Why the Holidays Still Trigger You — and How to Move What You’ve Been Carrying

The holidays have a way of pulling old family dynamics back to the surface, even when you think you’ve already handled them. You can be living your life, working hard, raising kids, paying bills, doing the work—and then one interaction, or in my case one very loud silence, unzips something old. That doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means the lesson isn’t finished yet.

This year it surfaced when I offered to host a family gathering. I have the land. I have the space. I’ve restored an old schoolhouse on sacred ground and built an entire place devoted to reconnection—reunions, retreats, family gatherings, weddings, baby showers, best-friend weekends, cowgirl get-togethers, Pilates intensives, horseback riding, quiet time in the hammock, afternoons by the pool. My life is literally designed around bringing people back together. All of that lives at https://www.elmwoodplacetx.com. I put the invitation out in a group text to family members and was met with silence. No response. No acknowledgment. Just nothing. That silence didn’t start now—it plugged directly into something I’ve been carrying for years.

My father died when I was twenty-seven. After he passed, I received a phone call from his mother telling me that because of choices my father made while married to another woman—not my mother, not my choice, not my responsibility—my brother and I would inherit nothing from her estate. I wasn’t expecting an inheritance. That wasn’t the point. The message underneath was the point: my father’s failures were now mine to carry.

There is scripture for this, and it matters. “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son” (Ezekiel 18:20). And again, “Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their parents; each is to die for their own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16). This isn’t just theology. It’s nervous-system truth. When guilt and responsibility are passed down instead of processed, someone ends up carrying weight that distorts how they stand in the world.

Over time, I understood this wasn’t about money. It was about allegiance. Unresolved resentment was redirected, and because I am my mother’s daughter, it landed on me. These things are rarely spoken, but the body hears them. Prolonged silence and emotional exclusion register as threat in the nervous system. You feel separate. Rejected. Like you’re standing on the wrong side of an invisible fence.

I know this because I was told directly. Family truths were shared with me in a space shaped by shared grief. Knowing the pattern didn’t erase the pain, but it stopped me from turning it inward forever. That distinction matters. Awareness alone does not heal trauma. Embodiment does.

I also want to be clear about my father. My gratitude for him is rooted in wisdom, not nostalgia. He showed me what not to do. He struggled with addiction, untreated mental health issues, and chronic anger. He chose avoidance over accountability, and those choices had consequences that rippled outward. Watching that taught me something very clearly: I do the opposite. I take care of my body. I regulate my nervous system. I stay sober. I stay accountable. Experience became wisdom.

What I’m describing here is not a one-off exercise or a collection of techniques. It’s a system. I call it Motion of Emotion™ (E-Motion™)—a proprietary, body-first framework I developed to identify emotional patterns, locate where they live in the nervous system, and move them through the body using color, sound, rhythm, and movement. Each color corresponds to a specific emotional state and physiological response, and each has a limited expression and a regulated one. The work is sequential, intentional, and grounded in how the nervous system actually resolves stress and trauma. When we move emotion, we restore motion—and when motion is restored, the body reorganizes itself toward coherence.

Here’s the thing most people miss: this kind of inherited shame does not live in thought. It lives in the nervous system. Silence, rejection, and misplaced guilt are not processed cognitively first—they are registered as threat, abandonment, and powerlessness in the body. Over time, the nervous system adapts by bracing, collapsing, over-thinking, or disappearing. That’s why talking about it helps you understand the pattern, but doesn’t dissolve it. To resolve it, the body has to complete what it never got to do: mobilize strength, restore belonging, and then reintroduce lightness and forward movement. That sequence matters. You don’t start by softening. You start by restoring agency. That’s why this work moves through Red, then Blue, then Yellow—in that order.

This is where Red, Blue, and Yellow come in.

We start with Red because Red interrupts paralysis. Red is action, truth, and clean force. On the limited side it’s rage. On the regulated side it’s strength. Red uses the Ē sound—sharp and staccato: Ē, Ē, Ē. The movement is direct: jabbing both arms forward with one leg, like a sword. Fast. Clean. No apology. Red tells the nervous system, I can act. I am not powerless.

Then we move into Blue, the heart of this pattern. On the limited side, Blue is isolation, fear, rejection, and self-rejection. On the regulated side, Blue is compassion, receptivity, and self-acceptance. Blue works with the Ō sound, resonated into the chest and the back of the heart. The rhythm is one-two, side to side—like walking, like waves, like a horse moving steadily beneath you. Blue says, I belong. I can receive. I don’t have to disappear.

Once the heart has softened, we bring in Yellow. On the limited side, Yellow is over-analysis, criticism, and paralysis. On the regulated side, Yellow is joy, creativity, and trust. Yellow moves in a one-two-three rhythm—a waltz that reintroduces lightness and forward motion. Arms lift overhead. Chest opens. The sound is Āh. Yellow restores cognitive flexibility and livens the body back up.

Red. Blue. Yellow. Sound, rhythm, movement. We don’t force positivity. We allow the nervous system to complete what was interrupted. You end standing tall—feet grounded, spine upright, arms overhead. Acceptance isn’t approval. It’s self-respect. It’s compassion for what you carried and how long you carried it.

This is wisdom. Experience processed into knowing. Trauma turned into clarity. Life is school. You either integrate the lessons or you keep repeating them. The holidays don’t trigger you because you’re broken. They trigger you because something is ready to be resolved. You don’t pass this on. You feel it through—and let it stop with you.

Ready to Move This Out of Your Body?

• Work with me in Houston through somatic Pilates, nervous-system regulation, and trauma-informed movement
→ https://www.thegoodspace.com

• Do deeper, immersive work on sacred land in East Texas—private sessions, retreats, reunions, and embodiment weekends
→ https://www.elmwoodplacetx.com

• Follow ongoing insights on Motion of Emotion™, somatic healing, trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, Pilates, and movement science
→ Instagram: @thepilatescowgirl website: The Pilates Cowgirl

When you know what moves you, you can move yourself out of old patterns—and let it stop with you.