One year down....A lifetime to go.

Spinach and strawberry salad with sweet onion dressing(not shown)

It's May and that means many things for this family. For one, the weather will be nice from here on out until about Halloween (if we're lucky). Two, there is a wedding just around the corner, and in a few weeks we will be getting ready to pack for another trip to Florida! But this May is special because it makes one year of living a vegan life for us (Damien doesn't spend 100% of his time with me, and he doesn't have the option of a meatless life where he goes, and as hard as it is, it is out of my control).  By no means have we been perfect vegans, but we are pretty damn good.  This was a huge decision that I never thought I would make, or would have seen myself or family doing. To be honest, before becoming enlightened, I never gave a second thought to where any of my food came from. I didn't have a care in the world as to what I was eating or feeding the family. It even got dangerous at one point when Amar'e was 5 months old, she got salmonella poisoning. Ok, I've been in some scary situations before, but having my 5 month old suffer through this awful sickness was the worst thing I've been through. We were shocked that she had salmonella because she was exclusively breastfed and had not started solids yet. After deep thought, we have a couple of suspicions of how she may have got this. One, we ate ground chicken every single night and sometimes the dogs would get a hold of the packaging and take it away and eat what was left. (yuck!!) It is possible some got on to the floor where Amar'e could have come in contact with it. Second, we found out much later that there was a salomnella tainted dog food that had made people sick when coming into contact with it. It's possible the dog could have licked her hands, face, arms, and she may of contracted it that way. Either way, this was a huge eye opener for us that some foods can be dangerous, even though nothing changed for about 7 months after that. Once the inspiration came to make a huge lifestyle change, it all happened pretty quickly. We didn't throw away any food in order not to be wasteful. We ate what was left in the cupboards and fridge and then proceeded to change our grocery list for the next shopping trip. We haven't looked back since. The hardest part was giving up cheese. I will admit I've had cheese on a few occasions in the past year, and have been craving it during this pregnancy, but I'm doing my best to avoid breaking down. It is working so far.

I've also switched all of my beauty products over to products that contain no animal ingredients and that don't test on animals. Animal testing is horrendous! Don't take my word for it, watch the videos yourself. I refuse to have some innocent animal be tortured because I need to wash my hair or skin. There are other ways to test products and I'm more than willing to seek out products that don't test on animals. I've been extremely successful so far. I also feel much better getting ready in the morning knowing that me doing so didn't hurt anything. I am now in the process of finding products for Damien and Andrew to use that are cruelty free.  I plan on sharing what products I use in another post soon.

Going vegan has changed my life in many ways. I am now conscious about every move we make from the food we eat, to the second hand clothes we get, to the amount of waste we create. It is more like a vegan and conscious life for us. I've seen horrible things in the course of studying where food comes from and how it's made, and the effects it has on our planet. The same goes for beauty products. In some case these things have caused me to have a total breakdown. I've been extremely sensitive to animal abuse since I was a young child, but like most people I had no idea what the animals went through to be my food, or produce the milk I drank until I looked for the information myself.  Seeing what I've seen is enough for me to never go back down that path. If I can do it, anyone can.

I've taken my vegan conscious life one step further into animal activism. For me, becoming an animal activist made sense. I'm not the type of activist that is going to lecture you if you aren't vegan. I'm more like the email writing, educating, "let me inform you" type.  After all, it was the information and stuff  I discovered that changed me. And like I said, if I can change ANYONE can!

I will leave you with one last thought. This quote says it all:

"I don't want you to think like me, I just want you to think"-Anonymous

P.S.-I would like to take this opportunity to thank a dear friend of mine who has helped me find the information I needed to make the decisions that I've made for myself and my family....so a big THANK YOU Sarah.....and Happy Birthday!!! :)

The Undying Desire To Know More, And Being Informed.

  "If you wanna make the world a better place, you gotta look at yourself and make a change."
 -Micheal Jackson.

This is something I've been wanting to write about for some time now. Within the last six months my family has undergone some extreme changes and transformations. This started by simply watching an episode of Jane Valez-Mitchell (I no longer do this because we got rid of cable). She was reporting on an animal abuse case against  McDonald's. I remember being totally shocked and disgusted by what I saw. Then it hit me really hard, seriously, I mean hard. I've been living so blindly for all of my existence. How is it that I was so unaware of the world that I lived in? Something inside me snapped and I haven't been the same person since. I find myself having this undying desire to know more, and more about everything around me, especially the food we eat. This is huge for me. I view the food a very intimate part of who I am. I also attribute the reason I was so very sheltered, to living in the same place I grew up, and not being exposed.  It is pretty much like only reading one page of a book, and re-reading it, and re-reading it. Kind of like being stuck in time. I'm surrounded by the same people, the same things, same routine, nothing much changes when you live in a small isolated town . Don't get me wrong, we live in a very beautiful part of the country, but you can't learn much about the world here.

Once I saw Jane's report, I immediately spoke with Andrew about what I saw. He is always my base line go to for things like this. I am an emotional, hysterical, passionate creature at times, and have a hard time getting past the initial emotional shock of things, and he helps me through this every time! He also knows a little bit about everything and gave me some info he picked up on the subject. I took off running with it and started to research everything about factory farming, food, and food related diseases. I seriously couldn't get enough. Along the way, we got Netflix and I was having a great time watching tons of food documentaries. Sometimes I would absorb so much information at once, and it was overwhelming at times. I started to change the food I purchased for my family. I started to change the way we ate. We changed the way our family viewed meals and mealtime. I was on the path of becoming informed and enlightened. Some people are so unaware as to where their food comes from, and some people don't care to know (which is fine). We went from being mid-less carnivores, eating whatever was the cheapest foods to buy, to vegans, mostly organic, mindful eaters. Total 360!

Some great food/animal documentaries to check out are:

Ingredients
Food, Inc. 
Fat, Sick, and nearly dead
A River Of Waste
Fed Up!
Frankensteer (On Netflix)
TED Talks: Chew On This (On Netflix)
Food Fight
The Gerson Miracle
Food Matters
Forks over knives

(All of these titles are on Netflix, but I wanted to link them up so you could see what they looked like)

I think that everyone should know where their food is coming from. It is extremely important. "It is health that is true wealth, not pieces of silver and gold"-Ghandi

This awareness also got me thinking about our carbon footprint. As I explored the world of our "food", it led to discovering about our wasteful ways as Americans, or as humans in general and about living in a convenient society. This opened up another undying desire to know and change. We have already transformed our eating habits, now we were ready to take on our wasteful ways. I hate to admit it, but I use to hate doing dishes, so I would buy Solo cups, paper plate, plastic ware, etc. Little did I know I was contributing to the planet's pollution problem. But now that I'm informed, I have changed all of this. We try to reuse everything we can. We recycle everything (I'm pretty sure the recycling people dread our house on recycle day) I feel that knowing and changing is the responsible thing to do. Some documentaries that I found helped me make this change of mind are:

Plastic planet
No Impact Man
The End Of Suburbia

We have also stepped out of the way of consumerism and are using what we have and trying to avoid buying anything new. We have been trying to live with less these days. I've been thrifting for things that we need and this as been an awesome experience. We no longer use plastic bags (plastic is toxic) from the store, we always bring our own. I have also become aware of the toxins in the world around us (plastic, everyday household cleaners). I will save this for another post. I am just shocked and moved enough to change the way we live in efforts to help the world be a better place, and us to be a healthier family. As Ghandi says" You must be the change you want to see in the world." We try to live this everyday.

What has inspired you? What has moved you? Please share!

♥