simple days with bonnie rae

This weekend I watched another food documentary. My close friends and family will tell you that I am pretty easily pulled into movements.

Sign your petition? Yes please! Increase my monthly donation to Farm Sanctuary? Absolutely. Join the Million Women March on DC? Hell yes.

Watch a documentary and completely change your outlook on life? YES PLEASE.

I’ve talked a little bit on my blog about being a plant based vegan but I don’t think I’ve ever shared the story of why.

It was 2011, I was standing at a gas station with sister and a chicken truck drove by. Packed with small, terrified chickens. They were just babies and they seemed to know they were very unsafe.

“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they’re the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” Isaac Bashevis Singer

I looked at sister and I broke down. I wept in my car and declared that I would never eat an animal again.

I have always loved animals. We all do, don’t we? I meet so many people who call themselves animal lovers and yet they eat them or they eat the products animals produce.

I used to be one of them. I would weep at the site of roadkill and then I would eat ribs for dinner. There was a disconnect between what my heart knew and what society told me I should be eating.

I started to explore. I started to question authority and ask why I was “supposed” to eat meat. And do you know what I found? That I wasn’t.

I found that eating meat and dairy are linked to cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. I found that animals are tortured, force fed, raped, and murdered. I watched Food Inc. and Vegucated.  I wept for weeks.

I learned that there is such a massive disconnect between how we feel about animals and how we treat them.I learned that there is a lot of money and bad business associated with meat and dairy.

I learned that being a vegetarian or vegan will make some people be mean to you. I don’t blame them for this, I blame society and big agriculture. They’ve made you think that you need them to survive and that only loser hippies eat plants.

I am easily pulled into movements I align with and I am so thankful. Veganism lends well to minimalism and vice versa. When you take time to learn about the practices behind something, when you slow down enough to question the world, you change your life.

It’s not easy knowing this much. It’s not easy questioning where my food comes from, who made my clothes, or why we all keep buying so much stuff, but I would rather know. I don’t want to walk through life not knowing, not fully living.

If you want to be more powerful in your life, educate yourself. Take a step back and examine the choices you are making. Are they the right ones for you?

Each step you take toward knowing is a step up the mountain. Each movement or change builds on the others getting you closer to the top.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to hang out at the bottom of the mountain. I want to be at the top knowing that the path I made will help guide others on their way up. 

More knowing, more living.

More soon,

Bonnie Rae xx