Instinct, Inheritance, and the Pause in Between

“My daughter gave birth last week,” Jyoti tells me, her eyes brimming. “It had to be a boy. But it’s a girl.”

She says it with the heartbreak of a mother expecting tragedy, not a grandmother celebrating life. I freeze. Not because I haven’t heard this sentiment before—but because it still lands like a slap.

This is Jyoti—my cook, my help, and a mother of two daughters. A woman who quietly pulled together 35 lakhs to get one of them married. Thirty-five lakhs!!! That’s years of grinding, saving, borrowing, and probably skipping things for herself. But all that still didn’t buy her the social currency she was hoping for: a grandson.

As if this wasn’t enough, she says that life decides to throw another weight at her.

Just weeks before the birth, her sister-in-law dies. And Jyoti’s husband is forced to pay for the funeral. Why? Because the sister’s husband—yes, the actual spouse of the deceased—believes it’s the brother’s duty to handle it. Not his. Because she was “his” sister. Because women, even in death, come with invoices. Apparently, being female means someone else always has to pay for you. You’re a burden at birth, an expense at marriage, and a liability even at your cremation.

This is the kind of logic that quietly shapes lives—especially women’s lives—across homes, classes, and generations.

I think of my mother and my aunt. Two women who don’t cry openly like Jyoti, but fight their own battles with as much pain—just tucked behind tight jaws and long silences. My mother, who told us we should be independent. Who held education like a sword in one hand and survival in the other. 

My aunt, who still demands and apologizes for wanting things for herself and does both with equal passion. It’s like her mind and heart are running in opposite directions—one charging forward, the other yanking her back by the collar. Watching her is like watching someone wrestle with invisible hands. She’s constantly negotiating with internal voices—some hers, some inherited, all loud.

Both are strong. But they are also caught in a quiet war—not with the world anymore, but with themselves.

There is what they feel.

There is what they were taught to feel.

And then there is what they’re only now, slowly, starting to feel—after years of reflection, rumination, regret.

It’s a strange and exhausting emotional triangle. One where the spontaneous collides with the socialized. Where instinct says I want more, but habit says be grateful. And somewhere in between, after enough sleepless nights and second-guessing, something real starts to break through.

That inner confrontation—between impulsive reactions, deep-rooted conditioning, and newly-formed self-awareness—can feel like an earthquake under your skin. A bewildering trilemma, as Erik Pevernagie puts it.

And that’s the thing about many women of their generation: they’re not just fighting patriarchy. They’re fighting their own internal wiring, built carefully by decades of society whispering (or shouting) what they should feel.

So no, it’s not always about rebellion. Sometimes, it’s about quiet disruption. Not the kind that makes headlines—but the kind that makes you pause at the sink, stare out the window, and finally admit: I wanted more than this. And I didn’t know I was allowed to.

My mother and aunt are strong. But they are also tired. Because they are constantly fighting. Fighting for voice. For respect. For space. For air. And above all, fighting their past. Every day. Like it’s a ghost that sits at the kitchen table with them, judging, doubting, reminding them of the women they were supposed to be but refused to become.

But here’s the thing: do we have to keep fighting the past?

What does it do to a woman to be in constant resistance mode? What does it do to her children to watch her always either defending herself or correcting the world?

There’s a cost to surviving. A fatigue that seeps into the next generation. We inherit not just our mothers’ ambitions, but also their trauma. Their anxiety. Their blueprint for “not this life.”

And what is that blueprint, really? Often, it’s a series of negations:

Not like my mother.

Not like my childhood.

Not like that silence.

But when you build a future only in opposition to the past, you’re not dreaming—you’re dodging. You’re not designing your life, you’re reacting to someone else’s.

So again: what do we pass on?

My niece, at 15, already knows something I took decades to learn. “If boys had periods,” she said one day, casually, “pads and tampons would be free. And we’d get a holiday every month.” No filter, no apology, Just pure clarity. 

But then I watch her mother—my sister—live out a very different reality. She wants to push back at work, to speak up when things aren’t fair. And sometimes she does. But more often, she sighs and says, “What’s the point? Nothing’s going to change.”

It frustrates me. I get angry. I start pushing—say something, demand better, fight back.

And then I wonder: how different am I from the very system I resist? The one that tells women how to behave. What to feel. What strength should look like. Am I just pushing a shinier version of control and calling it feminism?

She’s not failing the movement. She’s just tired. She’s just surviving. And she gets to decide what survival looks like for her.

Maybe the work now isn’t about insisting everyone fights the same way. Maybe it’s about making space for every woman to define her own fight. Her own wants. Her own worth.

We are what we remember, what we inherit, and what we challenge.

Jyoti’s tears. My mother’s resistance. My aunt’s exhaustion. My niece’s sass. My sister’s surrender. They’re all part of the same story. Women giving voice to disparity—across generations, across class, in kitchens and boardrooms and WhatsApp groups and whispers at 2am.

Some in grief. Some in fire. Some in punchlines. But always—always—in truth.

Change doesn’t always come roaring in. Sometimes it arrives in the quiet recognition that the mould we’re running from is still shaping us. And maybe the work now isn’t just to reject the past, but to reimagine what we build in its place.

So no—it didn’t have to be a boy.

It has to be a world where every girl is enough.

Where women can want more—without guilt.

Where strength isn’t measured in how loud we yell, but in how gently we allow each other to grow.

And maybe that’s how we move forward—not by erasing the past, but by refusing to be trapped in its logic.

Instinct, Inheritance, and the Pause in Between