July 8, 2025 • 8 mins
What happens when the person holding a family together is suddenly gone? In this episode, we look beneath titles and roles to reveal the quiet power shaping every inheritance story—sometimes spoken, more often felt. You’ll discover how emotional blueprints and unspoken systems can bind or divide families, and why true resolution means seeing what’s beneath the surface. If you’re willing to listen for what isn’t being said, this conversation offers a new lens for your work—and for the families you serve.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sacred Work, the podcast for
professionals navigating theemotional and logistical layers
of inherited property.
I'm Alexa Rosario, and here weexplore how to serve families
with strategy, systems and soul.
Every family has a structure,whether it's spoken or unspoken,
and when somebody dies thatstructure gets exposed,
(00:24):
especially when it's thematriarch or the patriarch of
the family.
Today we're talking aboutmatriarchies and patriarchies
and the emotional blueprints andhow these families come
together, because if we don'tunderstand the family system, we
end up misreading the room andwe end up misserving the people
that we're called to help.
(00:44):
Matriarchies often are notnamed, they're not talked about,
but they're absolutely felt.
That power comes from theemotional labor, the history,
the relational influence, theway that she did the holidays.
It's not a position or a title,it's just something that she
inherited and she owned, andthere's typically no coronation,
(01:08):
there's no recognition for it,but she does it and that's just
who she is.
In matriarchal families,decision-making is often
informal, but it's deeplybinding, like when the matriarch
says so, like everybody moves.
And these women are memorykeepers.
They're peacemakers, they'rebridge builders.
(01:29):
They're the ones who rememberevery holiday, everyone's
birthdays.
They're the ones who rememberwhat your favorite food is, you
know.
They're the ones who make surethat you feel home and you feel
welcomed and you feel likeyou're part of the family.
And especially when thematriarch dies, the emotional
gravity shifts.
Everybody feels it, even ifthey pretend not to, and
(01:52):
typically you'll find thatsomebody in the family is going
to step in and try to own thatrole to honor the legacy of the
woman that passed.
Now, in matriarchal societies,the executor may hold the legal
power, but the room still looksto the woman in charge, the
woman of the family, to makethose big decisions.
(02:14):
Now in patriarchies it's alittle bit different.
In a family that runs more likea patriarchy, power tends to be
more clear.
It's typically the dad, thenthe eldest son and there's, like
you know, head of householdtypes and things like that
Authority is respected, buttypically it's relationally
distant and emotions aregenerally suppressed, but
(02:38):
actions are emphasized.
Decisions happen quicker, butthey often leave emotional
wreckage and when the patriarchdies it creates a vacuum that,
like the firstborn son, may rushto fill before grief ever ends
up taking shape.
So patriarchal systems movefast legally, but often leave
(03:01):
the deepest emotionalincompletions behind.
But often leave the deepestemotional incompletions behind.
Now we have to talk aboutculture here, because that is a
huge part of determining if afamily is going to be
matriarchal or patriarchal andhow we serve these families
individually.
So in Black households, inLatin households, in Asian and
(03:21):
Indigenous families, thematriarch often holds both the
emotional and the practicalpower, but it's not typically
named as such.
Now, in westernized whitefamilies and also in some Middle
Eastern families, patriarchyshows up more formally as like
title control assets, but theemotional power either is absent
(03:43):
or may fall still on the woman.
Now, immigrant families oftencarry sort of this dual layer.
They have this sort ofbalancing between their
traditions and their culture andthen also layering in the
American legal systems andthings like that.
Now, when we think about thefact that women were not even
allowed to have credit cardsuntil like 1974, that's where a
(04:07):
lot of this comes from.
Right Is, even thoughtechnically, yes, maybe the
woman might have a bigger rolein the family, the husband still
has kind of the tangible power,if you will, and in older
families that still very much isthe case.
Think about how many clientsthat you've had where maybe the
husband passes away and the wifehas never done anything related
(04:29):
to money and she has never doneanything related to money.
She doesn't know how to pay thebills, she doesn't know where
the bank accounts are, shedoesn't even know what they have
, because the patriarchy in thatcase was the one who was
leading.
Now this becomes superimportant when we start getting
into the topics of inheritance,because these unspoken systems
(04:50):
determine who gets the house,who gets the stuff in it, who
gets the blame, and also how thefamily grieves through the
process.
Matriarchies often pass downemotional inheritance.
They pass down traditions, theypass down legacy, they pass
down holidays.
They pass down how birthdaysare celebrated, the way that the
towels are folded, how foodgets seasoned.
(05:12):
Now patriarchies often passdown financial or structural
inheritance.
They typically are the ones whopass down the property, but
they're the ones who typicallypass down the property.
Let's say, for example Now bothsystems can end up leaving the
heirs unseen, unchosen or evencarrying guilt, and it's not
necessarily that it's designedor intended to be that way, but
(05:35):
I think that the absence ofconversations like this is where
a lot of those hurt feelingsend up coming from.
So if you don't understand whoholds the heart of the family,
who kind of is the heartbeat,then you'll never understand why
they can't let go of the house,why they shut down, why they
get frustrated, why they startstonewalling and disappear and
(05:57):
ghosting you, and it comes downto the fact that we're dealing
with really complex familystructures and if we're not in
tune with that, we just can'tget through to the family.
So what I want to dig into hereis, firstly, we have to stop
assuming that the executor isthe decision maker.
They might be the person who'ssigning the documents, but if
(06:20):
there's another family memberwho has a bigger voice is the
one who kind of was theunofficial heir of whoever the
person that passed, or maybethey were the one who, or maybe
there was something unspokenwhere maybe the sister is the
one who is handling all thestuff for the estate, but it's
(06:42):
really the brother who has thefinal say on everything.
We have to understand and beable to ask the right questions
and really listen for what's notbeing said, so that we can
serve these families better.
If you can get the heirs in theroom at the same time, one of
the best ways to do this is topay attention to who everyone
glances at before they answer.
(07:03):
That is going to be a deadgiveaway that almost nobody can
hide.
And if you really go in with theintention of listening and
observing, you'll notice veryquickly who the person is that
holds the power.
They may not be the person whosays the most, but they're going
to be the one that, when theydo speak, everybody stops and
listens.
If you can't get all the heirsin the room together, another
(07:26):
great way to do this is to askabout the family, ask about
their traditions, ask about whoheld the keys, ask about what
their family was like, ask aboutwho made Thanksgiving happen
right.
And then we want to learn howto read emotional architecture
of the family, not just thelegal one, not just what the
documents say.
So with that, I want to leaveyou with this.
(07:48):
Number one is that inheritanceis not just financial, it's
emotional, it's spiritual, it'scultural right, and every family
system carries its own unspokenrules about who matters and who
doesn't.
And when we understand thosepower dynamics, we can stop
pushing paperwork and we canstart guiding families towards
true resolution.
(08:08):
And that, my friends, is sacredwork.
Welcome to Sacred Work, the podcast for
professionals navigating theemotional and logistical layers
of inherited property.
I'm Alexa Rosario, and here weexplore how to serve families
with strategy, systems and soul.
Every family has a structure,whether it's spoken or unspoken,
and when somebody dies thatstructure gets exposed,
(00:24):
especially when it's thematriarch or the patriarch of
the family.
Today we're talking aboutmatriarchies and patriarchies
and the emotional blueprints andhow these families come
together, because if we don'tunderstand the family system, we
end up misreading the room andwe end up misserving the people
that we're called to help.
(00:44):
Matriarchies often are notnamed, they're not talked about,
but they're absolutely felt.
That power comes from theemotional labor, the history,
the relational influence, theway that she did the holidays.
It's not a position or a title,it's just something that she
inherited and she owned, andthere's typically no coronation,
(01:08):
there's no recognition for it,but she does it and that's just
who she is.
In matriarchal families,decision-making is often
informal, but it's deeplybinding, like when the matriarch
says so, like everybody moves.
And these women are memorykeepers.
They're peacemakers, they'rebridge builders.
(01:29):
They're the ones who rememberevery holiday, everyone's
birthdays.
They're the ones who rememberwhat your favorite food is, you
know.
They're the ones who make surethat you feel home and you feel
welcomed and you feel likeyou're part of the family.
And especially when thematriarch dies, the emotional
gravity shifts.
Everybody feels it, even ifthey pretend not to, and
(01:52):
typically you'll find thatsomebody in the family is going
to step in and try to own thatrole to honor the legacy of the
woman that passed.
Now, in matriarchal societies,the executor may hold the legal
power, but the room still looksto the woman in charge, the
woman of the family, to makethose big decisions.
(02:14):
Now in patriarchies it's alittle bit different.
In a family that runs more likea patriarchy, power tends to be
more clear.
It's typically the dad, thenthe eldest son and there's, like
you know, head of householdtypes and things like that
Authority is respected, buttypically it's relationally
distant and emotions aregenerally suppressed, but
(02:38):
actions are emphasized.
Decisions happen quicker, butthey often leave emotional
wreckage and when the patriarchdies it creates a vacuum that,
like the firstborn son, may rushto fill before grief ever ends
up taking shape.
So patriarchal systems movefast legally, but often leave
(03:01):
the deepest emotionalincompletions behind.
But often leave the deepestemotional incompletions behind.
Now we have to talk aboutculture here, because that is a
huge part of determining if afamily is going to be
matriarchal or patriarchal andhow we serve these families
individually.
So in Black households, inLatin households, in Asian and
(03:21):
Indigenous families, thematriarch often holds both the
emotional and the practicalpower, but it's not typically
named as such.
Now, in westernized whitefamilies and also in some Middle
Eastern families, patriarchyshows up more formally as like
title control assets, but theemotional power either is absent
(03:43):
or may fall still on the woman.
Now, immigrant families oftencarry sort of this dual layer.
They have this sort ofbalancing between their
traditions and their culture andthen also layering in the
American legal systems andthings like that.
Now, when we think about thefact that women were not even
allowed to have credit cardsuntil like 1974, that's where a
(04:07):
lot of this comes from.
Right Is, even thoughtechnically, yes, maybe the
woman might have a bigger rolein the family, the husband still
has kind of the tangible power,if you will, and in older
families that still very much isthe case.
Think about how many clientsthat you've had where maybe the
husband passes away and the wifehas never done anything related
(04:29):
to money and she has never doneanything related to money.
She doesn't know how to pay thebills, she doesn't know where
the bank accounts are, shedoesn't even know what they have
, because the patriarchy in thatcase was the one who was
leading.
Now this becomes superimportant when we start getting
into the topics of inheritance,because these unspoken systems
(04:50):
determine who gets the house,who gets the stuff in it, who
gets the blame, and also how thefamily grieves through the
process.
Matriarchies often pass downemotional inheritance.
They pass down traditions, theypass down legacy, they pass
down holidays.
They pass down how birthdaysare celebrated, the way that the
towels are folded, how foodgets seasoned.
(05:12):
Now patriarchies often passdown financial or structural
inheritance.
They typically are the ones whopass down the property, but
they're the ones who typicallypass down the property.
Let's say, for example Now bothsystems can end up leaving the
heirs unseen, unchosen or evencarrying guilt, and it's not
necessarily that it's designedor intended to be that way, but
(05:35):
I think that the absence ofconversations like this is where
a lot of those hurt feelingsend up coming from.
So if you don't understand whoholds the heart of the family,
who kind of is the heartbeat,then you'll never understand why
they can't let go of the house,why they shut down, why they
get frustrated, why they startstonewalling and disappear and
(05:57):
ghosting you, and it comes downto the fact that we're dealing
with really complex familystructures and if we're not in
tune with that, we just can'tget through to the family.
So what I want to dig into hereis, firstly, we have to stop
assuming that the executor isthe decision maker.
They might be the person who'ssigning the documents, but if
(06:20):
there's another family memberwho has a bigger voice is the
one who kind of was theunofficial heir of whoever the
person that passed, or maybethey were the one who, or maybe
there was something unspokenwhere maybe the sister is the
one who is handling all thestuff for the estate, but it's
(06:42):
really the brother who has thefinal say on everything.
We have to understand and beable to ask the right questions
and really listen for what's notbeing said, so that we can
serve these families better.
If you can get the heirs in theroom at the same time, one of
the best ways to do this is topay attention to who everyone
glances at before they answer.
(07:03):
That is going to be a deadgiveaway that almost nobody can
hide.
And if you really go in with theintention of listening and
observing, you'll notice veryquickly who the person is that
holds the power.
They may not be the person whosays the most, but they're going
to be the one that, when theydo speak, everybody stops and
listens.
If you can't get all the heirsin the room together, another
(07:26):
great way to do this is to askabout the family, ask about
their traditions, ask about whoheld the keys, ask about what
their family was like, ask aboutwho made Thanksgiving happen
right.
And then we want to learn howto read emotional architecture
of the family, not just thelegal one, not just what the
documents say.
So with that, I want to leaveyou with this.
(07:48):
Number one is that inheritanceis not just financial, it's
emotional, it's spiritual, it'scultural right, and every family
system carries its own unspokenrules about who matters and who
doesn't.
And when we understand thosepower dynamics, we can stop
pushing paperwork and we canstart guiding families towards
true resolution.
(08:08):
And that, my friends, is sacredwork.
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