Being Vegan: Teach your children well

Teach your children well, their father’s (and mother’s) hell, did slowly go by…

By way of an apology to my children.
There are no words to express my sorrow toward all earthlings.

This article is made possible by the support of Veet’s Vegan Cooking School

Eve Jeffery

I wasn’t always a vegan.

I am happy to admit I was wrong.

Not many vegans have been a vegan all their life. Mind you, I have been speaking to some families who have happy healthy teenage children who have never consumed animal products – but, for the majority of us, being a vegan is something we have come to later in life.

Like ex-smokers or ex-alcoholics, ex-carnivores can be a little bit ‘militant’ when it comes to their food choices because we’ve seen the light, or maybe, we’ve seen too much of the dark.

I did what I thought was right. I was wrong.

I have spoken to other vegans, people who became vegan, and there is something we all have in common. There is part of us that can’t understand why we didn’t do this sooner, why we didn’t see what we were doing to animals, didn’t see the pain and torture we were inflicting on other earthlings, before.

I personally think the answer is simple, we are humans! And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, we just are.

The only other thing I can equate it to, is being in love with a total jerk. How many of us have been so absolutely absorbed and immensely, passionately in love with someone, only to wonder years later how we could have possibly even looked twice at that person? I look back now and wonder what part of me convinced the rest of me it was ok to have sovereignty over the lives, and deaths, of others.

That’s what being a vegan is like for me.

Once I actually stopped, and thought about what it was that I was doing – which was causing suffering and death, and obliterating the rights of other earthlings – my own past actions horrified me.

We hated it when Hitler did it. We condemn slavery of other humans. We even feel very superior when other humans consume dogs, yet we, on a daily basis, cause immeasurable trauma to other earthlings.

We hated it when Hitler did it. We condemn slavery of other humans. We even feel very superior when other humans consume dogs, yet we, on a daily basis, cause immeasurable trauma to other earthlings.

When you think about it, who actually has it in them to kill and eat another live being? I always used to say that if I had to kill my own food, I’d be a vegetarian – why did it take so many years for me to take that extra step?

Yet, for the first 50 years of my life that’s exactly what I did because that was my ‘culture’ – it was what I brought up with, it was what generations upon generations of my family had done and so we just thought it was right.

I thought it was right.

I was wrong.

This is how I try to turn the tide – not by being judgemental, but by offering positive feedback.

But it wasn’t all that long ago in history that we thought slavery was okay. It wasn’t all that long ago that we thought that women were in some way less than men – even many women thought that! It was part of the indoctrination. Eating meat and consuming animal products is also part of the indoctrination that many of us have been influenced by since birth. Since pre-birth.

Even though I was an omnivore, I always wanted my children to be aware of what they were eating, so when we’d go shopping I’d hang my head over the meat freezer and ask them: ’What do you want? Dead pig, dead cow, dead chicken, dead sheep or dead fish?’

One of my children used to think everything was chicken. One day she said to me, ‘What sort of chicken is this mum?’ I said to her, ‘It’s not chicken, it’s pork’.

‘But what sort of chicken is it?’ said she.

‘It’s not a chicken love, it’s a pig.’ said I.

‘But what’s sort of chicken is a pig?

The conversation went along. She couldn’t understand that everything wasn’t chicken. The disconnect from what she saw in the paddock, to the shop, to her plate was too vast for her to get. So in the end I said ‘It’s Babe! You know, B-a-a-a-a-a-a-abe! It’s a dead pig.’ The look on her face was one of complete horror.

By the time she was eight she had become vegetarian. ‘I don’t want to eat dead things any more.’

I have to admit, I certainly wasn’t any good at vegetarian cooking. To be honest, I just didn’t value her choices and ideals enough to be a better mother. I am ashamed to say I added meaty broths to her meals to make sure she got enough protein! I literally had no idea.

Plain ignorant.

Within five or six years she was eating meat again. But she soon went back to being a vegetarian, and it wasn’t too much longer after that that she became a vegan.

It wasn’t long after that that my other daughter became vegan and then it just seemed a natural transition for me.

Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, though they are with you yet they belong not to you. – Kahlil Gibran

They woke me.

They – woke – me.

‘…they come through you, they are not from you, though they are with you, they belong not to you.’ (Kahlil Gibran).

So where did I go from there?

I got preachy. Yes, I’m guilty, I’m guilty as sin. I’m guilty AF! I did it and I can’t take it back. It was me who caused, not only my own habits (we grow up and become adults – there comes a point where you can’t blame your parents any more), but I also inflicted eating death upon my children and I can’t take that back. Ever. Never ever.

I am preachy, but not judgey. it took me 50 years to work out what my kids worked out in less than 20, no thanks to me. I am not judgey because I know it’s hard to break that life-long indoctrination, so, you eat whatever you want to eat. I hope you choose plants, I hope you don’t feel as bad as I did when I worked out what I had been doing.

I feel I need to make up for that. I feel I need to turn the tide – the tide of sorrow and earthling blood. That’s why I feel compelled to ‘preach the good word’, the only word.

Earthling.

To my children – I am sorry. I am so, so, sorry. I am sorry I didn’t love and respect you more.

I am guilty, but I’m not guilty of being an annoying vegan. I’m guilty of 50 years of being asleep, of not looking after my fellow earthlings. I’m guilty of behaving like an entitled dictator over the lives of what I saw as lesser things.

They are not lesser beings. We are all earthlings under the sun, we are all created equal, and I have to take responsibility for my past actions.

So do you.

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