the way a family values togetherness. These inheritances often go unnoticed, yet they shape who we are as much as the challenges we carry. This episode invites you to reflect on the gifts you’ve received, how they show up in your daily life, and which ones you want to nurture and pass forward.

Episode Highlights
• Expanding the conversation beyond family trauma to acknowledge inherited gifts
• Brenda shares her grandmother’s chicken soup recipe as an embodiment of ancestral wisdom and love
• Family humor as a gift that teaches lightness and perspective
• How lineage gifts differ from memories by becoming transferable qualities and practices
• Examples of gifts families pass down: cooking, art, resilience, traditions, communication styles, storytelling
• Invitation to identify and appreciate your own lineage gifts
• Reflection on how these gifts shape who we are and what we pass to future generation

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Chapters

• 1:34 Gifts Beyond Family Trauma
• 4:04 Brenda's Chicken Soup Legacy
• 6:30 Humor as a Family Gift
• 9:29 Finding Love in Family Traditions
• 12:21 Recognizing Your Lineage Gifts
• 15:25 Closing Thoughts on Lineage

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 2: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire piece that is often overlooked, being responsible for our desire.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Welcome back listeners and friends to the Desire as Medicine podcast season three. Catherine's smiling over there, so grateful to be here with her again. We are just so thrilled to be here in season three with you. We love your messages and your reviews and your insights from the episodes. Keep them coming, people.

Speaker 2: 1:57

So last episode we talked about seven generations forward and back and the impact of that in our lives and we really focused on some challenging patterns that Catherine and I have both inherited and what we're doing with those patterns moving forward. And there's traumas and wounds and hurts and difficulties and many families have survival patterns inside of them and how we do hold responsibility to shift these things. So we really dove into that and I want to widen the lens a little bit because it's not only the hard stuff that gets passed down. It can get really heavy and these hard things that we inherit, yeah, we want to change them. We want a better life, not only for ourselves but for our children. Whether you have children or not, maybe it's your nieces and nephews or your actual children, or maybe you want to do your inner work and it will influence the generations above you because it works in all the directions. But it's really important to say that it's not just the crapola and the hard things that keep you up at night that get passed down. There's gifts as well. There's gifts and sometimes it's harder to see those. There's gifts and sometimes it's harder to see those. But we want to shed a little bit of light on those today, because I know that I personally do have a lot of gifts and I'm the first one to be like, oh my God, I inherited this and I inherited that. And sometimes it can be daunting when you're trying to have something in your life and it's not quite going the way you want because of this pattern that you inherited from your family. So this episode, we want to name some of the gifts and just chat about those, and maybe you're already percolating. What are your own gifts that you have from your lineage, and please percolate, because it's really important to have these gifts and name them. So one of mine I have a few.

Speaker 2: 4:11

Catherine mentioned this one in our last episode about my family bone broth, my family chicken broth Really, we call it chicken soup. This recipe I have watched my mother and my grandmother make my entire life. This recipe is not written down, although I have since transcribed it and if you want it, I'll send it to you. Catherine's laughing because it's so good. But when I make this chicken soup, it's so good.

Speaker 2: 4:48

But when I make this chicken soup, like, I feel the gifts of my grandmother and my mother in the soup and the soup is so delicious. My grandmother cooked her soup for days, days, because when you cook the bones like that for days, the nutrients really get into the broth. This is ancient wisdom that we're talking about, and I don't know if my grandmother watched her mother do that. I really have no idea. My guess is yes, but anytime anyone's sick or if it's a cold winter day, I'm popping some chicken soup on the stove Because it smells delicious and it is medicine for the soul, and my daughter makes the soup now. So my daughter makes the soup and I'm watching my mother make the soup still, and I'm making the soup and it's not only a delicious meal but it's a gift. And it's not only a delicious meal, but it's a gift Like the fact that we make this soup and I can remember my grandmother making it is such a gift that I've gotten to feed it to my children when they were babies and that I watch my daughter make it and she'll feed it to her children when she has babies. That's really beautiful and there's so many stories inside of that that I won't even go into.

Speaker 2: 6:09

But another one that I have is, of course, my amazing sense of humor. My family's really funny. My mother's side of my family specifically. Every family gathering was filled with laughter and jokes. My mother has three brothers and they're just funny brothers and they're just funny. So my family is just always kind of joking and funny and laughing and there's always been a lot of lightness and humor, which is such a beautiful gift Passover my grandmother would make in her chicken soup.

Speaker 2: 6:44

She would make matzo balls. Matzo balls are supposed to be light and fluffy, so one of my grandmothers makes them light and fluffy, but this particular grandmother. With the funny side of my family, they are like lead sinkers and there was one Passover where my uncles were taking the matzo balls, which were like little golf balls, and throwing them across the room to each other, like having a game of catch, and it's such a great memory. Seeing my family laugh like that, because it doesn't have to be so serious, is what I learned? Like, yeah, things can be serious sometimes and there's a time for that, but it doesn't have to always be serious.

Speaker 2: 7:25

And something like matzah balls that are supposed to be a particular way, but they're a different way. We don't have to hide in shame or be judgmental or mean, we could just laugh at it. My grandmother made those matzo balls and one of my memories is her face when my uncles were tossing the matzo balls around. I think she had the best time feeding them and having them interact and laugh with it. I think it was actually much better and funnier than if they had just come out soft and delicious. Okay, so those are some of my examples and I'm curious what comes up for you, catherine.

Speaker 1: 8:00

I think it's beautiful that you have these gorgeous stories like that. You can remember that you just have such beautiful family memories. Like I know, you're talking about it from the lens of seven generations forward and seven generations back and that, oh, you received these traits. But as I listened to you, I'm like, oh, they're just beautiful memories. That's what comes up for me.

Speaker 2: 8:26

That's beautiful. Thank you, it's true.

Speaker 1: 8:30

How would you make a distinction for yourself and or listeners, or is there one for you? When you think of something I've received, when we think of patterns or something that's in our lineage, how do you make a distinction between that and, let's say, like a beautiful memory?

Speaker 2: 8:48

That's a great question. I don't know that I've ever thought of it in that particular way before. You know, we have these things that are inside of us and it causes us to act a particular way, and those experiences become our memories when you speak of the chicken soup.

Speaker 1: 9:08

It's such a beautiful memory and the ritual itself has you connect to the various different lineages. So for me, as a listener, I'm not looking that specifically like a pattern, but I do see a gift in. It's almost like watching a love line in a story. I would assume when you say my grandmother, I saw her really enjoy feeding them, and I see you really enjoy when you're going to cook for your children, even though they're grown now.

Speaker 1: 9:45

I see that beautiful memory and I've seen many families that don't enjoy cooking for their people. So I see just so much love in that action, and so I think the distinction that I see is like you were able to see people do something that some can see as a chore, and how beautiful it is that you got to witness people really love it and do it with so much love, and that you got to really receive that benefit and that imprint of what it feels like for someone to deliver it to you with so much joy and so much love, so much care, to the point that you're like I want to do this as well. I want to be able to deliver this point that you're like I want to do this as well. I want to be able to deliver this, and I can only imagine how beautiful it will be for you when you're making that chicken soup and you have grandchildren.

Speaker 2: 10:42

My goodness, yeah, it's a beautiful thing to tap into and you really did nail it. You really spoke to the joy and the gift because when I make that soup it's not just cooking something on the stove the way I might be cooking a meal tonight, it's something special. You know we're talking about this particular thing. There's other things that my family cooks that we're not talking about, but it's this particular thing that holds so much joy and love. And I think that's the magic of broth as well is that there's so much love that goes into it and you can serve it with love, like the intention of even making it for someone, for their health or nutrition or joy, or to warm them up on a cold day. There's so much love in that intention that we could like slow down and really feel, and then the broth itself is literal medicine, like it's good for your body, it's healing. So it's just a beautiful thing and I really wanted to slow that down and look at in our families and invite our listeners to say, well, what are the gifts in your family? Because it really is easy to be in blame or feel victimized or be annoyed with older generations, and you can find a thousand reasons to be annoyed and irritated with anyone in your family. I don't think we need to convince anyone of that. But do you see the gifts? Because they are there and maybe we just have to slow down and see them or think about what they might be. And maybe we just have to slow down and see them or think about what they might be. And they're different for every family because, you're right, not every family or not every woman likes to serve food. That is one of my love languages that I've inherited, because my mother very much is that way, my grandmothers both were very much that way. So I've really received this one and, oh my God, I can't wait to make chicken soup for my grandchildren. My son doesn't like it, by the way, so I've gotten over that. But in every family it's different.

Speaker 2: 13:10

You know, some families maybe pass down a love of art, which I also have, or resilience and different traditions, different kinds of foods or body wisdom. You know practices around giving birth or herbalism. Those aren't things I inherited at all, but those are some gifts that I know people have, even the way people connect in a family, you know, does your family get together a lot? My family gets together a lot. You know that's a gift that we have, that we value seeing each other and we make it happen, and this came from my grandmothers. Or even stories, like we pass down stories or celebrations or rituals, what you believe about your past ancestors, and any rituals around that even desire, sewing, musical talents. I mean, there's so many things that we inherit from the people before us and then we pass on. So I really wanted to pause and share these things. Like some families are great communicators, some families are screaming, some families tell beautiful stories or pass down wisdom Like what wisdom have you received from the generations before you? It might be something small that you didn't even realize, but it's there and it's beautiful to receive that because it's part of the fabric of who you are, this wisdom, and probably you're passing that on to the next generations, maybe without even realizing it.

Speaker 2: 14:51

Thank you for being here with us for this mini episode on on lineage gifts. I'm really touched by this topic. It's really important to acknowledge and receive the gifts of your lineage, whatever they are and how small they are. Nothing is too small. What are the things that you received and how do you pass them on, how do you live them in this world, or how do you want to live them in this world? Hopefully, this little love episode has inspired some thought in you and maybe there is something that you want to carry forward or do more that you haven't done before. Some little desire. So thank you for being with us today. Until next time. Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 15:54

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.