This evolution of fear has been proven through studies causing mice to be fearful of the smell of cherry blossoms.
Researchers taught mice to fear the smell by exposing them to a mild foot shock. Generations later, the offspring of the tested mice experienced fear and anxiety from the odor of cherry blossoms.
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in 2013 also found that this ability to remember can be affected by the presence of immune-system factors in the mother’ s milk. Chemokines carried in a mother’ s milk were found to cause changes in the brains of her offspring, affecting them in later life.
How can we begin to comprehend the impact of the chemokines in the milk of the slave woman, breastfeeding her newborn, when all of her previous children have been snatched from her arms and sold? Has the DNA of being subservient and the acceptance of inferiority birthed its way through generations of women? At what point were the creators of life crushed into a role that today needs affirmation from quotes on the internet?
The revealing words of this 16th century“ mystery document” are an explanation of the acceptance of some societal norms that still exist. This note, stumbled upon in a second-hand bookshop in Australia, reads:
“ Woman is to win everything by peace and love; by making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes, will be the free-will offering of her heart. But the moment a woman begins to feel the promptings of ambition, or the thirst for power, her aegis of defense is gone. All the sacred protection of religion, all the generous promptings of chivalry, all the poetry of romantic gallantry, depend upon a woman’ s retaining her place as dependent and defenseless, and making no claims and maintaining no right but what are the gifts of honor, rectitude and love.”
The DNA for the need of“ aegis” from anyone other than the creator of the universe diminishes the cellular and genetic ability to create life. On this Mother’ s Day, women are continuing to fight not just to change laws, but to change attitudes of men and the woman in the mirror.
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