Occupation: Vegan Writer For the Animals
On my childhood Indiana farm, we grew kale to feed the rabbits, and killed the rabbits to feed the humans. At a young age I witnessed animals being killed, but strangely, I do not recall feeling sad — even though I loved playing with all of our animals, especially the goats. I remember trying to ride the goats’ backs down a small hill, but they threw me off every time, sending me rolling down towards the pond.
In addition to goats and rabbits, I adored the chickens, sheep, and cats. It never occurred to me that we ate the flesh and fluids of some animals, but not of others.
My family moved to the city when I was thirteen. Immersed in friends, cheerleading, and studies, I soon forgot about the animals. By the time I left home for college in the Fall of 1988, I would never have dreamed that many years later my life work would be for the animals.
Majoring in Political Science and Spanish at Butler University, I naively imagined that my Bachelor of Arts degree would land me a high-paying job the day I graduated. Well, as any reasonable worldly person would know, that did not happen.
For a few years after graduation I found nice, low-paying jobs in universities, working with international students and programs, during which time I got married and became pregnant. My then husband and I decided that I would stay home with the children.
So, during many years of at-home mothering (two sons), in Ashland, Oregon, I searched for my dream career. Becoming a workshop junkie, I trained as a labor doula, childbirth educator, lactation counselor, postpartum doula, energy healer, caregiver, meditation instructor, medical assistant, hypnotherapist, and facilitator of prison groups. I also led healing circles, wrote books, blogged, and studied spiritual subjects.
In the midst of that earnest career project, we got a divorce and somehow endured the two-house co-parenting life. I lived on the house settlement and continued taking more trainings until the money ran out and I had to get a job. While working half-time as a medical assistant and attempting to get a hypnotherapy business going, my chronic health issues worsened, which compelled me to move to Arizona. I hoped that the dry desert climate would help my health, and anyway by that time my teenage sons had moved up to Portland with their Papa.
Unfortunately, in Mesa my second attempt to succeed at a hypnotherapy business failed, and my health did not improve. So at age forty-eight, with worsening Fibromyalgia and an Anxiety Disorder, I moved back home with my parents. My life as a ’boomeranger’ was blessed, and yet depressing.
In my upstairs bedroom, that I call my tree-house temple, I spent many months just reading and writing, but then I thought that I should start working towards somehow getting a job again. So, while blogging and publishing another book, I trained with a local hospice to sit with the dying and their families. After volunteering just a couple of hours per week for a few months, my health issues worsened to such a degree that I was forced into early retirement.
Well, “retirement” is not really the correct word, since I never actually found my dream career!
During the two years since my pseudo-retirement, I have finally aligned with my true calling. On my last tax return, for occupation I wrote “Writer” which was shorthand for my full title as Vegan Writer For the Animals.
I shifted to the vegan diet, philosophy, and lifestyle in 2009, because I feel so much compassion for the non-human animals. I believe that writing for the animals is the least I can do, to try to influence other humans to stop eating the flesh and fluids of the non-human animals, who are brothers and sisters in our earthling family. The cows, lambs, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and fish are sentient beings, which means they are aware and able to feel pain and pleasure through their senses. I write for them, hoping to help reduce their incredible suffering, that is caused by humans.
I am able to do this work because it is not paid, scheduled work. I am the boss woman, and I just write for an hour or two whenever my symptoms allow it.
I returned home to Indiana in 2018. In our small green urban forest, there are many trees, birds, squirrels, and wild brown rabbits. Now, we vegans eat the kale ourselves, and adore watching the rabbits from a distance.
