Once you start looking, the body gives you all kinds of information. Your intuition will increase. You'll get flashes of information (a quick thought or image that disappears) that might seem way out, but pay attention. Sometimes we can't believe some things the body tells us about ourselves. Sometimes we can, as when we get a strong feeling of not liking or trusting a person. Trust that. In time, something will surface in that person or situation to explain why. But you have to remain alert. The body talks to us all the time through heart palpitations, hunger, binges, cravings, constipation, sneezes, nausea, etc. When these things happen, just ask, “Okay, what brought that on?” Sometimes it's obvious: it's your period (hormones dropped); someone walked by wearing some expensive chemical (perfume) that your body doesn't like; you ate that deep fried food; you bit into some rancid nuts, etc.
Our bodies are amazing computers. They record data and give them back to us. We just have to know how to look for them. I first learned about some of this stuff from my own body: when I was sick; when I became a vegetarian (my blood pressure dropped ten points); when I stopped smoking (I could get out of bed instantly instead of sitting on the side for ten minutes); when I was a member of Black Women's Self Help, where we looked at our cervixes and monitored our mucus to determine when we were fertile; when I read books such as Alive to the Universe and Gabriel Cousens's works on diet and health; and when I have watched my own intuition. It's not hard; it's just that nobody has ever told you about it. You haven't shared your own experiences because you doubted yourself. Now you know you're not crazy. Now you know some things to look for. Go for it!
In my younger days, I was a die-hard pork fan. I loved my pork chops with the fat fried to a golden brown crisp. I hated the smell of chitlins stinking up the house, but loved them after vinegar and seasonings transformed them into a Christmastime delicacy. However, ham hocks were my absolute favorite. The three textures—the stringy reddish meat, the soft melt-in-your-mouth fat, and the slightly tough skins—were just the prize in a pot of greens or black-eyed peas with okra and corn on the cob.
Today at age fifty-four, I sometimes ponder how in the universe I managed to transform myself from lover of the hog to spiritual vegan—one who does not want to support the killing of animals by wearing clothes, shoes, and accessories made from them.
Looking back, I can see that my decision to eschew eating meat was incidental. Later, I made a conscious decision not to eat animals or the products of their death, such as dairy products, or utilize bags, shoes, or clothing made from their bodies. That decision made by chance put me on a path to a twenty-five-year journey that has informed so much of who I am today as a U.S.-born African woman. That initial step evolved into a transforming force in my life and has led me to be exceptionally health-conscious (some would say “obsessive”), intuitive, environmentally and spiritually aware, and a crystal lover (I definitely own the “obsessive” label here). The genesis of this journey is in the culture in which I grew up.
I was raised in a South Florida Bahamian-American family. Every Friday, we deep fried snapper, serving the crispy fish with the Bahamian staple—pigeon peas and rice—along with sautéed okra or cabbage. On Saturday nights, we always ate broiled steak. On Sunday mornings, we had big bowls of boiled or stewed grouper, a meaty fish, with grits—another Bahamian standard. For Sunday dinner, Mama always cooked a ham in addition to whatever other meat she'd have, such as turkey wings or chicken, fried or stewed. A pot of greens was simmering on the stove every Sunday, chock-full of those luscious ham hocks. Fried bacon seasoned the string beans and squash and the rice, whether it was cooked together with sweet peas or pigeon peas or tomatoes (another staple, this is called “dirty rice”). In all we cooked, meat was central to the seasoning, not to mention on the menu. Lots of meat on the table—mostly pork—meant you were living good, or “high off the hog.”
Today, I realize that with so much of that hog in my diet, it was no wonder that sometime in my late teens I started having an unexplained “sickness to my stomach.” It was a sort of uneasiness or queasiness—not quite nausea, but a slightly ill and uncomfortable feeling. Through trial and error, I noticed that if I drank hot beverages or ate hot soups or noodles, the discomfort went away. Knowing today what I do about how hogs are raised in filth, and because of some health issues that developed later, I suspect that I was suffering from a serious case of parasite infestation even then. The discomfort I felt all the time was so bad that I constantly drank coffee from those fat 16-ounce Styrofoam cups popular in the 1980s. (I know now that the strong acid in the coffee and the Styrofoam no doubt reacted to create quite an unhealthy chemical cocktail that only contributed to the problem.)
By that time, I'd gone away to the University of Florida in Gainesville to study journalism. I became involved with the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), a radical group that published a newspaper and harassed the governor of Florida about the false imprisonment of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, two Black men railroaded for killing a white gas station attendant—a murder they didn't commit.
During my travels across the country, I met people whose serious politics also included food. One brother from one of the Party mass committees in Atlanta pulled out his copy of the Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad's pamphlet, “How to Eat to Live,” to explain to me how horrible meat was; how rotten the dead flesh is and how the butchers used dye and lighting to make it look healthy; how the pig was the filthiest creature on earth because it ate garbage, excrement, and everything else; and it was full of parasites to boot (I hadn't a clue about parasites at the time). I'd half glance at the pictures in the pamphlet, but then say, “Uh-huh. I love pork too much to give up meat.” And I'd laugh, thinking to myself, “I'll never quit eating meat. At least not pork.”
But then one day, years later, after I'd gained more weight than I wanted, I fasted for three weeks. I'd heard Dick Gregory speak at the University of Florida and had started the one-day fasting as he suggested. I'd learned that fasting was a quick way to lose weight. I had worked my way up to a two-week fast trying to lose weight, and had done it enough to go on juice for three weeks.
After fasting for that long, you gradually work your way back to eating solid food—first with fruit, then vegetables, then soups and soft foods. Later, you add fish and chicken and then, last, you eat the hard-to-digest meat. Well, after working myself up to eating a piece of steak, I got a punch in the stomach. The sick feeling that I hadn't noticed the previous four weeks came back so suddenly and strongly that it was obvious the meat had something to do with my queasy feeling. To test it out, I went off the pork, beef, and chicken. I noticed I didn't have that feeling. I ate beef and pork and noticed that I got the feeling again. I didn't get the feeling with chicken. Oh boy! What a blow! My whole world seemed to change. I weighed my options. I could continue to be sick, or I could give up the meat I loved so dearly and enjoy a calm stomach.
I'd had an experience of how good it felt to be free of that feeling and that, thankfully, overruled any desire to cling to meat. Quitting meat was the beginning of sensing the wonder of my body. One week after giving up meat, I went to the doctor for an already-scheduled checkup and noticed that my blood pressure, normally around 120/90, had dropped to about 110/80. I was stunned. Could not eating meat do that?
A more dramatic change in my body happened when I quit smoking. I'd started smoking in 1972 when I went to the University of Florida at seventeen years old. I worked myself up to a pack a week. As the editor of the Party's newspaper, I worked long hours, and smoked and drank coffee and beer to handle them. By 1981, I was smoking two packs of Salems each day. Totally stressed out, my 5′6″ body weighed 215 pounds. I was twenty-seven. After I became tired of coughing and having mucus dripping into my throat at night, I freed myself from my enslavement to the cancer sticks. I quit on a Sunday, and threw the remaining two cigarettes in my pack of Salems out rather than smoke them.
Then, a second surprise entered my life. The next Monday morning, after the alarm clock went off for me to get ready for work, I was up and out of the bed before I realized something profound. I didn't have to sit on the side of the bed for ten minutes with my head cradled in both hands while I “got myself together.” When I realized this, I had to ask myself a serious question: Had cigarettes really been stealing that much energy from me, and I didn't even know it? As the days of abstinence increased, and my energy grew, I became convinced of this sad truth.
Though I had conviction and great experiences to support quitting for good, I also decided to cleanse my blood of the nicotine to make sure I didn't go back to smoking. (I'd quit two years before for a year after seeing a smoker's lung on display. Amazingly, I started again.)
As part of my new health consciousness I started reading Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss. I read that burdock root was a rapid blood purifier. I made the mistake of buying the tea instead of the capsules and had to mask the horrible taste by mixing in peppermint tea. It worked. Then, in order to sustain my freedom from nicotine poisoning, I knew I had to quit beer and coffee at the same time. I couldn't drink coffee or beer without wanting a cigarette. I got those out of my system and then started drinking teas and juices. In practically one fell swoop, a matter of a week or so, I rid myself of all my bad dietary habits—meat, coffee, beer, and cigarettes.
I was on a roll then. I started shopping at a health food store that had opened in Hallandale, Florida, where I lived, and learned about brown rice, fertilized eggs, and “exotic” vegetables. Soon, I cut from my diet almost everything all at once: milk, sugar, butter, eggs, cheese, and chicken. I kept eating seafood because it was so much of my Bahamian culture that I couldn't give it up. I promised myself I'd do it in a year. But because I'd made too drastic a move at one time, I found it difficult to eat anything such as pancakes (I didn't know anything about egg substitutes then). So I swung back toward the middle and allowed myself to eat cheese, and I compromised and started using brown sugar and honey. That was 1981.
With my new diet and exercise, I lost fifty pounds. I became a fanatically charged-up “health addict,” which is what we were called then. Hallandale had a wonderful little vegetarian restaurant that I loved eating at, enjoying my new lifestyle. My male friend Bruce, who'd helped me jog and lose weight, ate health food too, but continued to eat meat. Whenever we ate out at the restaurant, we were always the only two Black people there.
I felt better than I ever had in my thirty years. My body was lean; my head clear. This transformation was also shortly after I suffered great grief and disappointment in the APSP. I was disillusioned because of a betrayal by the chairman and felt that I'd wasted the best years of my life. Getting myself back in shape, physically, emotionally, and mentally enabled me to find my center.
When I moved to Washington, D.C., in 1982 and later to Los Angeles, Allentown, Pa., and Miami, I discovered that the vegetarian lifestyle became much richer with curries, veggie pad thai, and udon noodles. I could go to an Italian restaurant and get an order of sautéed spinach, one of sautéed mushrooms, and garlic pasta and bread. I was thrilled when I discovered Indian food, and of course, Thai and Korean and Japanese cuisine, where I could eat tofu and sea vegetables or fermented veggies, vegetarian sushi, and other interesting foods. Food and health had now become an adventure.
For thirteen years I continued to eat seafood and cheese, telling myself “next year.” During the years I lived in Washington, D.C., I joined feminist causes and enjoyed an even greater array of health-food restaurants, such as the now-defunct Food for Thought in Dupont Circle, and Naturally Yours on P Street. Memories of the stir-fried noodles and cakes have never left my brain cells, or wherever memories are stored. However, it was 1994 before I could tear myself away from seafood. That was the year of the mercury scare. The news was full of reports of deformed fish turning up everywhere containing large amounts of mercury. There was talk of other chemicals and needles and biohazardous blood being dumped in the ocean. Those news stories were the final kick in the butt I needed to give up seafood. Because I was still having problems with mucus dripping from my nose, I decided I had to give up cheese, too, which was hard. I absolutely adored Cracker Barrel sharp cheddar and would eat two packets a week.
Becoming a vegan in 1994 was exciting and difficult. I had no idea what a sacrifice I was making. The meat substitutes available now hadn't been made. There were some canned Worthington meatless products, but I eschewed them in the beginning. I didn't want meat and told myself that I didn't need to “pretend” that I was eating it. I had learned to cook with herbs and eat vegetables that I'd never heard of or hadn't ever eaten fresh—like spinach, mushrooms, and artichokes. As a kid, my mama had always bought frozen spinach; mushrooms and artichokes were new to me. So while the new foods made life interesting for a bit, after a couple of years I got bored and started eating meat substitutes for variety. I also started to enjoy their texture.
Eating out as a vegan was nearly impossible. It was hard to go into a restaurant and find a meal without cheese on it, even when it wasn't mentioned as part of a dish on the menu. I'd order pasta with garlic, and cheese would come sprinkled on top. Garden salads arrived with cheese or eggs in them. And sometimes the waiter wanted you to just remove the offending animal product. One had to quiz waiters about what was in a dish and push them to go ask the cook if they didn't know. There was a natural resistance to finding this information out. I always got the impression that they thought I was some weird spoiled freak.
For years when I ate out in a restaurant, I'd eat only Chinese food because I could always get tofu and vegetables. Eating out at first was difficult in a place like Allentown. Luckily, it had an Indian restaurant where vegan dishes abounded and an Italian restaurant where I could get pasta with marinara sauce. Later, the town acquired a health-food restaurant and, later still, a veggie pizzeria.
In December 1994, I moved to Miami-Dade County and was disappointed that Miami, the “big city,” didn't have the vegetarian resources that a small town like Allentown had. I couldn't find one health-food restaurant in Miami or the surrounding communities. There was only the Whole Foods deli, and I made special trips to Whole Foods in Aventura, closer to the Broward County line, which fortunately was where I lived with my mother before moving to Miami-Dade. I would stop by on my way to work in Miami and buy lunch so I wouldn't have to come back north. Later I discovered Koinonia, a “no meat sold here” takeout in North Miami run by Jamaicans who made wonderful dinners, veggie pies, and smoothies. I always got a dinner with rice, a veggie mix, a meat substitute, and salad along with two veggie pies and a smoothie. I was a stressed-out reporter for the Miami Herald at the time, and I always needed extra food with me for those times I worked late in Miami Lakes and Hialeah. Fortunately, this isn't a problem today, as most restaurants now have finally learned to have vegan items on the menu, even only a soy or vegetable burger.
Veganism was hard on the sex life, too. Bruce, the man who helped me to make a big change in my life by jogging with me and teaching me how to meditate, ate meat. I didn't want to kiss a man who ate meat. I eventually left Bruce for other reasons and moved to Washington, D.C. I dated a couple of meat eaters but wouldn't kiss them. One man I dated asked me outright: “Why is your pussy so sweet?” He was genuinely curious.
“Must be those fruits and vegetables,” I said, never missing a chance to extol the virtues of vegetarianism. Then he begged me not to wash for a week because he liked “pussy with a bite.” I put two and two together when I heard several lesbians talking about preparing for their first sexual encounter with a new love by drinking fruit juice for a week so that they tasted really sweet. Eating fruit and a vegetarian diet made all the difference in the world. I noticed that I didn't have body odor even if I didn't bathe for an entire weekend and certainly didn't feel a need to douche to stay fresh smelling. I realized that eating meat contributed to body odor.
It was interesting to be confronted with the perceptions of meat-eating men about sex with vegetarian women. A friend of an uncle was adamantly trying it on with me, and repeated often, “I know that veggie pussy is some good pussy.” It was ironic that they were attracted to me and I was repulsed by them because they ate meat. Black vegan men were hard to find. I tried to be okay with men who were fish eaters.
Once, a man I like a lot tricked me into believing he was converting in order to become involved with me. I made it clear that I didn't want to get serious with anyone who ate meat. I met him at the Miami Book Fair when he was selling his book. We talked for three hours the first day and exchanged numbers. After that, we talked every day for three months. He told me how he was practically a vegetarian, only allowing himself a pastrami sandwich once a year. He'd been a Muslim, so he didn't eat pork and only ate one meal a day. He promised me that he would eat like I did and he was anxious to learn how to eat healthy from me. He even nicknamed me “Vegan”—he was fascinated with the word I'd used to describe my diet—and started calling me that instead of my name. Anxious to finally find someone whom I could feel free with, I ate it all up. Finally, we planned a trip down to Florida. I went shopping and bought seitan, tempeh, textured vegetable protein, tofu, and veggies to make enticing dishes that would further enhance his desire to join the vegetarian lifestyle.
On the morning I was to pick him up from the airport, I cooked a meal of chickenlike seitan over brown rice and veggies and had it ready to feed him after picking him up from the airport. He took one look at my masterpiece and asked, “What's that?” After I told him, he said “I'm not eating that” and insisted we go out to eat. I couldn't believe it. “I thought you said you were going to be a vegetarian.” He cut me off. “I was just talking trash,” he said. I was speechless. He had had no qualms about lying to me. He waited till he'd flown from New Jersey to tell me to my face. It was a big joke to him. I had no qualms about not kissing him.
My dates with vegans and vegetarians also turned out to be problematic. Even vegetarian men could be full of it, too. I met a vegan at Koinonia, an alleged Muslim whom I found out was trying to tip out on his girlfriend and rush me into bed on the first date. Another vegetarian man I met in a Black study group was so secretive and different from me that it didn't work. Another was an acupuncturist whom I was extremely attracted to, but he apparently had some issues that he didn't communicate fully about, creating a great distance between us. Finally, I realized that just because a man was vegetarian didn't mean we'd get along any better or that that commonality would overshadow other problems. All of this came after a vegan I'd fallen for in Washington dumped me without any explanation.
I concluded that I needed a break from men, vegan and all. Men were just too much of a distraction. I decided to focus on being a kick-ass reporter covering the city of Opa-locka, Fla., which had enough social heartache, crime, and corruption to keep me not thinking about men for a long while.
One persistent man, however, managed to bring me out of my self-imposed isolation and convinced me to go out with him. We went to Denny's Restaurant in North Miami Beach. When I ordered a salad and fries, my date exclaimed to the waiter that, because I was a vegetarian, I was a very cheap date. The waiter, a young Black man, looked a little confused and squirmed a little. He then whispered to my date, and they broke out in the most uproarious laughter.
After the waiter left to put in our order, my date told me he'd said that he didn't like to date vegetarians because they didn't like to have oral sex—their definition of “meat” included penises. I found this hilarious and enlightening. My date was trying to find out if that was true. I just laughed. He was a meat eater. We weren't even going there. Later, I noticed that at times he had a funny “smell,” even after he'd bathed. I later came to identify it to some extent as coming from meat. It reminded me of the smell I'd pick up in my mother's kitchen. I'd come in from a city council meeting sometimes at midnight or one in the morning, long after she would've cooked, cleaned up, and put up the food. I'd smell an odor that I came to identify as chicken, after asking her what she'd cooked that night. My friend smelled like that. I knew then that I didn't want to have a relationship with a meat eater. Before, I had been wavering, telling myself that I had to compromise on the meat question, else I wouldn't find a relationship. But after identifying that chicken smell on men, I decided I'd go without.
But what I lost in male company, I gained with God. As a result of becoming a vegetarian, I came more spiritual. I looked up one day and found myself in love with trees and with an insatiable desire to be outdoors all the time. I felt oppressed if I were indoors on a nice day, and wherever I lived I had to do some activity outside. When I lived in Allentown, I walked along the water every day in Leigh Park and did tai chi among ancient trees that I started to feel a special closeness with. When I was in South Florida, I walked and performed tai chi and Qigong on the beach under brilliant blue skies to the roar of the ocean. In Washington, D.C., I walked for hours in Rock Creek Park, losing myself in that patch of forest in the middle of the city, scaring my friends and neighbors who were bothered that I'd walk there alone.
Noticing how not eating meat caused my blood pressure to drop and how quitting smoking gave me more energy was just the beginning of a process of self-observation that led to even greater learning about my body and health and spirituality. One's intuition becomes stronger and more powerful. You recognize more cause and effect between what you eat and how you feel, what you believe and what you end up doing. Being vegetarian made me calmer and centered—something I noticed in other vegetarians. It was enlightening one day to be around meat-eating friends who drank, who acted wild and called it fun, and who soon became uncomfortable if you didn't drink with them.
Noticing your body, and observing the effects of food and positive thinking, naturally puts one in touch with God, the universal power. Pretty soon, you notice other vegetarians—mostly sisters—and you see an energy and excitement and spirituality that are common to us. When I shopped at Whole Foods in Aventura, I couldn't help but notice the Unicorn shop next door where I discovered crystals and all kinds of books linking our food choices to health and spiritual wellness. Soon, I felt a real love of the earth that went along with being in touch with earth energy from crystals, taking herbs, and body movements such as tai chi, Reiki, and raising my consciousness.
How can one eat the variety of foods—especially the fruits and vegetables that we have at our disposal—and not know there is a power greater than ourselves? Or look at the billions of stars in the sky and have doubts? I feel the power of God when I'm among the trees with my hands raised or can feel the energy of the earth when I stand doing Qigong.
It's fascinating to learn that authors like Gabriel Cousens, M.D., believe that the body is just one big crystal. In this regard, veganism was a step toward more physical health as well as a journey to a more spiritual life that is constantly evolving. I'm reminded of novelist Alice Walker, who revolutionized my thinking when she wrote about the enslavement of animals on the planet. How could we kill another being for food or enslave them to make them work for us? Once we understand this and practice it in our daily lives, then we're on a path to a greater life, just by our choice of foods. Even making a choice of not indulging in sex at times because I couldn't stand the effects of animal-eating was a sacrifice that resulted in greater love of, and learning about, myself. I believe people know this on some deeper level. How else does one understand the anger meat eaters feel because a vegan refuses to eat meat? Why else would it matter to them, if not for them feeling it is something that they should be able to do, or wish they could do? That to do so is a form of justice in the world?
Becoming a vegan, or more conscious about food, makes one more aware of life and living and the earth and love. You just can't eat meat with consciousness. For me, it truly has been a revolutionary and transforming journey—one still going on. I discover more about myself, food, herbs, crystals, energy, and love every day.
And just think: becoming a vegetarian at first wasn't even planned!