Becoming Un-vegan

Becoming Un-vegan

For fourteen years our family ate a mostly-vegan diet. We were house-vegans. We only ate vegan at home but when we visited other people's homes or celebrated family holidays we would eat what people served.

I threw my full-time homemaker efforts into this way of eating. I gestated and birthed two babies on this diet, raised three children from infancy to pre-teen/teen years. Damien and I taught plant-based diet courses in our living to friends. I wrote about it on my blog and published freelance essays and articles for other sources.

And then some stuff happened in our life and I stopped eating this way. But not without a lot of processing the change in my decision along the way. (I don't do much without a lot of processing!)

This series is all about that processing. In this series I dive into:

  • why we started eating vegan, why I stopped being mostly-vegan, and why I would go vegan again (if I do).
  • how food and cooking has been closely tied to my identity as wife and mother, and how I needed release from that.
  • redefining health more holistically.
  • how complicated food, eating, and cooking is and my own experience with the familial, cultural, cognitive, and spiritual reasons for that.
  • what our family eats these days and how we share the cooking responsibility.
  • the importance of food culture and hospitality in building relationships and community, how hard this can be with everything I've already mentioned, but how our spirits need to do it anyway.

Food matters, a lot. It matters globally, locally, and individually. It matters in our bodies and in our families. This is my food story, thus far, I invite you around the table to share it.


House rules for hospitality and shared meals

House rules for hospitality and shared meals

After everything I've written in this series, all the angst and struggle and questions that remain unanswered, eating together with the people I love is one of the highlights of my day, however it happens. Probably because I know these years are fleeting and precious.

It's complicated but it comes down to something simple: Love

It's complicated but it comes down to something simple: Love

Unless you are the kind of cook who feels enlivened by the challenge of dietary restrictions and food preferences (I know some people are like this!), cooking for others, whether that's within our families or for guests at our table, can feel burdensome. And if you didn't enjoy cooking much to begin with, this can take the wind right out of your sails.

A mixed family diet

A mixed family diet

For our shared family supper we eat gluten-free vegan, much like we always have, with addition of non-vegan food on the side if the cook wants it. During the rest of the day everyone is responsible for their own food and we each prepare and eat according to personal conviction, necessary dietary restrictions, budgetary constraints, and desire.

The ethics of eating animals (and why I do it anyway)

The ethics of eating animals (and why I do it anyway)

How is one supposed to eat and live in this culture? In this age? In spite of writing this series, I'm not actively seeking an answer to that question right now. It hangs in my life as an unknown.

How to define health and what food guru can I trust?

How to define health and what food guru can I trust?

With all the options of our North American diet, conflicting scientific data, advertising, and evolutionary biology not caught up with huge societal changes of the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions, the message I internalized was this: I can't be trusted to just follow my taste buds or cravings to the best diet. My body will betray me.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

At forty, in the crucible of a mid-life crisis, I had to disassociate myself from the whole mess, from plant-based eating associated with my husband being an authority in my life and from good cook = good mom.

Falling Apart

Falling Apart

I had been onboard with this diet for many years and we had influenced dietary changes in our extended families. We had raised kids who ate vegetables! But I was starting to ask questions and have doubts.