Baking Cakes: The Power of Curiosity and Freeing Ourselves by Unpacking Family and Cultural Burdens
Story Time!
I am a thorough believer in the power of stories, and this one has been coming up for me a lot in the last week as I have been exploring the idea of Legacy Burdens with clients.
So gather around the campfire, in the living room, or get ready for bedtime…
Every good story starts with “Once Upon a Time...”
Baking Cakes
Once Upon a Time, a young woman wanted to bake her first cake from scratch, hoping to recreate delicious memories from her childhood and share a homemade dessert with friends. She remembered watching her mother bake cakes over the years, always placing a pan of water alongside the cake pan in the oven. She believed this was to help keep the cake moist and prevent it from drying out, but she could not remember for sure. Curious, she called her mom and asked, “Mom, why do you always put a pan of water in the oven when you bake a cake?”
Her mother paused momentarily and replied, “You know, I’m not entirely sure! That’s just how my mom taught me. I always thought it was to keep the cake moist.”
Not entirely satisfied, the young woman decided to ask her grandmother the same question. “Grandma, why did you teach Mom to bake cakes with a pan of water in the oven?”
Her grandmother chuckled and said, “That’s funny—I’ve never really thought about it! I just learned it from my mother, and I assumed it helped the cake bake more evenly.”
Now deeply intrigued, the young woman reached out to her great-grandmother. The older matriarch was delighted to hear from her, and she explained her quest to understand this family baking tradition. Upon hearing the tale and her great-granddaughter’s desire to know why they repeated this baking step, her great-grandmother laughed out loud.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “I used to put a pan of water in the oven because that old oven had an uneven rack! The cake would be lopsided in the pan and wouldn’t cook evenly. The pan of water helped the rack stay level. But I only did it because of that old oven. I never thought you’d all keep doing it!”
The young woman laughed, realizing that a habit born of necessity had become a family tradition passed down without question. From that day forward, she confidently baked her cakes—no water pan required.
This Baking Cakes story has also been told in the form of The Pot Roast Story. In that story, a young cook cuts the ends off a pot roast before putting it in the pan because that’s how they learned it from their mother. Eventually, they discover that the matriarch of that family initially did this simply because her pan was too small to fit the entire roast.
Both illustrate the same idea: inherited traditions often have practical roots but become unnecessary habits over time. We often easily adopt these beliefs, habits, and rituals without understanding or questioning them. These are Legacy Burdens—patterns of behavior and belief systems passed down, often unconsciously, from generation to generation.
These stories also demonstrate the transformative power of curiosity, questioning, and letting go.
Letting Go of Legacy Burdens
A finely balanced tower of stones similar to the Legacy Burdens that pile up within us.
The Cake Story is a powerful reminder of how behaviors, beliefs, and traditions can travel down through generations, family systems, and cultures without anyone stopping to ask, “Why?”. Legacy Burdens are inherited patterns that no longer serve us but continue to influence our lives, often unconsciously.
For example, cultural beliefs about gender roles, such as expectations that men always be stoic and not show emotion, or that women should be primary caregivers, can be passed down through generations, shaping behavior in ways that no longer serve individuals in a modern context. They might manifest as rigid beliefs about what it means to be successful, how emotions should be expressed, or even how love and connection are supposed to look. Just like the great-grandmother’s pan of water, these burdens often began for reasons that made sense at the time (sometimes even due to very dire circumstances) but now no longer fit the needs of our lives.
Like this image of delicately balanced stones, they pile up and add weight being.
In therapy, we explore these ideas and assess the relevance of our current patterns of behavior and belief systems. More often than not, we become mindful of our unconscious patterns and recognize that what we thought was an integral part of our identity, or a necessary coping mechanism was simply an old workaround—an emotional or behavioral adaptation to a situation that no longer exists.
Questioning the Past, Freeing the Future
Letting go of legacy burdens requires questioning our inherited stories and beliefs. This process can be emotionally challenging and is best done with the support of a trained therapist. These patterns are often deeply ingrained in our everyday lives and our unconscious sense of self and survival systems. We may feel loyalty to our family or culture and worry that letting go of old beliefs is a betrayal. We may also fear losing connection to our families and ancestors. Additionally, we may fear losing a sense of our own identity. However, questioning these burdens doesn’t mean we’re rejecting our past—it means we’re choosing what best serves us moving forward.
The young woman’s curiosity led her to uncover the truth behind a family tradition, freeing her from an unnecessary step in her baking routine. This lighthearted fable mirrors the therapeutic process of letting go of emotional or psychological burdens (although that process is trickier than a simple phone call). The traditions and beliefs we inherit are often rooted in past necessities, but they may no longer serve us in the present.
By becoming curious about our habits, behaviors, and beliefs, we can untangle ourselves from the past and make mindful choices about what to carry forward. This process can be profoundly empowering, allowing us to intentionally shape our lives and align our actions with our true values. For example, we might question why we always feel the need to overwork ourselves to feel valuable or why we avoid expressing emotions openly. By examining these beliefs, we can decide if they truly serve us or are inherited patterns that no longer fit our lives.
Moving Toward Healing
In therapeutic work, tools like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR can help us identify and release these legacy burdens. For example, using IFS, we might connect with parts of ourselves that hold onto inherited fears or rigid beliefs—parts that were once protective but now limit our growth. By understanding these parts and allowing space to heal, we can release the old patterns and make room for new, healthier ways of being.
The key to letting go of legacy burdens is curiosity. Just as the young woman kept asking questions until she understood the truth, we too must stay curious about our inner world. We might ask ourselves, ‘Why do I react this way?’ ‘Where did this belief come from?’ or ‘Why do certain situations trigger intense emotions?’ By asking and exploring such questions, we can separate inherited patterns and discover which ones genuinely serve us and which burdens we’ve inherited that may have become antiquated.
We can then decide whether these ideas still serve us—or if it’s time to let them go.
Interested in Starting Therapy?
If you’re interested in exploring these ideas further or need some support, don’t hesitate to reach out for a free consultation at my Contact Page. You can also learn more about me here and more about Individual Therapy here.
Some Citations, Resources, and References
Breuning, L. G. (2013). Meet Your Happy Chemicals. Inner Mammal Institute.
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (Second Edition). The Guilford Press.
Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. Bantam.
Sinko, A. (2021). Chapter 6: Working with Legacy Burdens in IFS. In M. Sweezy & E. Ziskind (Eds.), IFS, Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy. Routledge.
