Personal Vegan Transformations
I love hearing other people’s stories of how they became vegan.
They are all different.
Indeed, the variety of ways people go vegan suggest that there is no single most effective method of helping omnivores reach the point where they have the a-ha moment, everything clicks, and they choose to go vegan.
Here’s a story from a new blog called The Vegan Revolution:
“I was on the internet and looked up vegetarianism. I watched Meet Your Meat [click here to watch] 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 my fiancé that I was a vegetarian and I was never going back to eating meat. He was shocked by 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 ‘We can still eat eggs and cheese, right?’ I paused, confused. ‘I’m sure we can, that 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. In the span of one hour I had gone from being a bacon inhaling omnivore, to a vegetarian, to something call ‘a vegan.’”
Her story comes from this post, My Beginning…
What was your beginning?
I went vegan gradually. I stopped eating red meat. A while later I stopped eating chicken. Then fish, then milk and eggs. At first it was for health reasons. Then it became environmental and animal reasons.
I first approached the issue of our exploitation of animals from a rather conservative perspective. I was given a pamphlet by a representative from PETA documenting processes of slaughter; I was also introduced to the issue by several friends, and I felt it necessary to defend the consumption of meat, for example, by appealing to our species’ “superiority” (e.g., our reason, or our capacity to act morally). What I found as I attempted this defense was a counter-punch of examples of cruelty, animals in abject misery, etc. I couldn’t get beyond the belief that while human beings are “superior” to non-human animals, our treatment of these animals was not an expression of this superiority: an individual acting morally, for example, would never approve of processes that slaughter conscious animals. So, confronted with this reality I had no other option but to go vegetarian.
After four years of being a vegetarian I was challenged by the illogic of my belief in the moral relevancy of those traits I believed made humans superior, which forced me to re-evaluate my position on the subject. What occurred was a shift away from taking the processes as my point of contention to the moral validity of animal exploitation itself. I read, I argued, I debated it all, but I couldn’t deny my complicity and implicit approval of this unjust system.Also, I was ignorant-by-choice (e.g., I didn’t make the connection between pregnancy and the production of milk). Veganism was the logical ethical conclusion; a step I took in September 2006.
Alex’s last blog post..I can haz bread?
I went vegetarian at age 6 when I figured out meat came from dead animals. My mother welcomed the change for health reasons and my whole family made the switch together (my mom, my sister, and me). We learned more about animal rights and vegetarianism (mostly from books and magazines) and I decided I wanted to go vegan when I was 13. But I only did it for a year.
I felt so lonely and isolated that I finally went back to more mainstream lacto-ovo vegetarianism. That’s one reason why I think vegan networks are essential. You need to find other vegans to learn from. I’ve heard other people say this too, that all the people who slide back into vegetarianism or omnivorism from veganism are the ones who didn’t have vegan friends. A support network is crucial.
Eventually I went vegan again at age 31. That was a year ago. This time it’s for good. Things have changed. It’s so much easier now-a-days. And even if you live in the middle of nowhere, if you have access to the web you can find other vegans to learn from. So vegan living is just so much easier now and there’s no way I’ll go back to eating dairy and eggs. My conscience is cleaner and my health is improved too.
I read a book on how animals are killed for the meat we eat and the very night I finished it I stopped eating all meat except seafood. That was 16 years ago. Three years ago I quit seafood because all those years I felt bad for being compassionate with only some animals and not all of them. Last year, researching about eggs and dairy and finding out how cruel that industry is, my husband and I became vegans. I never felt so good in my life. It’s the best thing. We love eating good food so we are always preparing together amazing vegan dishes at home. I now feel like I am really doing my part for a better world. As a result, my husband and I became more aware of the environment as well and our habits with food not wasted, shopping, recycling etc. is better and better. I feel better inside and outside, physically and emotionally. And I’ve never been so healthy- my doctor said!
Andrea N.’s last blog post..O que os veganos comem?
Andrea, that’s a great story. Do you remember the name of the book? Was it Slaughterhouse or The Jungle? Or maybe something else?