Being a Vegan is one of the most powerful aspects of my life. It is central to everything that is me, and all of my ideals and hopes and aspirations radiate from it. Becoming a Vegan transformed my life and I cannot wrap my head around the fact that I ever lived any differently. It seems so fundamental and basic that it is inconceivable to me that there is another way to be. I get so wrapped up in my vegan head that sometimes it doesn’t occur to me that people would even make things out of animals or animal products anymore, or that anyone would actually pay money for death and pain. But I know that it wasn’t so long ago that I did just that. This is my story:
I was always a compassionate child, overly sensitive some people said. I refused to choose favorites among my stuffed animals and dolls because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings and make them feel unloved. The classic Disney movie Dumbo was so traumatizing to me that my parents wouldn’t let me watch it again. In 2nd grade I did a science experiment for school in which I was supposed to test whether plants grew faster if they were talked to nicely versus being not talked to at all, when all other variables were the same. But at night, I would lie in bed and cry, thinking about how the ignored plants must feel and inevitably I would slide quickly out of bed and dash into the kitchen, where the plants were being kept, and I would grab them into my arms and beg their forgiveness and whisper words of love into their beautiful green fronds, promising that I really loved them just as much as the other plants.
I grew up in a house filled with dogs that were not seen as ‘pets’ but as full fledged members of our family. They traveled with us around the world, to 4 different continents, and dozens of different countries. They slept in our beds at night and spent their days being loved on and cuddled. I adopted dozens of baby birds that had fallen from the nest too young and tried valiantly to nurse each of them back to health. I had a dismal success rate but my passion for trying, for valuing each tiny life as something worth saving, never waned. My family rode horses and I would spend hours with my arms wrapped around the strong, warm necks, stroking their coarse manes and murmuring made up songs into their twitching ears. Animals were my best friends. At times, my only friends. And I loved them more than anything.
The thought of another person or animal feeling fear or loneliness hurt me more than anything, and I worried constantly that I had inadvertently made someone upset by something I had said or done, or that I hadn’t paid enough attention to our two little poodles that day. I knew what it felt like to be abandoned and alone, terrified and filled with fear, and I was incapable of allowing that to happen to another living thing (or inanimate thing, in the case of my stuffed animals!)
I knew from a very young age that I wanted to spend my life helping animals and speaking out for a better world. But growing up in Saudi Arabia hadn’t exactly provided me with a fertile landscape with which to meet liberal, open minded thinkers. I had never really known a vegetarian, much less a vegan. I had been a vegetarian for a while when I was a child but, of course, as time went by and family pressures won out it was forgotten.
But during university in Texas I began volunteering actively at a no-kill animal shelter and feeling empowered and joyful and finally on the right track. “This is it; this is what I can do with the rest of my life!” I wanted to make it my career to ensure that animals never felt afraid, ever again. The feeling of protecting an abandoned dog, letting them know that they were going to be safe from now on was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I knew that I was doing what I was meant to do!
So, one night I was in the kitchen cooking dinner after a long day of walking dogs at the shelter, chopping up a piece of chicken flesh to throw in the frying pan. I dropped something and bent to the floor to pick it up and I remember that very moment just as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. I sat down hard on the cold tile floor. What was I doing? Was I seriously humming happily to myself just thinking of all the dogs I had played with and loved on today and planning my future devoting myself to their care while chopping up a tiny defenseless chicken?
I was a hypocrite. I wish I could say that I never ate meat again, but I did. For several more days I went on with life just like normal but the idea was there and it wouldn’t stop shrieking at me. I kept bringing it up to friends and family, just testing it out in my mind, practicing the words in my mouth. Could I do this? Could I really do this? Of course at the time I had no idea that the dairy and egg industry is in many ways even more cruel than the meat industry and I thought being a vegetarian would be sufficient. I didn’t even know what a vegan was!
So one day I was on the internet and looked up vegetarianism. I watched Meet Your Meat and sobbed for an hour. I was hysterical. I wanted to rip my computer to shreds and take to the streets and scream at people and stop it all right that instant. How could this have been happening? Didn’t anyone know? Was this really legal? I was outraged and disgusted at myself. I felt sick to my stomach and outraged. I ran downstairs and told Cody that I was a vegetarian and I was never going back to eating meat. He was shocked by the strength of my emotions and asked to watch the video with me. We cried together that time, hating ourselves for ever being so blind. For allowing ourselves to be so ignorant.
After talking about the video and acknowledging the fact that we were now vegetarians, I remember him clearly asking “What about eggs and cheese?” I paused, confused. “I’m sure we can eat that stuff, it doesn’t kill animals. Does it?” A minute later I was looking up the dairy industry and the egg industry on-line and moments after that a fresh round of tears was streaming down my face. It became clear to us that the dairy and egg industry, in its twisted efforts to extend the lives of their ‘productive assets’, end up torturing them for years upon years, and was even more brutal than the disgusting and murderous meat industry. The thought of the sweet dairy cows calling out for their babies that had been hauled off to veal farms so we could drink their milk, or the mother hens losing every single egg to our desire to make an omelette broke my heart again and again.
In the span of one hour I had gone from being a bacon inhaling omnivore, to a vegetarian, to something call ‘a vegan.’
But never in my life had I done something that felt so right. It was so clear. There was absolutely no moral middle ground. This decision was final, irrevocable, unyielding, uncompromising and unchanging. From that very second, nearly 3 years ago, Cody and I have not knowingly eaten another animal product.
My life has transformed. The physical benefits are amazing, asthma and allergies cleared up, I have been sick once since becoming a Vegan and it was so mild it could barely be considered a cold, my migraines have almost disappeared, etc. And this summer I had a complete physical with blood work and stress tests and all of my results were not just normal, but stellar!
But honestly, none of that holds a candle to the mental and spiritual transformation. I am whole. I am finally whole. My heart is complete. To walk this path is to know what is right. To know what is true. I cry just thinking about how I used to be, how much was hidden from me, how much I kept hidden from myself. It wasn’t until I became Vegan that I realized how limited my love had previously been. Even if it is just subconscious, your heart always knows that you are a hypocrite when you are not vegan. You can spend your life saving puppies and kitties and horses, but if you are going home at night and eating a steak or a cheese pizza, your heart will never be whole. It cannot be whole because the pain would be too great.
As sentient beings we have feelings and love and gentleness, it is innate in our souls. Even when it is buried down deep the fundamental knowledge that you are devouring the flesh of a defenseless, frightened animal hurts the psyche profoundly and forces us to shut off a part of our brain and close down a portion of our heart. Denying this gentle, compassionate aspect of ourselves over and over and over again, every day, numbs our feelings and the best parts of ourselves. We don’t even know this is happening most of the time. We’ve been doing it since we were babies and we are conditioned to never think of it and never question it. But we know. We always know. Now, as a Vegan, my heart can know itself in its entirety, I am a hypocrite no longer. I am whole.
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