Embrace who you are, especially your kindness

 

Delicate and bold, we dared to care

 

Have you ever been moved by an animal's joy?

 

Growing up on a farm, Arroyos-del-Mar saw cows' sadness when their calves were taken away. Years later, they were moved by a video of a woman playing fetch with a cow.

 

"She would throw the ball and the cow would gambol with joy and retrieve the ball for the woman. I was shaken so hard, I had a deep, long cry after that. I had never considered the capacity for joy that animals have."

 

There is something magical about those moments, when you empathize with someone you were taught not to care about. Allowing those moments to fuel you out of complicity, and to do something as their ally — such as going vegan — it can feel like your compassion becomes free.

 

But anyone who cares a lot, with a tender soul in this harsh world, has likely been told before...

 

“Why do you have to be so sensitive?”

“They’re just animals.”

 

These comments can have the power to not only erode our willingness to stand up for animals, but our ability to stand up for ourselves. Sensitivity is tied to core parts of who we are.

 

For example, I'm autistic. It's impossible for my brain to stop being sensitive. Feeling like I couldn't speak about animals' mistreatment, I also could not address my unique social and sensory needs. It caused me to suffer as an overstimulated child at a crowded school, where I was pressured into dissecting animals.

 

Who else has been told they're too sensitive — that they're too caring towards others and too inconvenient in who they are?

 

Women, girls, and others can be treated as "irrational" for having feminine emotions of care, for menstruating, for being mothers, or for otherwise being different from the highly competitive/dominating male bodies who lord over so much of human society (and animals!).

 

Vegans of color face immense barriers for being rightfully sensitive about racism and speciesism. Black people in the U.S. are significantly more likely than their white peers to stop eating animals, yet the visible vegan movement has been overwhelmingly white-dominated. By trusting their intuition and leading their own way, Black vegans, Indigenous vegans, and vegans of color are making powerful waves for total liberation.

 

For decades, LGBTQ+ rights were dismissed as "decadent" compared to supposedly more important issues. Yet when queer and trans people stand up for our nonhuman relatives on factory farms (some of the most blatantly oppressed beings), we are once again told that it's too soon to care...

 

Disabled people can feel like we're "burdening" society for needing extra aid. Becoming a disabled vegan, who needs accessible vegan options — or even a disabled vegan activist, who demands an end to all abuse and neglect — can make us feel like we're inconveniencing the powers that be by being so ahead of our time.

 

Being homeless or poor, childhood and elderhood, being an immigrant or refugee, facing war or genocide... These are just a few of the many types of marginalized human experiences that are clearly connected to the ways we dismiss and oppress animals, and things that animals are suffering alongside us.

 

Being sensitive can be a superpower — helping us recognize the deep, private, wondrous feelings of a pig, turkey, bee or fish that only they will ever know. As well as the vulnerability of a fellow human who can only describe to us what they've gone through.

It's time we proudly declare: It is awesome to be sensitive!

 

So if you’ve ever been told things like, “Stop being so sensitive” and “They’re just animals"...

 

I dare you to be sensitive. And I dare you to be vegan.

 

If that feels like too much, I invite you to explore veganism. Practice thinking and acting more vegan as you learn about animals who are harmed by humans and ways that we can help them.

 

You're allowed to be an imperfect ally to animals, who tries and who learns.

 

You're allowed to build a kinder life at a gradual pace that is sustainable for you.

 

You're allowed to be yourself, to make mistakes and be misunderstood sometimes.

 

And you are absolutely encouraged to bring all of who you are to your vegan journey!

 

Animals are strong and beautiful with us. Let's evolve the way we think, feel, and act towards them, in ways that lift our own spirits too.

 

If that sounds exciting to you, then feel free to read more on this website, or contact me and I'll do my best to respond.

 

Reach Me Anytime!