The words that raise us
The generational inheritance nobody talks about. What if the most life-altering thing we pass down is how we speak to the people in our lives?
The first time I recognised my inheritance wasn't when my dad handed me something tangible. It wasn't money or property or an ominous bank transfer from a distant aunt who died in a freak accident in the Cotswolds, it wasn’t those small family heirlooms that nobody cares about until someone tries to sell them. It wasn't even the generational mental illness (hi, ADHD), because that diagnosis came later.
It was a random school-day afternoon. I was maybe nine years old, standing in our back garden with a football at my feet, frustrated after missing yet another penalty in the makeshift goal. I only know it was a school day because I vividly remember I had my school tie and pinafore still on, as if I look down and can see the dark grey polyester. My hair was in braids hanging down by my ears, woven with tangerine and white ribbons (the colours of my home town football club).
If you've seen me attempt anything remotely athletic since, you'll understand the true comedy of this scene. My coordination has always been what we might generously call non-traditional (again, hi ADHD).
But I will never forget my dad, watching from the side, simply saying, “try again, you're a natural” (you wonder where my delusion comes from).
To be clear, I was not a natural. I was the opposite of a natural. I was whatever you'd call someone who manages to trip over their own shadow while standing completely still. But these four words — casual, throwaway even — didn't register as significant at the time. Looking back now, I realise they were part of a much larger legacy he was quietly building in me, word by careful word, despite my spectacular inability to kick a ball.
Because here's what made that moment unusual, though I wouldn't understand it until decades later: my dad spoke to me exactly as he spoke to my brothers.
There was no softening of expectations, no subtle linguistic shifts that suggested different capabilities. No “good try, sweetheart” with that slight downward inflection that transforms encouragement into consolation. No implied surprise when I displayed competence.
Just, “try again, you're a natural”.
The same words, the same tone, the same underlying assumption of capability he used with my brothers. I didn't know then that this subtle linguistic equality was unusual. I didn't know that many girls were being spoken to differently — that language was already drawing invisible boundaries around what they might become.
I didn't know how fucking lucky I was to be given this inheritance: the unconscious assumption that my gender or natural disposition had nothing to do with what I was truly capable of.
Words create (or deconstruct) reality
Language shapes reality. This isn't some esoteric philosophical claim — it's neuroscience, it's psychology, it's the lived experience of anyone who's ever been limited or liberated by the words used to describe them. It's literally written in data.
Research from Stanford University shows that by age six, young girls exposed to language that emphasises appearance over capability already display measurable differences in risk-taking behaviour and self-efficacy. Their neural pathways have been physically shaped by the words they've heard which creates a biological foundation for how they'll perceive their own potential for years to come.
The language we hear about ourselves becomes our very own interior architecture of possibility. It builds the rooms we allow ourselves to explore, the doors we believe we can open, the stories we cling to, the heights we think we can climb.
My inheritance didn’t arrive in the form of a suspicious check, or even direct encouragements to pursue writing or business. It was much more fundamental than that. It was the subtle, persistent absence of limitation in how my dad spoke to me and about me.
“Of course you can”, he'd say, regardless of whether I wanted to try boxing or writing or building something with my hands.
Not “that's unusual for a girl” or even “I'm proud of you for trying something different”. Or “don't you want to try ballet?” Just matter-of-fact confirmation that there was nothing surprising about my desires or capabilities.
He took me to his boxing gym and taught me how to punch “just incase”. He carried me on his shoulders through the tunnels of Anfield, with matching ribbons in my pigtails to the football shirt on my back. He patiently explained the offside rule to me, knowing that at some point I'd go to school and the boys would try to knock my choice in football club by being the boy who knows the rules.
What happens to a little girl who grows up hearing this kind of language? What rooms get built in their mind?
In my case, it created a particular kind of courage — not fearlessness, exactly, because I was still falling over my own two feet, but the deeper conviction that barriers were mostly illusory, that permission wasn't something I needed to seek from external authority. And that boys were no different from girls.
This isn't to say I never doubted myself. God knows I've had my share of insecurities and still do. But underneath those normal human uncertainties has always been this bedrock belief, inherited through thousands of casual conversations, you can because you choose to. It's as simple as that.
Recognising what I'd been given
I didn’t fully appreciate my inheritance until I started noticing how differently the world treated people outside of this bubble I had been in.
Not in some glaring, obvious way — but in the subtleties. In the way a man would cut across a woman mid-sentence to restate the same idea, only slightly louder. In the way a suggestion made by a woman was ignored until a man echoed it with conviction and suddenly it became “brilliant”. In the casual dismissals, the interrupted sentences, the performative nods paired with a condescending chuckle.
How often a woman’s ideas were quietly undermined. How often we have to fight for the kind of default credibility men seemed to receive just by opening their mouths. How easily our confidence is framed as arrogance, our clarity as coldness, our directness as aggression.
I began to see how rare my own inheritance was. How the casual, consistent way my dad had spoken to me — without gendered expectations or subtle undermining — had given me a freedom many others were never granted and a freedom I begun having to fight for more frequently.
This realisation came with a strange grief. Not for myself, but for all the brilliant minds who'd inherited different linguistic legacies — ones that quietly taught them to question their right to be heard, to second-guess their instincts, to make themselves smaller through their words.
The gift becomes the work
When I started in business, I found myself unconsciously replicating the linguistic patterns I'd inherited. I didn't soften my expertise with qualifiers. I didn't present my ideas as questions hoping for validation. I stated them clearly, directly, with the assumption that I had as much right to my perspective as anyone else in the room.
This was the natural expression of someone who had inherited a particularly empowering relationship with language, often mistaken for arrogance.
It showed up in unexpected ways:
In negotiations, where I stated my rates without the apologetic wincing I noticed in others.
In creative discussions, where I defended my perspective without the need for external validation.
In writing, where I developed a voice that didn't hedge or qualify itself into insignificance.
But the real power of this inheritance was in what it allowed me to do for others. Because once you become conscious of the legacy you've received, you can choose what to do with it. You can perpetuate old patterns, or you can become the beginning of new ones.
With my clients, my team members, and the women in my community who habitually make themselves smaller through their words, I try to create the same linguistic environment my dad created for me. Not false praise or empty encouragement, but the simple, powerful assumption of capability. The absence of surprise at their brilliance. The matter-of-fact expectation that they have every right to their voice, their space, their ambition.
And this became something clients would praise me for, even though it was something that felt so obvious and natural to me. That’s when I truly realised its quiet power.
In my work helping people find and claim their voice, I've seen how transformative this can be. How someone who has spent decades living within the linguistic boundaries they've inherited can suddenly discover new rooms they never knew existed.
The dark side
This inheritance isn't without its dark side. I sometimes take up too much space, speak with too much certainty, assume agreement when there is none. I can come across as intimidating, uncompromising, a bit much. (Just a bit? I hear my closest friends snorting with laughter. Let's be honest — I can be a complete bulldozer in conversations, if I’m not careful).
Because that's the thing about any inheritance — it shapes us in ways we don't always control. My dad's casual assumption of my capability gave me courage, yes, but it also gave me blind spots roughly the size of small planets.
I remember the first time a boyfriend told me I was "aggressive" in how I expressed my opinions. I was genuinely shocked. In my family, direct speech wasn't aggression — it was just Tuesday dinner conversation. The louder you spoke, the darker your sarcasm, the more likely you were to get the last roast potato. It was basically survival of the verbally fittest.
The realisation that my inherited way of speaking might be read as hostility by others was jarring. It was like discovering that what I thought was my charming personality was actually just me repeatedly stepping on everyone's toes while maintaining aggressive eye contact. It forced me to reckon with how different linguistic environments produce different expectations, different reactions, different consequences.
So I've had to learn when to modulate, when to soften, when to strategically adopt the more tentative speech patterns that might make others more comfortable. Not because I believe I should be smaller, but because sometimes effectiveness requires translation.
This, too, is part of the inheritance — learning how to code-switch between my dad's direct speech and the more qualified patterns many professional settings expect from women.
The courage to keep speaking
We talk so much about financial inheritance — who gets what, who starts with advantages, who has to overcome disadvantages.
We rarely discuss the wealth gap in the stories we believe about ourselves, the dreams we inherit. The vastly different understandings of ourselves that we develop based on how we're spoken to, especially as children.
Words cost nothing to give. They leave no paper trail. They don't appear in wills or trusts. Yet the language we inherit shapes every aspect of our lives — our ambitions, our relationships, our sense of what's possible.
My dad gave me a form of wealth that doesn't show up on any balance sheet but has generated returns throughout my life. The simple, powerful belief that I could speak and be heard. That my voice mattered not despite who I was, but simply because it was mine. (No, dad didn't foresee that I'd use this power to write lengthy Instagram captions about my existential crises, but we all make our choices).
This belief hasn't made me immune to doubt or failure. It hasn't protected me from criticism or rejection. It hasn't guaranteed success in any conventional sense. I've still had spectacular face-plants in my career, still made decisions so questionable they deserve their own podcast (there goes my delusion again), still sent emails with typos to important people whose respect I desperately wanted. The inheritance wasn't a forcefield against my own humanity.
But it has given me something perhaps more valuable: the courage to keep speaking even when it's difficult. To claim space even when it feels uncomfortable. To use words as bridges rather than barriers.
This has been particularly valuable in my writing life, where rejection and criticism are not just possibilities but inevitabilities. Where the blank page can feel like both invitation and judgement. Where “writer's block” is just the sophisticated-sounding pseudonym for “holy shit, what if everyone hates this and then, by extension, hates me?”
The inherited belief that I had every right to my voice didn't make writing easy, but it made it possible. It didn't mean I never stared at a blinking cursor for hours, wondering if I should just give up and take up something less emotionally devastating, like lion taming or bomb disposal. But it did create a foundation from which I could take creative risks, develop my own style, say things that might not be universally palatable.
Sticks and stones
The words we speak rattle through generations. The language patterns we use become the internal dialogues of the people we love, those who hear us.
I think of this often when I consider the reach of my work, my children, my long-distance niece and nephews. The words I write become part of someone else's linguistic environment and may contribute — in some small way — to their own inherited beliefs about what's possible.
And, isn’t that the very least I might do with this inheritance? Use it to positively impact others who didn’t get the privileges I did?
This is true for all of us, whether we work with words professionally or not. The way we speak to others — especially those with less power, less confidence, less certainty than ourselves — matters beyond measure.
People who've never felt the sharp edge of language often say, “words are just words”. The nursery rhyme rings, “sticks and stones may break my bones”. They've clearly never been carved hollow by someone's casual cruelty, never had their ambitions flattened by a dismissive tone, never tried to build something from the rubble of “but, you can't”.
Words aren't just words. They're the scaffold on which we build our sense of self. They're the maps we follow when navigating possibility. They're the lenses through which we perceive our own capabilities.
The words spoken to us — especially in childhood, especially by those with authority in our lives — don't just describe reality. They create it. They become the internal architecture of our ambitions, our sense of possibility, our relationship with our own voice.
I was lucky. The words spoken to me by my dad built rooms with high ceilings and wide windows. Spaces where I could stretch, explore, expand. Where I could speak without shrinking, claim expertise without apology, take up space without permission.
Not everyone inherits such expansive inner architecture. Many people — especially women, especially those from marginalised groups — inherit words that build narrow corridors, low ceilings, small windows. Spaces that teach them to make themselves smaller, to doubt their voice, to question their right to be heard.
The truly fucked up thing is how invisible this inheritance often is. How rarely we examine the linguistic patterns we've absorbed, the words that have shaped our sense of possibility, the subtle messages embedded in how others speak to us.
We accept these patterns as natural, as reflections of who we inherently are, rather than recognising them as inherited constructs that can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately changed.
It’s as simple as that
These subtle linguistic shifts don't erase systemic inequalities or structural barriers. They don't change the material conditions that make some paths harder than others. I'm not sitting here in my jungle treehouse suggesting that saying nice things to people will dismantle the patriarchy. (Though wouldn't that be convenient? “Excuse me, centuries of oppression, but have you considered how capable you are?”)
But they do change the internal landscape where possibility takes root. They alter the architecture of belief that either expands or constrains what someone can imagine for themselves.
And that's no small thing. Because before we can change external reality, we have to believe that change is possible. Before we can create something new, we have to believe in our capacity to create. Before we can write that book or launch that business or tell that soul-destroying client to kindly take a long walk, we need to believe we'll survive the fallout.
The beauty of linguistic inheritance is that it's not limited to biological family. We pass it on through every interaction, every conversation, every piece of writing that reaches someone else. It's a form of wealth that generates its own interest: the more you claim your voice, the more natural it feels to keep speaking, the more you trust your words, the more powerful they become.
And herein lies the most beautiful thing about linguistic inheritance, unlike material wealth, it can be redistributed without being diminished. We can pass on empowering language patterns without losing anything ourselves. (It's essentially the pyramid scheme that actually delivers). We can create new linguistic legacies that reach far beyond our own lives, without having to downsize our own confidence or take out a second mortgage on our self-belief.
Now, in my own small way, I try to pass this inheritance on to others. Not through grand pronouncements or inspirational platitudes (although listen, sit down at a table with me after a glass of wine and just try telling me you can’t do it all), but through the simple, consistent language of assumed capability. Through speaking to others as if their brilliance is obvious, their voice essential, their perspective valuable.
Because the most powerful words aren't those that tell someone they can do anything. They're the words that simply assume they’re already doing it all.
Words that say, in a thousand subtle ways, you can because you choose to. It's as simple as that
Hi, I’m Lois.
I write from my treehouse in the Costa Rican jungle, where I help writers, entrepreneurs and creatives turn their ideas into irresistible offers, big conversations, and beautiful businesses. This Substack, The Smoking Area, is where we say the things that don’t fit neatly on sales pages. Where we write out loud. Every post ends with a writing practice, because your voice is the most valuable asset you have — and you shouldn’t wait for permission to use it.
Find more of my work, writing retreats, and other rebellious nonsense at weareupclub.com/retreat.
Your writing practice
This one’s about tracing the roots of your voice.
Think back to the voices that shaped you. The comments that stuck. The language you inherited — the obvious affirmations and the subtle insinuations. The words that built you up, and the ones that clipped you down.
Now write two lists:
List One: The words that built you.
→ What were you told that made you believe you could?
→ What language gave you permission, freedom, boldness?
→ What phrases do you still hear in your head when you need courage?
List Two: The words you had to unlearn.
→ What were you told that made you doubt your place?
→ What language still makes you shrink, apologise, hesitate?
→ What phrases are you choosing not to pass on?
Now:
Take one phrase from each list and write a short piece (3–5 sentences or more) about how it shaped your voice — or how you’re reshaping it now.
Call it what it is: an inheritance, or an interruption.
Want to tell better stories?
✹ My storytelling mini course, Stand Out Stories, is open.
It's built for creatives who want to write content that actually connects — without flattening your personality, watering down your words, or trying to sound like everyone else.
Inside are some of the best tools I’ve used to help hundreds of students turn their voice into a magnet through storytelling. The stories that make you memorable. The strategies that make you make sense.
Get immediate access to the prompts, frameworks, templates, workbook & resources or learn more here.
thanks for the restack! ⭐️
This is fascinating, I share much of your experience, and can also be a bulldozer in conversations, although I’ve learned to watch out for that impulse.
There’s lots here to digest and reflect upon, especially since I’m raising a daughter.