Hi, I’m Molly, I’m a French Canadian from New-Brunswick, Canada, and I’ve been vegan for almost a year now. I started to search online for the cause of my eczema and found that sometimes it’s caused by dairy allergies. Therefore, I started drinking soy milk instead and from there onwards, major changes in my body took place. I got rid of other problems: I’ve had acid reflux all my life (and just learned to live with it over the years) and never-ending constipation.
In the meantime, I still had acid reflux from time to time but never gave a thought about the „other“ dairy products I was using: butter, cheese, yogurt, coffee cream… Somewhere in August, I started feeling the aftershock from an injury back from November 2015. I had to quit yoga, could not sleep any longer on my back, had a hard time to sit long periods of time at work (I’m a web designer) and couldn’t do my chores anymore. That is when my acid reflux problem took a whole new turn. As I was not moving enough, my digestion was not really working as it used to be. Needless to say, I was feeling like shit.
There is no way I was spending the rest of my life feeling like that. On the verge of my 40’s, I have plenty of years in front of me, my two girls are growing and I have a great husband. In other words, life was too good to be wasted on countless worries. I started searching again the web but I had no idea that I was up for a ride! What I saw and viewed on the web changed me, for the better! I went 3 weeks crying myself to sleep watching documentaries-after-documentaries of the animal abuse all over the planet just to satisfy our craving for food.
This is not a „on the moment“ decision I’ve made. I have memories as a child throughout my life that triggered that decision:
I remember a gentle giant moose across the street, killed by hunt like a trophy, tied by its 4 legs on the kids swing, surrounded by the neighbors;
- The screams of my grandma pigs been gutted by my father and uncles. Those same pigs we’ve given fresh grass just a couple of hours before.
- A fluffy bunny I carried on my shoulder with an old uncle from the wood straight to my mom’s kitchen. I refused to eat it!
- My mom gutting chickens for an old friend, the horror I felt seeing where eggs came from and the putrid smell of dead carcasses.
- My father saying he would never go back hunting after he shot a deer with my uncle some years ago and the packages of meat in our freezer.
These memories are probably common for people living in this rural area but they molded my way up to my vegan lifestyle. My love for animals has always been a big part of my life, I have a dog and two sister cats who are like my own. I tried vegetarian before and I failed because I did not had the information I have this time and did not bother to tell my family members. I learned along the way that vegetarian is not enough, so I went vegan instead, cold turkey as they say.
I’m so proud this year I got my sister and her whole family on board, people around me start to open up and it feels good. Oh! By the way, my digestive problems are vanished and I lost 20 pounds! I have a vegan website on the go opening soon, dedicated to find all the vegans in my province and help them transitioning, it’s called „Living Amongst Wolves“.
My only regret is not going vegan earlier in life! Vegan all the way, for the animals, for the planet!
