Why Someone Might Go Vegan

I’m often asked why someone might choose to go vegan. So, above, I’m sharing a diary entry I wrote as a little girl (misspellings included).

In this childhood diary entry, I share that I had to help kill our bunnies. However, I wasn’t buying the reason we had to kill them.

Especially since my dad admitted that he had to first drink alcohol to gather the courage to kill.

As a child, I had to help kill and cut up a lot of animals. I protested in a variety of ways. Verbally. Logically. Emotionally.

Yet, as a child, I didn’t know if survival was possible without killing and eating animals.

I just knew, intellectually and emotionally, that I didn’t like harming and eating my animals. Or the neighbor’s animals. Or wildlife.

I didn’t like beating fish to death.

I was especially horrified when I had to help kill sheep.

The bullets didn’t immediately kill or even down the gentle sheep we walked home from our neighbor’s field. Clean holes in their heads, looking into our eyes, they cried for mercy.

Until my dad made me help pick them up, hang them on the big hook dangling from the rafters, and hold their living bodies as we slit their throats.

Warm blood seeped down their thick fleece, dripping onto my face, splattering my shirt, and puddling to the floor. This killing felt evil.

And it would automatically be considered evil if I were killing and cutting up cats and dogs. Any pet I desired. Intentionally. For their taste. Believing I had to fill my body with them.

As a child, I thought there must be a better way to exist.

I could see that animals had brains, hearts, and feelings. And I wasn't sure that I had the right to use or take another's life.

I thought if we were smart enough to figure out how to make another’s dead body taste good, we should be smart enough to survive off the vast variety of plants in this world.

Then, ironically, while in my 20s, my surgeon (and additional doctors) told me that I must stop eating animals and their fluids.

By then, I was addicted to the fatty taste of animals, so it took me a while to finally follow my doctor’s orders. And that is one of my greatest regrets.

Science has since helped me understand how animals and their fluids harmed my body. Science has helped me understand how I easily get protein and how I easily get calcium without killing.

So I wish I had initially jumped in with both feet. I wish I had gone vegan cold turkey.

I could have viewed the first few weeks as a healthy boot camp. I could have just made myself eat plant-based vegan food during that time (even though it wasn’t what my body craved YET).

That act would have helped my body to go through withdrawals more quickly from the food that was harming me, from the food that I was addicted to at that time—animals and their fluids.

That act would have helped my body more quickly become addicted to what I was supposed to be eating—plant-based vegan food.

Needless to say, I’m so grateful I didn’t wait any longer to go on this journey. I’m so grateful I can finally live my innate values.