I Am a Vegan

I have been a vegan for a few months now and I finally feel like my life is on the right path.

This is the not the first time in my life I’ve called myself a vegan. I was a vegan once before. Being a vegan was a big reason why I left my first husband who was a restaurant owner who wouldn’t take veal off the menu when I asked him to. I had read John Robbins book “Diet for a New America” and “Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat: by Howard F. Lyman and could not believe the horrors I was reading about and how people could do that, then perhaps the first epiphany I ever had took form and became this thought, “I’m a big part of the problem because I own a restaurant.” I quickly adopted the true, ethical vegan lifestyle. In addition to the foods I ate, none of my clothing, or cosmetics contained animal products either. I stood by my ethics until I met someone I thought I might be in love with.

I let myself forget who I was. I let myself crawl into the dark again and forget everything I knew about the meat, egg, and dairy industries because I was so insecure that I didn’t think this person could possibly love me for who I was. I tremble at the thought that he might not like me, or worse, would even make fun of me for not eating meat.

Even though I went back to eating meat, I still didn’t use cosmetics that contained animal by-products, but I do know I bought leather shoes. It’s no wonder that even though I was with this wonderful person, I was still not happy. I would often tell him, “I’m going to become a vegetarian,” and I would do it for a few weeks, then crave a cheeseburger or chicken strips and run to the bar for dinner. It’s no wonder I spent so much time beating myself up and feeling sorry for myself.

It was just before my 40th birthday when I finally figured out that I had to become at least a vegetarian again or I was going to be miserable. I was in the bathroom rescuing a spider from going down the drain, which I often do, when I had an epiphany much like the one that caused me to become a vegan so many years ago. “How can I say I love animals when I am rescuing a spider, yet continue to eat meat?” So I stopped eating meat.

I was still piling on the cheese though and eating eggs. Until I bought an issue of VegNews and then a book suggested in the magazine: Veganist by Kathy Freston. While reading  Veganist, I was reminded that the dairy and egg industries are often worse than the meat industries. I also found out that study after study shows that vegans are far, far healthier than people who consume a traditional American diet. What a great bonus, I thought.

So here I am a few months later and without even working at it, my body shape is changing and my clothes are starting to fall off me. I know I am doing the right thing and nothing is going to make me crawl back to meat.