The Day I Almost Let A Dead Woman's Fear Run My Business

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My grandmother could be sharp. Funny. Fiercely loving in that particular Southern way that wraps criticism and devotion together so tightly you can't always tell them apart.

And she was afraid of almost everything.

Not in a way she would have admitted. She would have called it practical. She would have called it wise. She had lived through enough hard seasons that caution had become her native language and she spoke it fluently, constantly, and usually in my direction.

I heard her voice again last week.

I was getting ready to do something bold in my business, something visible, something that required me to take up a little more space than usual and right on cue, like it had been waiting in the wings, her voice showed up.

Who do you think you are.

Not even a question. A statement. The kind that lands in your chest before your brain has a chance to argue back.

And here's what I know now that I didn't know for a long time…

That wasn't my voice. That was never my voice.

That was a woman who was born in a different era, who survived things I'll never fully understand, whose fear was completely legitimate for the life she was living. And somewhere along the way, without either of us choosing it, she handed it to me. And I carried it. For decades. Making smaller decisions, quieter entrances, safer choices.

All because of a voice that wasn't even mine.

Here's what's wild about the phrases we inherit.

They don't feel inherited. They feel like you. They feel like your personality, your instincts, your common sense. They feel like the reasonable voice in the room. And because they've been there so long, repeating so quietly, they've stopped feeling like something that was handed to you and started feeling like something you were born with.

But you weren't born with them.

You absorbed them. From people who absorbed them from people who absorbed them from people who were just trying to survive their particular season of life.

Money doesn't grow on trees didn't start as a belief about your worth. It started as a survival phrase in somebody's kitchen during a time when money genuinely was terrifying and scarce and hard.

Don't toot your own horn didn't start as a rule about your visibility. It started as somebody trying to protect a girl they loved from a world that punished women who shone too brightly.

New level, new devil isn't wisdom. It's anxiety with good marketing.

The phrases made sense once. In someone else's life. In someone else's season.

But you've been carrying them into yours.

The question that changed things for me wasn't is this true.

It was, whose truth is this.

Because the moment you can hear that voice and recognize it as belonging to someone else ,your grandmother, your mother, a teacher, an old boss, a culture, a church, an era then something loosens. It doesn't vanish overnight. But it loosens.

And in that loosening there's a choice that wasn't there before.

You can look at what you inherited and ask yourself, did this belong to someone I love who was doing their best? Almost always the answer is yes. Was their fear real and valid for them? Yes. Does it still belong in the life I am building right now?

That's where you get to decide.

Not everything handed down deserves to be carried forward. Some things were meant to serve a season that has long since passed. And part of growing, real growing, the kind that changes things at the root, is being willing to look at what you've been carrying and say, thank you for keeping me safe once.

But I don't need this anymore.

3 Quotes to Sit With This Week

"Not everything familiar is true."

"You absorbed their fear. You can also choose your own courage."

"The phrases running your life may have started in someone else's story entirely."

Two Thought Experiments Worth Trying

The Voice Behind The Phrase

The next time that quiet inner voice pumps the brakes on something like charging more, being visible, receiving something good, asking for what you want, pause and ask: whose voice is this actually? What were they afraid of? What had they lived through? And does their fear still belong in your story?

The Inheritance Audit

Pick one belief you have about money, rest, visibility, or success. Ask yourself honestly, did I choose this? Or did I just absorb it? If you were starting from scratch, building your life from the ground up, would you choose this belief on purpose?

This Week’s Affirmation

Write this somewhere you'll actually see it:

"I release inherited language that no longer serves me. I am willing to question what I was taught, choose what is true for me now, and build my life from conscious belief instead of old repetition."

Let this be an invitation, not pressure. There's a difference and your nervous system knows it.

This Week’s Journal Prompt

Find a few quiet minutes, maybe with your favorite cup of something warm, and explore this honestly:

Whose voice have I been listening to and is it time to finally let it retire?

Write whatever comes. Don't edit it. Don't make it pretty. Just let what's there come out onto the page. That's where the real shift begins.

Transformation doesn't arrive all at once. It unfolds one honest moment at a time.

Book I’m Reflecting On This Week

Untamed by Glennon Doyle 👉 https://amzn.to/4su5nIw

Glennon writes about the moment she realized the life she was living had been built almost entirely from other people's fears and expectations and what it took to finally ask what she actually wanted instead. It's brave and honest and I think about it often. If today's letter stirred something in you, this one will take it deeper.

Ready to Go Deeper?

Here's the thing about identity lag you can't always think your way out of it. And that's not a flaw in you. It's just how the subconscious mind works. It holds the patterns. It runs the programming. And no amount of positive thinking reaches it at that level.

That's exactly why I do what I do.

For the next few days I'm opening 5 spots for a Mini Hypnosis Intensive, 45 focused minutes where we go directly to the subconscious pattern that's keeping you stuck and begin to shift it at the root.

Not surface level. Not symptom chasing. Identity level.

$147. Only 5 spots. When they're gone, they're gone.

👉 Book your Mini Hypnosis Intensive here

You'll answer six simple questions when you book ,not as homework, but as a head start so we can spend every one of those 45 minutes creating real change instead of getting acquainted.

You don't have to force confidence, sweet friend.

You just have to let the version of you who already knows, take the next step.

With love,
Vickie 🍑
Life is delicious.

Remember, I'm here to support you on this journey!

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