My transition into a vegan lifestyle was slow and then all at once. It wasn’t long ago that I was telling people that I planned to be vegan ‘one day’ but right now I was just making little changes. That one day happened one day recently…
Multiple things happened at once and my eyes were opened. I exposed myself to the disturbing and dangerous way our society treats animals and the incredibly destructive impact this has on the planet. I made the necessary changes to my diet and am now eating far more delicious, fulfilling, nutritious and nourishing food. I am also constantly thinking about and researching where other things in my life come from so as to make a difference wherever possible, to not exploit and harm animals through my lifestyle and to reduce my negative impact on the planet.
I love finding quotes to inspire me and that resonate with me in all aspects of my life and so I’d thought I’d share some that I think best explain why I am vegan…
|| For Animals ||
“I was breastfeeding and I just remember having this moment, because I did drink milk during my pregnancy and I had this moment where I realised that cows don’t just produce milk all of the time. No, lactating cows produce milk for their young and I’d never thought about it until I was breastfeeding. Ah I just got goosebumps, seriously because the thought of someone taking my daughter’s milk away from her breaks my heart, like that’s my biggest fear. As a mother having that taken from your child and that’s exactly what I was doing to calves.” – Jinti Fell
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“The main defense of carnism is denial, which is expressed largely through invisibility. The ideology itself is invisible and so are its victims. For instance, 1.2 billion farmed animals are slaughtered globally every week. So in one week more farmed animals are killed than the total number of people killed in all wars throughout history. But how many of these animals have you seen? Where are they? Approximately 98 percent of the meat, eggs and dairy we eat comes from animals who were raised in factory farms. Windowless sheds in remote locations that are virtually impossible to obtain access to. Yet, although these animals are treated as commodities, they are in fact sentient, intelligent individuals with lives that matter to them.” – Melanie Joy
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“I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.” – The Dalai Lama
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|| For People ||
“I think that the oppression of animals is the gateway drug to oppressing humans because when a child is first told that the dog on his sofa is to be loved and cherished whereas the pig on his plate is to be abused, killed, dismembered, and eaten for food, that’s the first time that we instill the notion in a child’s mind that it is okay to discriminate between two living beings that basically look and seem alike, which is the basis of all forms of oppression, that you’re basically telling one living being that he can live and another that he must die.” – Alex Hershaft
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“Veganism has given me a higher level of awareness and spirituality […] If you’re violent to yourself by putting things into your body that violate its spirit, it will be difficult not to perpetuate that onto someone else. […] There is a connection between how you live and how you treat others. It starts with the individual.” – Dexter Scott King
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“It has been proven that there is enough food on earth to feed every last man, woman, and child. Yet, if this is the case, why do people around the world continue to starve? The answer to that question lies in large part with the production of animal-based foods, such as meat, dairy, and eggs. Even though there are enough plant-based foods grown to feed the entire human population, the majority of crops (including those grown in countries where people are starving) are fed to livestock for affluent nations, and since the amount of animal-based food produced by the farming industry is much less than the amount of plant food put into it, there is a “diminished return on the investment,” the food supply dwindles, and humans end up going hungry. […] Which of these two piles do you think would feed more people: the pile of meat that used to be [a cow’s] body, or the pile of food that went into creating and nourishing it? This is the stark equation that makes the animal farming industry so illogical and unsustainable.” – Michael Chatham
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|| For my Conscience and Spirit ||
“Every day we engage in a behaviour that requires us to distort our thoughts, numb our feelings and act against our core values, and which enables a global atrocity that can make even the most stoic of us weep in sorrow. […] When I stopped eating animals I had a paradigm shift. In other words, I didn’t see different things, I saw the same things differently. Beef stew seemed no different than golden retriever stew. And everywhere I turned I saw people putting the bodies of dead animals into their mouth as though nothing at all were wrong. So I became very curious as to how rational caring people, like myself, could just stop thinking and feeling.” – Melanie Joy
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“Simon Amstell: “It’s difficult I think to think of yourself as an empathetic being if you are eating another being. We’re in a place still where people say ‘oh it’s delicious’. Whatever the thing that once was walking around and having it’s own inner life was, to say it’s just delicious, for that to be acceptable is a really strange thing isn’t it?! So if you have any kind of feeling like we should be doing less harm to others then that should include non-human animals. The only reason it wouldn’t include that is if you regard humans as the most important thing on the planet and every thing else being there to serve the human being.”
Russell Brand: “[…]What I think is interesting about what you’re saying about veganism now is that you’re saying that there’s a place that you reach in yourself spiritually where eating animals would become unacceptable to you along with other forms of cruelty, alongside other forms of ignorance.”
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“Going plant-based is one of the best things you can do for your health and the wellness of animals everywhere, but you probably already knew that, right? You may already know that eating a plant-based diet is healthy, and that it’s better for the environment. Do you know some direct, specific benefits you may experience within the first week of eating a plant-based diet? [..] Eating in a way that promotes life naturally makes you happier. You’ll have a lighter outlook on life and just generally feel happier all the way around. This is a change many people don’t expect, yet one I hear the most about from everyone who takes on the challenge.” – Heather McClees
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|| For my Health ||
“A vegetarian diet is associated with many health benefits because of its higher content of fiber, folic acid, vitamins C and E, potassium, magnesium, and many phytochemicals and a fat content that is more unsaturated. Compared with other vegetarian diets, vegan diets tend to contain less saturated fat and cholesterol and more dietary fiber. Vegans tend to be thinner, have lower serum cholesterol, and lower blood pressure, reducing their risk of heart disease.” – Winston J Craig
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“Number one [of the three most surprising health benefits I’ve experienced] is potentially the most exciting to me because it’s just been the most beneficial I believe and that is increased life vitality. So I just have more energy, I’m more excited about life, I’m setting goals and actively working to trying to achieve them. I’m moving my body every single day, I have better mental clarity, I’m just more excited and more enthused and energized by life and I really do think that is directly related to changing my diet. I just think that now I’m no longer putting all this crap in, my body has more energy to experience life instead of using it’s time to just deal with all this junk.” – Jinti Fell
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“You might even want to veer even closer to a plant-based diet to stave off [menstrual] pains. According to Gaither, “Some small studies have looked at implementing vegan or plant-based diets and have noted that those women employing these diet changes experienced decreased volume of menstrual flow and the pain that goes along with it. […] And when you’re avoiding animal fats, don’t forget about dairy. According to Parikh, “Dairy products contain arachadonic acid, which is a substance in your body that is converted into prostaglandins.” And as you know by now, prostaglandins are a big no-no if you don’t want pain during your period.” – Emily Monaco
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|| For the Planet ||
“‘Agriculture is estimated to be the direct driver for around 80% of deforestation worldwide.’ […] The truth is, we’re not just destroying the forests in virtue of existing and taking up space for living, we’re destroying them due to specific, non-necessary habits found in the normalized Western diet and lifestyle. […] “A new report from FAO says livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.” As if animal agriculture’s affects on the planet’s forests wasn’t harsh enough, the secondary and tertiary effects of its degradation can be felt not just by our plant life, but in the air we breathe and the water we drink.[…] Since well-planned vegan lifestyles are regarded as appropriate for all stages of the life-cycle […] we can say with some certainty that living without excessive reliance on animal agriculture is well within our grasp. Living without Earth’s life-sustaining forests, however, is much less possible.” – Ariel Garlow
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Those are a few of the benefits I have discovered so far, thanks to a decision I am so happy to have made inspired by so many lovely people. A big thanks to all the people around the world spreading information and articulating it so much better than I could! Make sure to check out their articles and videos and share the love. Thanks so much for reading and have a beautiful day!
100 BEADED Flowers, Trinkets and Charms by Amanda Brooke and Murr-Hinson. I haven’t actually read any of it I just look at the pictures which are very clear. Here are some of the others things I have been using – A pack of 8 different colored beads, some Trimits beading wire and a beading rug (which I haven’t got any pictures of but is basically an A4 piece of felt to stop the beads rolling every where).
I also made another ring; that one was yellow with a blue jewel but that was too small for my fingers so I gave it to plumblepie – she lost it!
Thanks for reading,
We carefully managed to nudge it on to a car bingo card and we took it over to the bushes but just as we were putting it down it flew onto my leg and then off into the sky, it was so big we could see it for a least a minute flying away. I just researched it and discovered it was a Southern Hawker Dragonfly.
Home-ed Heads! 