"I am awake"

One of my fellow MSVA vegan lifestyle coaches, Adrienne Borgersen, recently shared this Facebook post from her friend, singer-songwriter Marilyn Carino. This is a powerful testimonial from a brand-new vegan, so I really wanted to share it with you.

OK. So let's keep in mind that I'm a bratty individualist who reads a lot and likes to stay thin. So for years and years I followed what I read to be the way to do that and wouldn't change it because it worked. I exercise (yoga, swimming) and eat very low fat foods and ZERO CARBS. I felt pretty good and stayed thin. Then I started to feel pain in my gut which recently got so severe I was hospitalized for three days, turns out I have diverticulosis which hurts like a mutha and which will be a chronic condition I will always be in danger of having flare up into an intestinal infection that will send me back to the hospital (diverticulitis).

Why did I get this, you ask? Because my apparently sensible diet of meat, veggies, low-fat Greek yogurt, fruit smoothies and ZERO CARBS is ruining my colon, my liver, and is also giving me bone loss. I'm not on any meds now except for Vitamin D supplements.

What's my point?

I read some more, different stuff that wasn't as easy to find, mostly recommended to me by my dear friends Beth Lockwood and Adrienne Borgersen, whose posts here about veganism I regularly tarred with my bratty brush as being pompous and extreme. Hey, I'm thin, that's all that matters. But now I understand that I was brainwashed by propaganda even someone like me couldn't see for what it was until I got sick. The food industry is vastly powerful. It needs to sell us its poisonous wares to make profit and send us to doctors who will prescribe expensive chemicals to temporarily alleviate the effects of the useless crap they push. And convince us that torturing and killing animals and destroying the planet in order to do so is, well, no biggie.

I am awake. I've been eating vegan for two weeks and I'm not going back. I can't un-learn what I've learned and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a victim of that corrupt, lying system that is ruining people's health and our beautiful world.

I'm changing because it's good for me and it's the right thing to do. All of you who scoff and say mmmm bacon are blind. This is not extreme, that's what they want you to think. Wake up, for your own sakes. Peace.

Huge thanks and congratulations to Marilyn for speaking her truth, and to Adrienne for sharing it!