This book is excellent! So much so, that I read it in less than 24 hours. It is a memoir about a lady who gets breast cancer and wants God to tell her why. She grew up a preacher’s daughter in conservative churches. And did not know why God would do this to her.
Sarah, the author, talks about how she internalized the conflict she felt about being a girl/woman. Because in her family and churches women were not considered equal to men. They could not retain the same positions in the church or at home. And this double standard and being viewed as less than is something that plagued her. She did not want to be less than. And so she worked really hard to get scholarships to college and masters programs. In an effort to prove her worth and equality.
This is why she got cancer at 27. Beliefs dictate epigenetics. Women are more prone to autoimmune disease and other health problems throughout their lives. Because when you internalize the conditioning from gender roles, it changes who you are on a gene and cellular level. When you are told you are not equal or good enough it literally changes who you are on a gene and cellular level. Even if you fight back and try to prove yourself, the belief that you are less than takes it toll. Can you imagine what it would feel like to believe that God created you to be a second class citizen? It would not feel good, right?
God, didn’t create the class system. We did. It is a human construct. There are God constructs and there are human/social constructs. Gravity is a God construct. We did not create gravity, God did. Or perhaps creation did or whatever you believe. But things like church, religion, government, and racism are human constructs. Humans created these.
Can you imagine blaming God for something that humans created? Seems ineffectual to me. But I can also see how it would be easy to do when you are bogged down with the belief that you are less than. Google says, “Many negative health effects are linked to the structural sexism and rigid gender roles found in some conservative religious traditions. “
I believe that people raise their families in rigid/strict religions in an attempt to shelter them from the evils of the modern world. But it does more damage than good generally speaking. Epigenetics are dictated by environment. And epigenetics are also dictated by beliefs. So, the environment of religion shapes your beliefs and it is a double whammy so to speak. Because the environment is dictating your epigenetics. But then your environment is shaping your beliefs and those are also shaping and dictating your epigenetics.
The environment is your external world. But your beliefs are your internal world. Both of these worlds shape your epigenetics(aka who you are on a gene and cellular level). However, your beliefs have the power to trump all. You can grow up in a culture that says women are not equal and experience that inequality. However, you do not believe in the inequality than it will help shape your epigenetics positively. But you have to remember it is hard to overcome the subconscious beliefs that are downloaded into our subconscious during the third trimester of pregnancy through our mother’s blood. You know that saying, “It’s in your blood.” That is because your Mother’s blood inserts subconscious beliefs into your brain. And they are subconscious so you do not know they are there consciously.
Even if you did not grow up in a strict religion, but your Mother did, you run the risk of inheriting these damaging subconscious beliefs. And thus them shaping your epigenetics and creating negative epigenetic triggers. Plus, we are in a state of hypnosis for the first 8 years of our lives. During these years we are downloading all kinds of information from everyone around us into our subconscious. And throughout your life your mirror neurons are constantly downloading information into your subconscious from the people around you. You know the saying, “Monkey see, monkey do.” This describes your mirror neurons in your brain. When you see someone do something your brain wires and fires as if you did the thing. So the more times you see someone do something, the more likely you are to do this yourself. Because your brain already thinks you have done it. You know how everything your parents do you are more likely to do? It is because you saw them to do it. It is belief, not genetic.
Culture is just a group of people who come together with shared beliefs. They do not always share genes, but they share beliefs and that is what brings them together. Your family was the first culture you had to grow up. Children who are adopted have the same chances of being like their adopted parents as children that are born with their same genes. If an adopted child is put in a family with an elevated risk of a certain kind of heart disease, that adopted child will have the same elevated risk of that specific heart disease. It is not genetic, it is epigenetic. It is based on environment and beliefs.
We all have genes, but epigenetics is how those genes are switched on and off(like light switches). Humans have about 25,000 genes and they turn on and off. But they are not on and off light switches, they are the dimmer switches. There are 30,000 different settings for every dimmer switch on a gene. Every one gene has 30,000 different epigenetic options/settings. So this is why we can have genes like our family and be nothing like them. This is why adopted children are more like their adopted family than their birth family.
I went off on a science tangent. But I had to.
This book was great. I think everyone who gets really chronically ill and especially those who get terminally ill ask God why. Why would God do this to us? It is not God, it is humans. It is the environment we have created. Which effects how our genes are switched on and off. All modern disease is mitochondrial. Thus, all modern disease is epigenetic. We were not designed to be sick like this. We have created an environment that turns on and off our genes in such negative ways that we are dying, slowly and painfully. It is all unnecessary suffering. Most of it is completely preventable. There are only 6 diseases in the whole world that purely genetic. The rest are epigenetic. Which means we can end our suffering if want to.
Why do we want to suffer so much, is the real question? God didn’t do this to us, we did this.