My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
—Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
I was raised in a typical American family eating typical American fare: pretty much anything that came from an animal who had once walked, swum, or flown. Nightly dinners in our Irish-American home consisted of a rotation of pork chops, lamb stew, meatloaf, veal cutlets, and ground beef, along with some token vegetables on the side, always slathered with butter or submerged in cream-based sauces. With a father who owned ice cream shops and who kept a separate freezer just to store the gallons of frozen treats he brought home, I enjoyed dairy-rich desserts on a daily basis. We had a milkshake machine, a hot chocolate maker, and more candy than Willy Wonka would know what to do with. There was no dearth of animal products in our home, and I ate them all with fervor.
I was also a typical child in that I cared about animals. I’m reluctant to say I “loved animals,” because I don’t believe you have to love animals to not want to hurt them, but I did (and do) adore animals. I’ve always loved being around them, I’ve never had a fear of them, and I shed tears at the slightest hint of them suffering at all—in real life or in books, television shows, or movies. When I was eight years old, a bird with an injured wing fell from a tree in our yard, so I built a little house for her until she was well enough to fly again. When stray dogs made their way to our doorstep, I brought them in until I could return them to their homes. When my mother took me to see Benji—a film about a homeless dog who endures hunger, abuse, and loneliness before endearing himself to a human family—she had to drag me out of the theatre mid-film for all of my weeping and wailing.
You don’t have to love animals to not want to hurt them.
I remember the day we adopted our own dog, Charmaine, an adorable, tiny gray schnauzer with floppy ears and a loud, persistent bark. She whimpered incessantly the first few nights she was with us, which tormented me greatly. This in turn tormented my mother, who would find me in tears at her bedside in the middle of the night begging to let our puppy come to bed with me so I could soothe her to sleep. My mother relented, and we all enjoyed restful nights thereafter. The emotional attachment I had to that little dog (and her to me) was gravely underestimated by my parents a few years later when, during a painful divorce and custody battle, she was taken from me with no warning. I was able to see her periodically, and eventually as a young adult I was able to arrange to have her live with me again, but the memory of the loss of that daily bond still stings.
My empathy for animals has always run quite deep, but I don’t think my affection for them was very different from that of most children. Parents, teachers, and adults in general foster a connection between children and animals from the time we’re born—evidenced by everything from the clothes they dress us in and the books they read to us to the movies they screen for us and the songs they teach us. Most of us had images of baby animals adorning our childhood clothing, wallpaper, and bedding; animal cutouts hung over our cribs in a musical mobile; and plush animals that served as our constant companions. As children, we’re taught songs about animals and play games where we imitate animals; we’re brought to the zoo to admire animals; and on Halloween, many of us dress up as our favorite animal. (Many of us still do as adults.) More than that, the adults around us use animals (albeit fictional ones) to teach us our most fundamental skills: how to count, how to spell, how to read, and how to talk.
Through allegories and fables—both ancient and modern—animals even help shape our mental character by teaching us social mores, proper manners, and moral conduct. A methodical tortoise taught me that slow and steady wins the race, a panicked chicken taught me not to jump to conclusions even if the sky appears to be falling, and three bears—a mama, a papa, and a baby—highlighted just how annoying little girls can be and how rude it is to intrude upon animals in their homes. (At least, that was my takeaway. I may have missed the point of that one.)
Many stories we read as children are written expressly for the purpose of raising awareness about the plight and welfare of animals, including such classics as Bambi, Black Beauty, and Charlotte’s Web, and often it’s a large-hearted child who becomes the champion for the imperiled animal, reflecting back to our impressionable minds a model for human–animal relations. Although the Disneyfied adaptations tend to dilute some of the poignancy of the original texts, the films still leave deep impressions on many of us. Who among us remained unmoved when Bambi learns his mother was killed by hunters or when Dumbo’s mother strains to rock her baby through the bars that imprison her? Or when Black Beauty is passed from one cruel owner to the next? Charlotte’s Web is the reason many children stop eating pigs, and despite its sixty-plus years, it continues to inspire many to become vegetarian—or to at least take a step toward that end. Jack London’s Call of the Wild, about a dog stolen from his home to be sold into service as a sled dog, still leaves an indelible impression upon students who read it in school. And Winnie the Pooh, along with his legion of furry pals, remains a link to the best parts of our childhood, when life was simple and our best friends were talking animals.
Granted, I’m speaking of characters in fiction and film, but the relationships (or lack thereof) we have with animals as children in many ways shape who we become as adults—as human beings. More than that, they reflect who we are as humans. How children relate to animals is often used as a barometer for determining mental or emotional health. We know that if a child is kind to an animal, it’s a good sign. It demonstrates that the child is capable of tenderness, compassion, attachment, and empathy. On the other hand, if a child abuses or hurts an animal, it’s considered a red flag. The National School Safety Council, the US Department of Education, the American Psychological Association, and the National Crime Prevention Council all agree that animal cruelty is a strong predictor of potential violence against humans.1 In other words, the research bears out what we know instinctively and anecdotally: that the more children are encouraged to bond with animals, the more they experience empathy and exhibit compassion—for everyone, humans and nonhumans alike.
The relationships we have with animals as children shape who we become as adults and reflect who we are as human beings.
My parents, teachers, and other adults in my life didn’t necessarily know about this research, yet in practically every aspect of my life I was encouraged to have a relationship with animals and was given the message that nonhuman animals were integral to who I was—and helping to shape who I was becoming. What I didn’t know was that, at the same time, I was being fed the dismembered bodies of animals—animals no different from the ones I was brought to the zoo to pet or whose wings I helped mend or whose likenesses ornamented my pajamas and lunchbox. And so I was taught—implicitly, of course—to categorize animals into arbitrary compartments of those we care for and those we eat, those we live with and those we exploit, those worthy of our compassion and those undeserving of it simply because they happen to be of a particular species or bred for a particular use. In other words: puppies good, calves food. (But only some puppies, as we’ll explore in a subsequent chapter.)
The message I received by the time I was old enough to understand I was eating animals was that the injured bird who was lucky enough to fall into my yard was worth saving, but the chickens and turkeys who “sacrificed themselves so I could eat” were valuable only in so far as their flesh was tender and juicy. In other words: chickadees friends, chickens dinner. This arbitrary distinction makes our consumption of them possible, but to animals, it’s all the same. To paraphrase the late Broadway actress and animal activist Gretchen Wyler: If they have wings, they want to fly. If they have legs, they want to walk. If they have voices, they want to communicate. If they have offspring, they want to nurture them. Having lives, they want to keep them. But these are choices we have taken from animals. That is our legacy. Animals are not the masters of their own fate or freedom. We are.
If they have wings, they want to fly. If they have legs, they want to walk. If they have offspring, they want to nurture them.
At the same time I was subconsciously learning to categorize animals, I was also learning to compartmentalize and temper my own compassion. In response to any questions I posed about what (or who) I was eating and why, I was given the message that life is not always fair and nature is not always kind, but God put animals on Earth for us to eat and I should be grateful for His kindness and their sacrifice. (I was raised in a Catholic/Protestant home, but the idea that humans are the overlords of other animals is indubitably universal and ecumenical, subscribed to by atheists and believers alike.) As a result, that fierce, unconditional compassion I had as a child began to dull, as my taste for animal flesh, fat, and fluids began to grow and settle into my palate.
I continued to devour all manner of fried legs, barbecued ribs, smoked backs, breaded wings, boiled eggs, flavored fluids, and whatever else came off of or out of an animal. I wore leather, wool, fur, and cashmere, slept under down comforters, and even tried my hand at fishing and falconry. I’d like to say I gave no thought to the animals whose flesh and secretions I was consuming, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Like most people, I ate what was socially acceptable and culturally palatable, and was viscerally disgusted at the thought of eating gizzards, livers, hearts, or feet—or dogs, cats, or horses. As I grew older, I internalized the narrative that “animals are here for us” and that “cows need to be milked for their own good,” and I trusted the marketing terms (“free-range,” “organic,” “humane”) that enabled me to justify my consumption of animals while mitigating any guilt I may have harbored. I also never fished again, because I’d seen what it looked like for an animal to die; during all the years I was eating animals, of course I never wanted to actually see how they were killed.
And then some light began to appear through the cracks of my protective shell. When I was about twenty years old, I read Diet for a New America by John Robbins, and the course of my life changed forever. This was one of the first books to examine the effects of an animal-based diet on our health, on the environment, and on animals themselves, and it was certainly the first time I had ever seen the images of animal factories, where lives are regarded as machines and the value of animals is determined only by what and how much their bodies can produce. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photos of hens in cages with the tips of their beaks seared off, female “breeding” pigs confined in crates the size of their own overgrown bodies, turkeys packed in windowless sheds, and calves chained to boxes. I remember staring at those images in disbelief. How could I not have known about this? How could I have contributed to it? How could this even happen? I knew right away that I didn’t want to be part of it, so I stopped eating land animals that very day.
Interestingly, my parents—and others—didn’t quite react the same way they had when I was a child. Helping fallen baby birds or taking in stray animals were considered admirable childhood pursuits and met with support and admiration, but when that very same compassion—though no different in substance or strength—followed me into adulthood and extended to pigs, cattle, chickens, and other animals brought into this world only to be killed, it was greeted with hostility and suspicion. The message was: Limited compassion good, unconditional compassion bad. Childhood compassion normal, adult compassion excessive. Despite the fact that compassion is a guiding principle in all the world’s religions and most secular philosophies, the primary message we receive by the time we’re adults is that compassion is conditional—reserved only for certain groups/species. And though we appreciate and even admire compassion in children, we’re taught to be somewhat suspicious of compassion in adults, deeming it sentimental and irrational. Operating within these boundaries of selective compassion, how can we not feel a weight on our minds and a heaviness in our hearts?
Nonetheless, my awakening had begun, and I was not deterred. I was, however, still partially asleep. I had stopped eating land animals, was learning everything I could about issues related to our food system, and had begun advocating for animals through education and outreach, but I continued to consume chicken’s eggs, cow’s milk, and aquatic animals. This lasted for several years until I was knocked into full consciousness while reading Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by investigative journalist Gail Eisnitz. I have never forgotten how painful it was to read this book and how powerful it was to feel my eyes and heart opening. Becoming fully awake was a visceral, harrowing process, but I wouldn’t change it for all the world—however many tears I shed in the few days it took me to read the book. The lens through which I saw the world completely changed, and the paradigm by which I lived my life totally shifted.
I came to fully comprehend that no matter how an animal is “raised” or what he or she is “raised for” (flesh, eggs, or milk), in the end, it’s all the same, and that end is characterized by violence. After reading Diet for a New America, I would have said that I stopped eating land animals because I didn’t like the way they were treated. But after reading Slaughterhouse, it became much more fundamental than that. I became aware of how wasteful, unnecessary, and absurd it is to bring animals into this world only to kill them; I became disgusted at how we manipulate the reproductive system of females for their milk, capitalizing on their ability to give birth only to take their young from them and impregnate them again and again and again. I became fully cognizant of the violence inherent in breeding, keeping, transporting, and killing animals for our pleasure and wholly uncomfortable that I was complicit in paying people to become desensitized to their own compassion as well as to animal suffering. I realized I was supporting a culture of violence whose consequences are incalculable and permanent, which didn’t sit well with me. I felt as if I had been sleepwalking up until that moment. Now that I was awake, I couldn’t help but act. My natural response was to stop participating in this system, and so, still reeling from what I was reading, I called my soon-to-be-husband and told him: “I’m becoming vegan.”
I’m struck by how funny that phrase can sound. We say a caterpillar “becomes” a butterfly or a seed “becomes” a flower and can easily imagine what they look like before and after their transformation. But what does it look like to become vegan? What did I become when I became vegan? Was there really a difference between the pre-vegan me and the post-vegan me? Prior to being vegan, I considered myself a compassionate person living a compassionate life—even advocating for animals in my way. But, in truth, my actions were not fully in alignment with my self-perception. In truth, I was not really living my life according to my deepest values—the values I’ve held dear since I was a child and that defined me as a person. I would never have intentionally hurt another living being, yet I was paying others to do it for me. Reading the personal accounts of slaughterhouse workers who abused, dismembered, tortured, and killed animals as a matter of routine shook me to my core and out of my slumber.
Becoming vegan was my metamorphosis into unconditional, unfettered, unabashed compassion. That is to say, when I became vegan, my deepest ethics became reflected in my daily choices, and the process was as natural and effortless as is the process for a caterpillar becoming a butterfly or a seed becoming a flower. Of course, births—and rebirths—are also messy and painful and not without their challenges, but they’re always worth the trouble in the end.
Before I became vegan, I was unaware of the ways in which I contributed to violence against animals. Once I knew, I couldn’t unknow. And I had to act. I chose—and continue to choose—to remain aware, awake, and engaged. There are many forces out there that compel us to revert to our old ways of thinking and behaving, and none of us are impervious to that pressure. It is for that reason I wrote this book: to link my story with yours, to guide you on your own journey of awakening, and to create a roadmap to help you stay the course, even as you encounter bumps, blocks, barricades, and booby traps along the way.
When I became vegan, my deepest ethics became reflected in my daily choices.
The Joyful Vegan is our collective story—of how we got to where we are, and how to keep going forward with conviction and joy.