How You Get Off the Ladder | The Inherited Ladder, Part 2 of 2

Last time I walked you up the ladder of fear, obligation and guilt, and you found your rung. This is the part nobody tells you. First, that you didn't build it. You were put on it before you could speak, because a small child can't survive being cast out, so obeying was intelligence, not weakness. But the program that was correct at four is still running, and now it's costing you your life, one unmeant yes at a time.

Then the two directions it leaks. Outward, where you meet your own unfaced material in someone else and call it their character, in an age that says toxic, narcissist, gaslighter. And downward, where your children absorb the whole ladder from watching you, and inherit the fear you never faced. Plus the industry built to keep you on it, selling you a better view from your rung instead of the way down. And then how you actually step off.

Michael Lauria

The Architect