On one of my last evenings in Paris, after a day of soufflé-making and wandering cobblestone streets without direction, I discovered Le Balzac Cinema off the Champs-Élysées, showing a Dutch film called Sentimental Value.  I bought a ticket, expecting a quiet escape.  Instead, I found myself watching my own life unfold through the story of a father and his two estranged, wounded daughters, who are slowly working toward reconciliation. Beneath the dialogue, beneath the subtitles, pulsed a truth I have lived for years: that silence, not conflict, is what fractures families most deeply.

As I watched the older daughter navigate her father’s evasions and her sister’s fragile loyalty, I felt the familiar ache of recognition. My own family has long believed in maintaining peace through silence… a belief that emotions are private property and that unspoken things will fade if ignored. But silence, I’ve learned, does not dissolve pain; it distills it. It seeps into our cells and re-emerges as distance, resentment, or inherited fragility.

The film revealed something I’ve studied and sensed for years but couldn’t find the right words for, until a fellow moviegoer suggested the term: emotional inheritance. An invisible thread that connects us to our ancestors’ unresolved feelings… griefs they buried, fears they never voiced, and the coping methods they passed down unconsciously. We inherit not only eye color or bone structure but also the emotional DNA of our lineage.

During my PhD coursework, I became fascinated by epigenetics, the study of how lived experiences influence gene expression. Trauma, stress, and even chronic emotional suppression can leave molecular marks, or chemical tags, that determine whether specific genes are activated or remain inactive. These molecular marks (I love this term and the alliteration) don’t change our DNA sequence, but they affect how our DNA is expressed. What I also found interesting is that they can be inherited across generations. The science is elegant; some people think it’s a hoax, but what struck me most was how it mirrors the human heart, just as stories passed down do.

Epigenetics confirmed what I always sensed: that what is not expressed still gets transmitted. The family secret, unspoken grief, quiet disapproval, all of it becomes cellular language. Our bodies remember what our minds try to forget. Biomarkers, those measurable signs of the body’s internal state, serve as the punctuation of those silent stories: elevated cortisol, inflamed pathways, restless sleep, tight chests, what the psyche cannot say, the body records. I could fill pages with how my body has reacted over the years to stress born of silence and self-suppression, but that’s a topic for another post. 

In ‘Sentimental Value,’ the father’s reluctance to speak reflected that of my grandfather and great-grandfather’s generation, men who believed strength meant stoicism and loved their children and grandchildren fiercely but silently. Over the years, I’ve met many men like them, shaped by the same silent code: emotions hidden beneath endurance, affection masked as responsibility. Their hearts might have been full, but their words were cautious. But I feel fortunate to have known a different kind of fatherhood, even if only for eleven years. My own young father did the opposite; he laughed loudly, loved openly, and made life feel like an adventure. Despite his own demons before he died, and flaws (we all have them), he still showed me that tenderness could coexist with strength, and that joy was a form of courage. I’ve been searching for that same adoration and vitality ever since. As a young girl and woman, I grew up decoding moods rather than hearing the truth, needing to quietly endure, like the daughters in the movie who longed for love.  It gets extremely exhausting, and I felt that in their actions throughout the movie.

When the film’s final scene arrived — an imperfect reconciliation, tender but unfinished — I felt a surprising sense of calm. It wasn’t the resolution of the characters’ lives that soothed me, but the realization that storytelling itself is a form of healing. By speaking, by naming, and by allowing the messy edges of truth to breathe, we start to change the internal chemistry of our lineage. Walking back to my apartment, I smiled, thinking out loud how “Storytelling becomes both art and remedy.”

It was another confirmation of what I had realized early on, which is why I have always been drawn to share my story publicly, even when my family resists. They see it as exposure; I see it as growth. Their silence feels safe, but it isn’t sustainable. It traps emotion in amber. And yet, I don’t blame them. Silence was their survival strategy, a way to endure without shattering. But what kept them intact is what kept me invisible.

Breaking the silence isn’t rebellion; it’s reclaiming. Every time I write and share, I perform a kind of molecular re-coding. I teach my brain and body, and my sons’ brains and bodies, that the truth is not dangerous. I give them permission to feel without shame, to speak without fear. In this way, storytelling is not just psychological healing; it’s biological repair.

Watching the film made me think about the future. My two sons have grown up seeing my endless curiosity, my habit of asking why, and my effort to link emotion, science, and spirit. They tease me about my wanderlust and my habit of narrating everything, but I know they are learning the deeper message: that communication is love in action. That expression provides safety. That our biology listens when we finally speak.

When I left the theater, Paris shimmered in the evening light. Walking back to the 7^th arrondissement, taillights streak down the Champs-Élysées like a river of red in motion. At the same time, the Arc de Triomphe stands firm and alert amid the rushing, windy night, acting as a witness as the city continues to rewrite its story. The film’s father and daughters stayed in my mind, not just as characters but as symbols…the silencer, the seeker, the bridge. I realized then that my role in my own family story is to be the bridge. Not to fix what was broken in the past, but to make sure that silence doesn’t become our legacy.

Ultimately, Sentimental Value provided me with more than empathy; it gave me validation. The emotional inheritance I have long examined is not abstract; it is measurable, traceable, and capable of transformation. My years studying epigenetics weren’t just an academic sidetrack; they served as a blueprint for healing. The markers of trauma and resilience, whether molecular or emotional, are malleable, and we can rewrite them.

The film reaffirmed what I have always known deep down and now share with you: the stories we tell change the stories our bodies carry. Silence may be hereditary, but so is courage.

And most importantly, the silence I was born into will not be the language I leave behind. Through my ongoing personal reflections, I will not erase the past; only transform it. I will give my children something stronger than silence—a living example that truth, once spoken, becomes the most beautiful inheritance of all.