Last Sunday I lay in bed trying to enjoy a rare sleep-in.

My mind went to the solo podcast I needed to get out this week — though I didn’t yet know the topic.

What did I want to share with my vegan friends?

And actually, the answer that compelled me out of bed was what I wanted to share with the non-vegans in my life.

The people I love and yet, at times, struggle to understand.

This is what I want to share with you.

You might think my vegan lifestyle is a decision born of delusional idealism. Ignorant to the realities of life and death. Selfish in the choices it unintentionally mirrors back at you.

If you took the time, let ego and fear slip enough to embrace curiosity and courage, you would see my vegan lifestyle has very little to do with me.

It is about compassion.

It is about taking responsibility for the impact my choices have on individuals who do not want to die.

That same compartmentalisation you deploy to shower a cat or dog with love and attention while condemning a pig to die screaming and burning from the inside out in a gas chamber…

I must also turn to when I choose to still sit at a table with you and the bodies on your plate.

I don’t know what it costs you to look away.

If, on some level, you are aware of the suffering and choose to push it into the vault of:

“Too hard.”

“Too inconvenient.”

“Too confronting.”

It costs me.

Every time I hear you describe an individual by the name industry chose to market their flesh and erase their individuality.

Every time I see and smell the remains of what used to be life…

Yet almost certainly never actually got the chance to live.

It costs me.

Every time I keep my mouth closed.

Every time I don’t speak my heart.

Every time I choose a “normal” and “peaceful” meal shared with you, when actually I could not be more clear that there is not one thing normal or peaceful about what humans do to the individuals we exploit for food, fashion, entertainment and profit.

I hold my breaking heart in check in front of you so as not to cause you pain with my words.

I consider your conditioning.

The countless pressures pulling at you.

The stories you’ve inherited.

And I stop myself from adding to that burden.

While letting the burden build inside me.

The sadness.

The anger.

The grief.

The frustration that you don’t care enough to truly understand why I make the choices I do.

And yet…

This podcast isn’t really for you.

It’s for my vegan friends.

The ones carrying this weight too.

The ones sitting quietly at family dinners.

The ones biting their tongue.

The ones who see the individual where others see a product.

The ones who feel a flicker of heartbreak every time someone they love dismisses something that feels impossible to ignore.

I see you.

I know how exhausting it can be.

I know how lonely it can feel.

And I know how easy it is to start believing you’re the difficult one for caring.

You’re not.

Your compassion is not a weakness.

Your grief is not an overreaction.

Your inability to look away is not a flaw.

It is evidence that your heart remains open in a world that constantly asks us to close it.

So thank you.

Thank you for caring.

Thank you for trying.

Thank you for having the courage to live in alignment with what you know, even when it’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, or misunderstood.

Most of all, thank you for the lives you’ve already changed.

The animals you’ll never meet.

The conversations you’ll never know mattered.

The seeds you’ve planted simply by showing another way is possible.

You are not alone.

The world needs more people willing to feel this deeply, not fewer.

Thank you for being one of them.

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With love and gratitude plant friends.

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