About two years ago, my family and I drove out to a National Park near us for a beach day. It was one of those bright summer mornings that feels like a promise. A few more family members would be meeting us there later, and we had the whole day to enjoy ourselves.

My daughter went straight for the sand toys. She played with the sand and patted it into different shapes and molds, then walked to the lake with her bucket for water, and came back and started again. My husband and I sat in our chairs with cold sparkling water and enjoyed the feel of the sun on our skin and sand on our feet.

Not too long after, another family settled in near us, two parents and four kids, a girl around fifteen, a boy about fourteen, a middle boy around seven, and the youngest, maybe four. The father was tall and strong built, thick through the shoulders. The mother was average weight and height, and she stayed close to him.

I don’t know how much time passed before I heard the screaming.

The youngest was crying desperately, the kind of crying that has no rhythm to it and is impossible to ignore, and he was begging his dad. “No, please, I am scared.” He did not want to go in the water; he was terrified of it. His father had him by the arm and was hauling him toward the lake anyway. A grown man, a hundred times stronger than the child, using all of that against a four-year-old who weighed nothing.

The boy went limp, then he fought, then he went limp again. His feet dragged through the sand. He kept begging. “Please, Dad, I am scared.” In Spanish.

When the little one was finally in the water, the father turned around and went back for the seven-year-old.

He was furious by now. It was evident in how his hands made a fist, the tone in his voice and in how he grabbed them. And the mother was right there with him, agreeing, backing him up, telling the boys to stop, to listen to their father. Both of them were going in the water. That had been decided, and nothing either one of them did or said was going to change it.

The harder they screamed, the angrier their parents got.

Then the older two joined in, fifteen and fourteen, each one taking a little brother, dragging them further into the lake, and laughing.

They had already learned it. Whatever the father was trying to teach that day, he had taught it to them years earlier, and he had succeeded. This time they were on the other side, they were not being dragged, they were doing the dragging.

That is what a generational cycle looks like when it gets passed down. It is not a failure of the system. It is the system working.

I have played this in my head for two years

I want to be clear about what I am doing here. I am judging this from the outside, I know nothing about those parents, or their beliefs, or what their morning looked like before they got to that beach. And I have my own biases and filters that I ran this situation through.

But I could not look away, and I could not stop feeling it.

If you are a parent, you know the feeling. Another child crying is a specific kind of torture. It makes you cringe, it is impossible to ignore, it makes you feel powerless, because something deep in your body wants to get up and hold that child, to protect him, and help him take a breath, and you cannot, because he is not yours.

I tried to look away. I squeezed my husband’s hand tight. I held my chest and took a lot of deep breaths. I wanted to hug those boys so bad, to just pause so they could catch their breath, so they could be heard for one second.

My husband saw kids crying and parents yelling. That was the whole thing to him, upsetting, then over. But me, I have played this scene over and over in my head for two years.

And all of it happened in public, in daylight, on a crowded beach, with strangers ten feet away and a whole family watching. That was the version of themselves those parents were willing to let me see. I still wonder what happens at home.

What was he afraid of

So I asked myself the only questions I could ask. Why is this father so angry? What is he feeling? What is he afraid of?

From what I could see, they looked like they came from a culture similar to the one I grew up in, the one that says boys don’t cry.

I saw a father on a mission. His sons were going to learn to be men, and men are not afraid, and men do not cry, and men do not beg. The more the boys cried, the more the mission was failing in public, and the angrier he got.

There is research on this, and it says something plainer than I expected. When researchers asked 322 adults how their parents had responded to their emotions growing up, fathers came up again and again, rewarding daughters for expressing sadness and fear, and punishing sons for the same things. The same emotions, treated differently depending on who was feeling them.

So this is not one man with a temper at a lake; this is a script, and he learned it somewhere. He was probably that little boy once, dragged into something, told to stop crying, and somewhere along the way he decided that what happened to him was love, because the alternative is unbearable.

He is a victim of it too, that system that taught him that fear is only acceptable when a woman feels it, that tears are unbearable when they come from a boy, that the shame of your son being seen as something that does not fit what the world demands of men is bigger than the human part of you that breaks when a child cries.

But he was not doing this alone, and that is the part I keep going back to. The mother never raised a hand. She stood beside him and told the boys to listen to their father, and that was enough. This is the hardest thing to understand about the systems we belong to, that a lot of the time fear looks like the lesser of two evils.

Maybe she believed it, because she grew up inside the same rules he did, learning what a good woman looks like and what a real man is supposed to be, and if you are handed that early enough you do not experience it as a rule, you experience it as love.

Maybe she thought this was what her boys needed. Or maybe it happened to her too, and she learned a long time ago not to speak up, and standing there quietly was the only thing that felt survivable. I do not know which one it was, and it may have been all of them at once. What I know is that the system does not run on the person swinging, it runs on everyone who has decided it is safer not to interfere.

Not soft versus strict

I want to clarify this, because we live in a time when everything is black and white, especially with social media playing a big role in dividing us. So here is where I stand, and I say it knowing it will get labeled one way or the other. I have learned a lot from gentle parenting and I use plenty of it. I am also strict, and I do not think those two things are in conflict, though the internet would like me to pick.

I believe in discipline, I believe in guidance, and I believe in teaching kids to work hard, to keep going when it gets uncomfortable, to respect themselves and to respect other people. I do not think you let a child quit because something is hard.

This is not a conversation about soft versus strict, the real question is fear versus trust. You can hold a high standard and still let a four-year-old take the water at his own pace, you can teach a child to keep going and still let him tell you he is scared.

That father wanted a brave son, and I actually believe that. But bravery is being scared and doing it anyway, and the anyway belongs to the child, it is the part he has to give you. When you take it from him by force, you do not get a brave kid, you get a quiet one, a more fearful one, a compliant one who will not use his voice when it matters, because using it was the thing that got him punished.

And a quiet kid looks close enough to a brave one that a father can live with the difference. That is exactly why this survives.

The grown version of those boys

I keep thinking about how many of us are walking around as the grown version of those boys, adults who cannot say out loud that they are scared, who go along with things they know are wrong because disagreeing with a powerful man still feels physically dangerous, who are angry all the time and could not tell you at what. Fearful people, deferring to fearful people, making fearful decisions, still trying at fifty years old to get approval from a father who scared them.

Michael Milburn and Sheree Conrad have spent decades studying the link between harsh childhood punishment and adult political attitudes, and they have found that people who report frequent physical punishment as children score higher in authoritarianism, and in support for punitive policies. In their words: “Emotional experiences in childhood may exert influence that distorts public life.”

This is one line of research, not settled science, and it is a politically loaded one, so take it as a question rather than an answer. But it is the question I cannot stop asking, because it says something about how crucial parenting actually is, and how we raise our children predicts the world we are going to live in, which I think we are watching play out right now.

And no, it is not the whole story, adults are responsible for themselves, and plenty of people were treated badly and did not turn cruel. But the foundation matters, and those four kids are still out there, two of them having learned that day what to do with a brother’s fear, and two of them having learned what happens when you show yours.

Healing is the entry point

I think the most important part of parenting is healing our own wounds. We all have them, even with the best childhood we all carry things that hurt us, things that still trigger us, things we pass down to our children without ever choosing to. This is what it looks like when we do not: a powerless child, and a broken relationship with the people who were supposed to protect him, because they never heard his fear, they never heard his pain, they never heard his voice, and his feelings were decided before he ever had them.

The work is not becoming a perfect parent, it is looking at what is already in me, and asking whether I want to pass it down to my daughter.

My daughter never saw any of it. She was in the lake on the other side, filling her bucket, going back to her sand figures, having exactly the day we came for.

Sometimes I think I notice these things more than anyone, and it is not a gift. It is what happens when you have spent years looking at your own inheritance, at your own wounds, because once you can see it in yourself you cannot stop seeing it in a stranger on a beach.

My hope for those kids is that they live in a family of love, that what I saw was a family repeating patterns out of love, and that they are not in a violent situation that is hurting them and their mother.

This scene has been playing in my mind for two years, waiting for me to reflect deeply on it, and that is my own way of healing, of paying attention to what I am passing down, of asking myself hard questions about me, about parenting, about the invisible systems that do not move us toward a more humane world.

I’m Adriana. I write about the stories we inherit, about our bodies, our roles, and our worth, and the reflection that helps us stop passing them down. Follow me here so you don’t miss what’s next, and if this one spoke to you, here’s the body shame I inherited, and the daughter who helped me break the cycle.

For more stories about breaking generational cycles, body image, and raising children with intention, follow Fourth Wave. Also check out our Livestreams and sign up for our Newsletter. Let’s grow our community! Have you got a story or poem that focuses on women or other targeted groups? Submit to the Wave!

I Watched a Father Drag His Screaming Son Into a Lake, and His Brothers Laughed was originally published in Fourth Wave on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My daughter is the light of my life and my moral compass. She has sparked more self-growth and introspection than any other crucial moment or heartbreak in my life, and that’s saying something, as I am an immigrant, and that experience is one that truly changes you.

She is now six years old, and I have never been more in love.

I remember when she was only three years old, being her silly and goofy self from an early age. She would enjoy running around naked in our house, especially around bath time and bedtime routine. She is perfect, not in a perfectionist sense, but in the way that everything about her is just right: her smile, her eyes, her confidence, her attitude (well, not all the time).

But every time she would playfully run around naked, being silly, avoiding bath time at all costs, I felt this major discomfort in my body. I felt rushed and urged to make sure she covered herself up quickly.

“You are going to get sick if you don’t cover yourself.”

“It is too cold, hurry and get dressed.”

“Please, put some clothes on.”

I didn’t even have the words to tell her why, because I didn’t even understand my rush myself at the time.

The question that changed everything

This went on for several months, until one day I asked myself: Why does this scenario make me feel so uncomfortable?

We are in a safe place. There is nothing wrong with her wanting to feel free in her home, to run naked and be comfortable. So, why were these moments triggering such discomfort for me?

I started to get curious. I reflected on what nakedness meant to me, if I had grown up with any sort of nakedness around me, what stories or narratives had I learned about my naked body when I was growing up.

And that’s when it hit me.

The stories I inherited

Shame had always surrounded my naked body. I was also always rushed to get dressed, and so were those around me. I did grow up with two older brothers, so maybe there was a protective element my parents were trying to instill. But it was more than that.

Socially, the woman’s naked body is always associated with sin, with shame. We’re told that victims of sexual violence are often the instigators. “Well, what were you wearing that provoked that situation?”

The narratives of my own culture taught me how a woman must be modest, dress in a way that doesn’t look too desperate, or send the wrong message. The advice from other women about how to dress. The looks I got growing up if I was wearing a short skirt or tight pants.

Nakedness was always a form of shame. Mixed with deep body image narratives about what a woman’s body must look like, it created this discomfort with my own body. Feeling shame for the very vehicle that wraps who I am and enables me to show up and live life every day.

That belief became my own narrative: my body is shameful, it is bad, and I must hide it. Even though I tried to rebel against this by dressing however I wanted, I always questioned myself. I moved through the world covering myself up rather than just being myself.

What the research tells us

As I processed all of this, I began looking into whether there was actual research supporting what I was feeling. And there was. A lot of it.

Studies show that how parents respond to their children’s bodies and appearance directly impacts their relationship with shame. Research published in 2023 found that parental attention to children’s appearance is linked to body shame in children as young as 7. Even more telling, when researchers looked at mothers and fathers together, it was fathers’ attention to their children’s appearance that was most strongly associated with body shame in both daughters and sons.

“Only fathers’ attention to their children’s appearance was associated with greater body shame” — Pecini et al., Sex Roles, 2023

But here’s what gave me hope. Decades of attachment research show that conscious parenting can interrupt these cycles. What predicts whether a parent hands down a painful pattern isn’t whether they had a hard childhood. It’s whether they’ve made sense of it. Parents who can reflect honestly on their own story, what researchers call earned secure attachment, go on to raise securely attached children at the same rate as parents who had easy childhoods. In one long-term study, mothers who had suffered painful childhoods but built this capacity to reflect were protected from passing that pain on.

The science was validating what my gut already knew. I could choose differently.

The breaking point

This realization hit me like a wall. I DID NOT want to pass down this shame to my beautiful daughter. I knew what living with this shame looked like: shrinking myself, hiding, not being too noticeable, not being too loud, because somehow the wrong attention would always be my fault.

I want my daughter to grow up feeling strong, capable, and empowered in her skin. I want her to feel that her body is a tool to help her live a life full of joy, love in all its forms, friendship, purpose, career, whatever makes her happy. I want her not to dim her own light. I want her to enjoy her body, to see what it’s capable of, instead of it being a barrier that holds her back.

I want her to stand tall and demand respect from a place of deep love for herself, her whole self, just as she is.

The hard work of unlearning

So I changed my behavior. I became careful about the words I use and what I say when she’s naked. I’m thoughtful and curious, and let her develop her own conclusions about how she feels, what she wears. I steer away from anything that might plant those seeds of shame.

But here’s the thing, awareness and reflection can create change, but I still feel that discomfort. Instead of acting on it, I lean into it and stay present to show up differently for her. Because she deserves it.

And this is not the easy route. It’s actually the hardest way of showing up for our kids. Triggers are louder when we’re in a rush, when we’re upset, or stressed. Sitting with discomfort instead of reacting to it? That takes everything I have.

What are we really passing down?

I often think about the responsibility we have in how we raise our children. What they’re learning from us. What we’re unconsciously passing down. Because it all contributes to the society we’re creating.

I’m not saying our kids’ actions as adults are entirely our responsibility. But in the world we’re living in today, can we do better? Can we raise humans who are kind and thoughtful, who see others for their humanity rather than their bodies?

Can I break this cycle of shame that was handed to me, the same way we can put down any story we never chose to carry?

The questions I’m still asking

How do we pass on strength without the shame? Awareness without the anxiety? Protection without the fear?

Am I ready to let go of the story that a woman’s body is something to be hidden, controlled, and judged? Am I ready to teach her that her body is hers, that it’s powerful and beautiful and not something she needs to apologize for?

Breaking cycles isn’t easy work. It requires us to sit with discomfort, to question the voices in our heads that aren’t even our own, and to choose love over fear in those small, everyday moments that shape our children’s sense of self.

My daughter may never know the internal battle I fought in those moments when she ran freely through our home. But I hope she’ll always know the feeling of being completely, unapologetically herself.

That’s the gift I’m choosing to give her instead of my inherited shame.

What about you?

What stories about bodies, about shame, about worth, about freedom are you carrying? And what are you ready to put down? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. What narratives did you inherit that you’re working to change? What moment made you realize you wanted to parent differently? Your story might be exactly what another parent needs to hear.

I’m Adriana. I write about the stories we inherit, about our bodies, our roles, and our worth, and the reflection that helps us stop passing them down. Follow me here so you don’t miss what’s next, and if this one spoke to you, here’s what motherhood taught me about fear.

For more stories about breaking generational cycles, body image, and raising children with intention, follow Fourth Wave. Also check out our Livestreams and sign up for our Newsletter. Let’s grow our community! Have you got a story or poem that focuses on women or other targeted groups? Submit to the Wave!

The Body Shame I Inherited — and the Daughter Who Helped Me Break the Cycle was originally published in Fourth Wave on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some days I sit still and wonder if I’m done fighting. Not because I’ve stopped caring, but because the caring has started to crush me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about escape. About leaving. About seeking peace. At my core, I am an immigrant. I left a country I loved because of violence, because safety and opportunity were out of reach. I have always been seeking peace, joy, life. Don’t we all deserve that?

It’s hard to describe the grief of believing in change and watching everything around us fall apart. The people and leaders we admired folding easily into the status quo. The companies we thought were inclusive quietly going through the motions. And the politicians we trusted with our rights voting against us, prioritizing their own interests over our lives.

I am watching my own community be persecuted like animals. Stripped of rights. Targeted through racial profiling. Stalked by both official agencies and vigilante impersonators. Who gets to decide who deserves to live here?

I keep wondering. How can there be so much hate in someone’s heart?

What happened to them?

Were they unloved?

Were they abused, neglected, abandoned?

Do they now believe that hurting others will somehow heal their own pain?

I am struggling.

Struggling to understand what I’m witnessing.

Struggling with the depth of hate toward people who simply eat differently, speak differently, love differently.

I’m struggling to believe that change will come soon enough to save us from the path we’re on.

Could existing fully, unapologetically, joyfully be its own form of resistance?

What does it mean to stand up against injustice now?

Is it being loud? Is it putting your loved ones in danger?

Is it simply daring to exist in your skin?

I’ve been wondering, what if I walk away from the fight, not out of apathy, but out of love?

What if I choose to live in peace, to prioritize the immense love I carry, to center the one thing that still keeps me moving, my family?

Is that wrong?

Is joy a betrayal, or could it be a reclamation?

Could existing fully, unapologetically, joyfully be its own form of resistance?

I feel broken.

Hopeless, in a system that keeps demanding more struggle while feeding a machine that values profit over humanity.

I used to think purpose meant always moving. Always fixing. Always holding the pain of the world.

But what if purpose is also choosing to feel the sun on my face?

What if I don’t need to perform my grief for a world that only honors us when we’re hurting?

I don’t have answers.

Just a sunny day where my soul feels like rain.

Maybe I’m not giving up.

Maybe I’m letting go.

And maybe, just maybe, claiming my joy and peace isn’t an exit from the work.

It’s how I survive it.

I’m Adriana. I write about the stories we inherit, about our bodies, our roles, and our worth, and the honest reflection that helps us keep going. Follow me here for more.

And I mean it, with my whole body. But to understand how far I’ve swung, you have to know where I started.

The girl who was afraid of everything

I’m the youngest of three, with two older brothers I’m close to in age. I like to describe my childhood as an amazing one, and a big part of that is thanks to them. I was the little girl of the family, and I was overprotected. A lot. My parents were extra careful with me, and now that I’m a parent myself, I feel deeply grateful for it.

But that kind of protection comes with consequences. I wasn’t allowed to play in the park alone. I always had to go with my brothers. I never learned to take public transportation, especially living in Bogotá, a big and scary city. My parents’ fear for my safety was passed down to me, and as I grew up I found myself afraid of everything: riding a bike, making new friends, crossing the street, taking the bus, being alone.

And in Bogotá, some of that fear was earned. When I walked alone, at only eight or nine years old, I was met with catcalling, with disgusting looks from grown men, with the latest headline sitting in the back of my mind.

The taste of freedom

Then we moved to the United States, to the suburbs, and for the first time I felt a kind of safety I’d never known. No more of what I’d faced back home. I could walk to the park. I could walk with my friends from school. I felt, somehow, safe.

That safety changed something in me. After years of being a “good girl,” nice, rule-following, careful, I rebelled. Especially after high school. I started dating, going to parties, taking risks, ditching class. I had a job, and if I didn’t like it, I’d quit without a care in the world and find another. I changed my major more times than I can count. My focus was solely on having fun.

I know. Very relatable for most twenty-year-olds. But I became a genuine risk-taker. I loved the adrenaline. Anything I set my mind to, I got, no matter what I had to do or who I had to walk over to get it. Not nice at all, I’ll admit.

I traveled. I made girlfriends and went out constantly, mostly because I love dancing salsa, and it pulled me into a world of fun and spontaneity that I adored. I started to get a bad reputation in my family. But I loved myself back then. I loved how free I felt. I loved that I felt like a badass.

And I worked hard. I kept getting promotions. Then I decided to transfer to a four-year college and drop everything, including a good job, to do it. I turned in my car lease, moved near campus, took a minimum-wage job at a nursing home to get experience as a diet aide, lived with roommates, and ate a lot of tuna to reach my goal.

I’m telling you all of this to paint a picture of who I was. Bold. Free. Certain that nothing could touch me.

Here’s the thing I only understand now. I wasn’t brave back then. I was just a person with nothing to lose.

Then I became a mother

After I had my daughter, everything changed.

I’d been working a very demanding job I had outgrown but was great at, managing a team of five, with real decision-making power. I moved to another role: more opportunity on paper, but remote, with less authority and more stability. I thought it would be the right decision, and it was. It let me be home when my baby needed me most, cook homemade meals, take her to daycare and pick her up, and always be present.

But I’ve also gotten really comfortable with my safe life.

I’m afraid of not being there for her. Of missing an important moment. Of missing the bad day she finally decides to share at just the right time. I’m afraid of taking a high-paying job that demands more of me, because it might mean missing her growing up, missing the trust we’re building, or worse, her resenting me for choosing work over her.

I’ve become afraid of raising her the wrong way. Of not sharing my roots with her enough. Of not passing down enough grit to help her survive. Of something happening to her and me not being able to protect her.

I love her so much, and I want her to be safe so badly, that the responsibility weighs on me like nothing ever has.

What I got wrong about fear

For a long time I thought this fear meant I had lost myself. That the bold woman had died and left behind someone smaller. Someone timid. A scaredy-cat mom.

But lately I’ve been sitting with a question. What if I had it backwards?

I wasn’t fearless in my twenties because I was brave. I was fearless because I had nothing to lose.

My life was mine alone. If I fell, I was the only one who hit the ground. Now I have everything to lose. And the fear I feel isn’t weakness. It’s the exact measure of how much I love, of how much I am holding, of how high the stakes have become.

Fear showed up the moment I had something precious enough to be afraid of losing.

I tell my daughter that being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. It means you’re scared and you do it anyway. That is the whole definition. And if that’s true, then I am not less brave than I used to be. I am more. Because now I am afraid, genuinely afraid, and I show up and parent her anyway. Every single day.

The most radical transformation

I used to think repositioning my dreams meant giving up on them. I’ve stopped believing that.

Choosing to be present, trading a team of six and real decision power for homemade meals and daycare pickups, is not the death of my ambition. It’s a reordering of my values, on purpose, with my eyes open. And it turns out that becoming a parent is the most radical transformation a person can go through. Nothing else has rebuilt me this completely.

Here’s what I want other parents to hear, the thing I wish someone had told me. You are not missing out on taking risks. You are just taking a different one, and it is the biggest of your life.

I’m still a risk-taker. The risk is simply so much higher now. I’m not betting on a job, or a trip, or a wild night out. I’m betting on raising a decent human being. A kind person. A child who gets a safe and beautiful childhood, and who grows up able to survive in a way that is authentic and full of joy. There is no adrenaline rush that compares to those stakes.

What I’m passing down instead

I am not the same person I was. But I’m sure my daughter will keep pushing me to be brave again, in the new way, not the reckless way. To trust her. To loosen my grip on control. To believe, and to have faith that God will take care of her when I can’t.

I’m not raising her to be fearless, because I now know fearlessness was never the goal. I’m raising her to be brave. To feel the fear, name it, and move anyway. To understand that being scared of losing something is just proof of how much it matters.

That’s the reframe I fought my way to. Fear didn’t make me a worse mother. Fear is what showed me exactly what I was willing to build my whole life around.

So if you became a parent and felt your nerve disappear, if you’ve mourned the bold person you used to be, I want to offer you this. Maybe you didn’t lose your courage. Maybe you’re finally brave enough to be afraid.

How has motherhood changed you? And what did your fear end up teaching you?

I’m Adriana. I write every week about the stories we inherit, about our bodies, our roles, and what we pass down, and the uncomfortable reflection that helps us evolve. Follow along, or subscribe to get the next one in your inbox.

How do you do it all? I’ve asked this of the women in my life, those who carried the weight of generations on their backs. Now, as a mother, I wonder if I’m ready to break this cycle. Can I pass down a freer, more balanced version of womanhood to my daughter? I’m still figuring it out.

I get this question a lot.

At first, it feels good. It’s a small affirmation that my effort is seen, that my sacrifices are noticed. But when I really sit with the question, it becomes more complicated. It forces me to confront the stories I carry, the ones I inherited, and the ones I’m creating for my daughter.

Carrying the Weight of Generations

My grandmother never had the luxury to pause and reflect on this question. She grew up on a small farm, married young, and became a mother before she was ready. She worked tirelessly, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning, sewing, doing whatever it took to make ends meet. But she dreamed bigger. She created a restaurant with a concept no one else had imagined: fresh, innovative dishes made from local fruit. She turned hardship into possibility, creativity into survival.

My mother’s path was different, but no less demanding. She started working at just six years old, selling empanadas in stadiums, helping support her family as the second oldest of five siblings. She shouldered the weight of responsibility early, caring for younger siblings while still a child herself. Education became her escape route, a way to build a life outside of poverty. She worked by day and went to school by night, finding creative ways to pay for her degree, pushing through exhaustion, and never letting go of her dream for a better life. It paid off. She became a successful accountant, eventually rising to an executive position at an international company. She built the economic stability she had once only dreamed of, creating a foundation that allowed our family to break the cycle of poverty and rewrite our story.

Seeing Their Strength

The ironic thing is that I have asked this same question to the women in my life — my mother, my grandmother, and the many strong, relentless women I have been fortunate to know. I’ve marveled at their incredible work, at how superhuman it all seems, and at how impossible it must have been to juggle so many roles, carry so many burdens, and still keep going.

I am impressed by their resilience, moved by their strength, and deeply aware that they often had no choice. They worked without rest, without pause, without the luxury of reflection. They carried their families, their dreams, and their hopes for the next generation on their backs. My deepest feelings of gratitude and empathy are for them.

My Own Path

And then there’s me. I had more privilege. I was the youngest of three, raised in a different time and place. My family immigrated to the United States when I was 12, and I had access to education as an expectation, not a luxury. I started working at 17 and have not stopped since, but my struggles have been different, less about survival, more about purpose, about finding my place in a world where I can be both provider and nurturer, protector and dreamer.

Breaking the Inheritance

I often wonder, when do we break up with society’s expectations of us?

For generations, men have been expected to provide, to protect, to carry the family financially. On the other hand, women have been cast as nurturers, caretakers, and the ones who hold it all together. But now, many of us are carrying both. We are providers and nurturers, breadwinners and caregivers, juggling roles that were never meant to be balanced on one set of shoulders.

I am proud of my ability to hold it all together, to move through the world with strength and purpose, to build a life that honors the sacrifices of the women who came before me. But I also wonder if my sense of pride, my unwillingness to let go, is quietly perpetuating the same system I hope to disrupt.

Am I ready to pass down a freer version of womanhood to my daughter? Or will I unconsciously hold her to the same expectations that have shaped me, the ones that whisper that rest is weakness, that productivity equals worth, that survival is our birthright?

What Do I Want for My Daughter?

I want my daughter to be resilient, to push through hard times, to feel proud of herself, and to be unapologetically her. But I also want her to know peace, not just the external kind, but the kind that comes from within, the type that isn’t always striving, always pushing, always trying to prove something.

I want her to have the freedom to rest, be gentle with herself, and find joy without guilt. I want her to believe that her worth isn’t measured by what she accomplishes, but by who she is.

But how do you pass on the strength without the struggle? The drive without the self-doubt? The resilience without the exhaustion?

Am I ready to let go of the story that survival is the only path to success? Am I ready to teach her that softness can be strength, that rest can be revolutionary, that her value isn’t tied to her productivity?

What About You?

How do you do it all? Have you ever wondered if you’re passing down the same drive you inherited? Are you ready to break the cycle, to redefine what it means to be strong, to be successful, to be whole?

Not another fad diet or surgery. Just the one question I’d never truly answered about myself and twenty years of chasing shortcuts instead.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed that my body is completely out of sync with me. I’ll go a step further: it has felt like it acted against me for most of my life.

I am one of the millions of women who have struggled with fluctuating weight, obsessing over it, letting it ruin or love my life depending on the season, or the number the scale was showing that week. I don’t think I can remember the last time I wasn’t on some sort of diet, or exercise routine, or eyeing the next program or solution to drop $$ on to fix my “problem.”

This is deeply rooted at the core of who I am. Since childhood, the first thing people including family members noticed when they greeted me was whether I was fat or not. Then the unsolicited advice would come in. “You know it’s easy to drop the weight when you’re young, because later you’ll be doomed.” Or, “Ugh, such a pretty face, you should really lose the weight.” It was always pitiful. And it wasn’t only aimed at me, there was always a chisme of who lost how much in the neighborhood, or who looked awful at the family gathering last week. The worse part of all is that 90% of the time, it was women talking about other women.

I grew up believing my physical appearance, more specifically being thin, was the most important thing about me. Thank goodness I have a smart, driven mom who pushed me to study and be independent, otherwise I don’t know what would have become of me. All that to say: like many women, I carry a long journey rooted in childhood trauma, and added my own contributions to it through adulthood, about my body image. Important to note that this is a systemic issue that goes beyond individuals but that is another’s day topic.

I am going to turn 39 this year.

I’ve been on a journey to be more active for about two years. Which has been brutal considering everything I have had on my plate: finishing graduate school, working full time, being a mom and a wife, and everything that comes with that. As much as I was able to workout 3 times per week, I spend most of my days (like 12hrs/day) sitting on a desk. The increased stress, added about 25 pounds.

To get to the heart of this story, you have to understand that this thing, my weight has burden me my whole life, to the point that, about five years ago, I had gastric sleeve surgery. I hoped it would put an end to it. Give me a clean slate. Help my body and my mind finally work together. At least that’s how this stupid surgery was sold to me.

As you can imagine by now, that was not the solution. I found myself right back where I always ended up: unable to control my weight, and more miserable than ever.

I hit a wall.

After years of therapy, after being told “you have to love your body the way it is,” “ YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT YOURSELF” after trying and failing to accept that there wasn’t a version of myself in my future that was healthy and in a healthy weight. I refused to accept being fat would be my forever identity.

I finally asked myself a real question: when was the last time I actually tried to be healthy? No shortcuts. No bullshit diets. No quick fix. To really do it, the hard way, the proven way. When had I taken this desire to be fit, that wouldn’t let me sleep, that made me cry when pulling on a pair of jeans that once again didn’t fit, and really tried? Not for a week, for a month but for long enough to let it work?

The answer: not since I was 18 years old.

Every time I’d start something, I’d do it for a few months, get frustrated because it wasn’t working fast enough, I would blame my body, my hormones, my genetics, my crappy luck and go back to bad habits. And the yoyo would start again. You probably feel me by this point.

That question I had asked myself kept pounding in my head. And I came to terms with something: I wasn’t going to accept a body that didn’t reflect who I am. I am strong, I am dedicated, goal oriented, disciplined, a badass. My body wasn’t reflecting that. I want a physical life that did, and that match how I wanted to feel: energized, healthy, young, someone my daughter could be proud and look up to. I decided to give it everything I had. But this time, no timeline. No fad diet. No crazy workout fad, no pills, no $80+ protein shakes and supplements. And no more surgery to fix it all for me.

So I searched. And searched. And, predictably, I was flooded with information and contradictions about the “right” way to do it. Here’s the irony: I have a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics, but I was never taught anything about weight loss, not in a real way. What I learned was technical: human development nutrient needs, chronic illness, the science. So I had a solid foundation for knowing what I was looking for, and what I wasn’t.

Eventually I stumbled on a program (I won’t name it here, because I’m not finished with it and I don’t recommend things I’m not sure about yet) that checked every box I needed:

1. Not a fad diet. Focused on healthy nutrition and proven ways of eating things we already know.
2. Movement and exercise as a core, non-negotiable component.
3. Real understanding of hormonal changes and daily weight fluctuation.
4. Accountability: a coach, daily tasks.
5. No shortcuts, no big promises. Just lifestyle and habit change.

This was it. What I wanted wasn’t a diet. I wanted to change my life.

For the last five months, that is exactly what I’ve been doing. Fully. With every part of me. One decision at a time. One habit per day. I committed to the thing that has driven and haunted me my whole life, but this time, on my own terms. For my health. For feeling strong. For my daughter. For longevity. And yes, to LOOK FUCKING HOT as a soon-to-be forty-year-old mom.

Transformation doesn’t happen suddenly. I didn’t just wake up and decide all of this one day, even if it looks that way from the outside. The right conditions had to line up: the right support, the right mindset, the accumulation of experiences that finally let me give up the old me, the one full of excuses and looking for shortcuts. This had become so important to me that it became the center of my life right now. This is the season I’m in. After pouring everything into my career, my family, my studies, this season had to be about feeling good, inside and out.

So, the results so far.

I’ll be honest: the impatience is still there. The frustration that all this hard work and daily sacrifice doesn’t show up as fast as I want, that’s still there too. The hesitation of wondering if I am ever going to reach my goal, it’s still there. But the transformation is something new, it shows up when everything stands in my way to achieving my daily goals, sick kid, overwhelmed work days, poor air quality, raining, exhaustion, etc. Somehow I keep going, because my goals are bigger than my impatience, than my excuses, than a momentary feeling. And for the first time, I believe my body and my mind are actually aligned, and that we’re going to succeed together.

In five months: I’ve lost 11 pounds of fat. Gone down 3% body fat. Lost several inches. My clothes fit differently than they did before, in a good way.

But here’s the thing, that’s not the success story. Not yet. I’m still in it. The real success is who I am now, and who I’m becoming permanently.

I am a person who prioritizes moving her body. I walk every day, not for 10 minutes, but for more than an hour. I am a person who weight lifts four days a week and lifts heavy, and I have never felt stronger. I am a person who plans her meals and prioritizes volume eating centered on protein. I am energized. I wake up at 5am to workout, or workout at night when life happens and excuses don’t fit my life. I don’t feel deprived. I show up for myself, every day.

And yes, I have bad days. Days I don’t walk as much as I planned. Days I eat a few more calories than the plan calls for. Days I choose to celebrate and give myself grace. And that’s okay. I’m still succeeding, because the next meal, or the next day, I show up for myself again.

I am forever transformed. That one question I asked myself allowed me to be brutally honest, and that honesty let me finally seek a real solution, a real change, a commitment. I couldn’t feel more proud.

I am far from being done, from reaching my specific weight, and fitness goals. But what I have already achieved is far more valuable, a new mindset: this transformation is one I’m going to stick to. I am a new and better person.

So let me ask you what I finally asked myself: when was the last time you tried to change your body the real way, not a shortcut, not a fix, and actually stuck with it long enough to become someone new in the process?