Our Story

I was born in August of 1967. From the start, I ate meat. I ate pretty much whatever I wanted. But here’s the thing — my mom didn’t let sugar and processed junk into our house very often. She shopped at health food stores back when that wasn’t trendy. I knew what alfalfa sprouts and tofu were before most kids could pronounce the words. It was just how we lived.

Then my adopted dad came into the picture, and things got more intentional.

By the time I was a teenager, my parents handed me a book called Animal Factories and told me we were reading it together. As a family. I had no choice in the matter.

I wish I could unread it.

What I learned about how animals are treated — about what really happens in factory farms — broke something open in me. My parents felt it too. Almost immediately, they announced we were going vegetarian. And I was all in. Not because I was forced. Because I couldn’t look at meat the same way again.

We weren’t vegans. The leather shoes and jackets stayed. But the meat was gone, and we meant it.

For a while.

Between 1981 and 1984, the diet slowly slipped. First eggs came back. Then fish. Then chicken. Then everything else. By the time I graduated high school in 1984 and was largely on my own, the vegetarian household was just a memory.

But the book never left me. Not really.

Around that same time, my parents also made me read The American Way of Death. To this day, I have no idea why. But between the two — what we do to animals and what we do to ourselves at the end — something in me got rewired permanently.

Over the decades since, I’ve tried to come back to vegetarianism more times than I can count. I’d commit. I’d slip. I’d commit again. I’d slip again. The pull was always there, but so was the convenience of just eating what was in front of me.

I’m done with that loop.

I’m in my late fifties now. I’m not getting any younger. And I’ve come to believe something I can’t keep arguing with: maturity is living authentically according to your principles. You don’t get to claim you love something and then keep doing harm to it. Not if you’re being honest.

I love animals. I cannot keep eating them.

I know what people say. It’s the circle of life. Animals eat animals. And that’s true. But not all animals do. Plenty of animals on this planet are herbivores and they’re doing just fine. More importantly, I’m a human. I have a choice. Most animals don’t get one. I do. And I think that choice means something.

So this time, I’m coming back to vegetarianism with my eyes open and my plan in place. And I’m doing this part alone — without EJ, because meat is not something he ethically struggles with and it’s not my place to change his mind.

This isn’t going to be cold turkey (pun very much intended). I’ve tried that. It doesn’t stick. What I want is a real shift — gradual, sustainable, and informed. I want to learn how to eat as a vegetarian properly this time. I want to understand where my protein is coming from. I want to know about iron, B12, omega-3s, and all the things I never paid attention to in the past when I was just winging it.

I want to do this once and not have to do it again.

That’s what this site is going to help me do — and if it helps you do the same, even better. Whatever your reasons, whatever your starting point, you’re welcome here.

[EJ is currently drafting his story. I’ll post it as soon as he’s done.]