My mother kept her good silver in a drawer she rarely opened.

It was wrapped in soft cloth, tucked carefully between layers of tissue, polished maybe twice a year. She'd take it out for holidays and visiting company — and sometimes, when she did, I'd watch her run her thumb along the rim of a fork like she was checking for something. A scratch. A memory. I never asked.

What I learned from watching her, without anyone ever saying it aloud, was that good things were for special occasions.

That belief lived in me for decades.

I used the everyday dishes. I saved the candle. I wore the comfortable shoes and kept the beautiful ones in the closet for "someday." When I poured wine, it was almost always into the wrong glass.

It took me years to understand that this wasn't a value I had chosen. It was a value I had inherited.

And it was running my life.

This week, the calendar invites us to think about our mothers. About the women who raised us, or tried to. About the women who came before them. About the women whose names are written in the back of family Bibles or whispered down through cousins or quietly missing from the record altogether.

Mother's Day is tender ground. For some of us, it's full of love. For others — those of us with complicated mothers, lost mothers, mothers who couldn't show up the way we needed, mothers we became before we were ready, mothers we wanted to be but couldn't — the day stirs more than it celebrates.

Whatever the day brought up for you on Sunday, I want to offer something for the week that follows.

Many of the values you live by were inherited from the women who raised you.

Some of those values are gifts. They are part of why you are strong, kind, capable, awake. They came down through generations of women who paid for them with their lives — and you carry them forward with grace.

Other values were given to you with love, but they don't actually fit. They were values your mother needed for her life, in her time. They were values your grandmother carried because she had no other choice. They were values your great-grandmother held onto because they were the only thing standing between her and ruin.

Those values may have kept your foremothers alive. But they may not be what your life is asking of you now.

I think of my mother often. The silver. The careful folding of cloth napkins for guests. The dress hanging in her closet that she only wore once or twice, but was kept for "the right occasion" that, as far as I could tell, came rarely.

She lived through a great deal. She made do with very little. And the value she handed down — save the good things for later — was, in her life, a form of devotion. A way of treating beauty as something sacred. A way of staying steady when the world wasn't.

I love her for it.

And I am also — gently, in midlife — setting it down.

Because my life isn't asking me to save the good things for later. My life is asking me to use them now. To pour the wine in the beautiful crystal glasses. To wear the dress on a Tuesday. To use the candle. To say the thing. To go on the hike. To rest before I'm exhausted.

That's not a rejection of what she gave me. It's a continuation of it. She taught me to honor beauty. I'm just learning to honor it differently than she did.

If you sit quietly this week with the women who raised you in your mind, you might begin to feel the difference between the values you inherited and the values you've chosen.

Some of what you'll find:

Values that are still alive in you, by choice. The ones you've examined, kept, and made your own. These are the gifts.

Values you've outgrown without realizing it. The ones still running quietly in the background, shaping decisions you don't know you're making. These are the inheritance you may be ready to update.

Values that never fit at all. The ones that always felt heavy, always felt off, but you couldn't name why. These are often the should values — the ones absorbed without consent.

The work of midlife — and I think this is some of the most sacred work a woman can do — is the work of discernment. Of looking at what you've been carrying and asking, is this still mine?

Not to dishonor the women who came before. But to honor them in a different way. By becoming the woman you are meant to become, instead of a copy of the woman someone else needed you to be.

Here's what I notice, in 20+ years of working with women's bodies:

The body always knows.

When you carry a value that's truly yours, you stand differently. There's an ease. A kind of integration. Your shoulders don't have to do the work of holding it in place.

When you carry a value that doesn't fit, the body shows you. In tension. In a tightness around the jaw. In a heaviness at the chest. In the specific exhaustion of saying yes to things you don't actually want.

This is information. Not failure. Not evidence that you're broken. Just your body telling you the truth your mind has been protecting you from hearing.

You can listen.

You can — gently, in your own time, in your own way — set down what isn't yours.

You can keep what is.

You can pour the wine in the beautiful glass tonight (even if you have to hand wash it).

🌿 The work of inherited and chosen values isn't a one-time inquiry. It's a season.

If something in this resonates — if you're feeling the weight of values you didn't quite choose, or sensing that something needs to shift — my six-month coaching partnership was made for this season.

It's a deep, sustained journey through the questions that midlife is asking you. We work with the body, the story, and the inheritance — gently, honestly, and at your own pace. By the end, women come away with a clearer sense of what's actually theirs to carry, and what's ready to be set down.

Learn more about the six-month coaching partnership 

If a deeper commitment isn't right for this season, but something in you is asking to be heard, Laser Coaching offers 30 minutes to ground yourself and find your next step.

Book a session 

🌳 And this Saturday, May 16, I'm leading a Trail Magic Hike at Stratton Open Space focused on values as our trail markers. The trail is a beautiful place to walk with these questions in your body.

Reserve your spot 

💛   Angelique

Breakthrough BodyMind | www.breakthroughbodymind.com