And a Good Point of View it is.

Point of View




Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless
Christmas dinner's dark and blue
When you stop and try to see it
From the turkey's point of view.


Sunday dinner isn't sunny
Easter feasts are just bad luck
When you see it from the view point
Of a chicken or a duck.


Oh how I once loved tuna salad
Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too
'Til I stopped and looked at dinner
From the dinner's point of view.




Shel Silverstein

Photo of Antoinette at Farm Sanctuary taken by Jo-Anne McArthur.


Antoinette is an individual sentient being who can feel pain and terror just like you and me. She has desires for her life, none of which include being a dead centerpiece. 

Vote for my kid!!

I'm jumping on this REAL late as the voting ends on the 17th, but I would really love it if you could vote for my little Lillers!! She has been chosen as a finalist in PETA's Cutest Veg Kid contest.
Here she is in case you don't believe me about the cuteness factor...

Thank you for your support!!!!

Long time no post...

So being tired and pukey and preggers has apparently zapped my ability to write. I do want to post while waiting for my brain to fall back into my head though, so here are some nice little pictures I've found around the web in the meantime!

Yeah... and that's all I've got today. Maybe I'll actually write tomorrow...maybe.

I got to be on the radio!!!!

I think most of you have listened to Midwest Vegan Radio, but if you haven't yet you should really check it out! Especially now that I got to be on their show talking about all things vegan pregnancy ( and some kind of gross things too). The hosts of the podcast are two awesome ladies, Ryan and Dallas. Midwest Vegan Radio covers all thing vegan in the Midwest with sprinklings of awesomeness courtesy of your excellent hosts. Head on over and check it out!!

*Hot button issue warning: I do discuss vaccination and how it relates to veganism on the show. If you are interested in any further information on the topic please feel free to ask...nicely.

Less and letting go.

This year has been full of change for me, full of new beginnings. I feel different, I think I look a bit different, and I have most certainly been surrounding myself with different people. I've heard a lot of comments lately, from people I have known for a long time, that I have changed myself so much that they hardly recognize me anymore. To that I really want to just say, have you ever really even LOOKED at me before? My sister put it best when she told me she thinks I have just gotten back to being the 'me' she always knew I was.
I think we all have set ideas of how we want to project out into the world, how we want others to view us. Everyone does change over time, but at the core? That core remains, it just gets covered up by the various versions of ourselves we try on.
That is what happened to me.
When asked to describe who I am, I often find myself going back to when I was in preschool, and yelling at a group of boys for hitting a tree and ripping its branches off. I was so upset that anyone would want to hurt a tree, let alone my peers, that my eyes were stinging with tears as I shouted at them to be nice. I just wanted everyone to be nice, including myself.
This encounter went on to color almost all my interactions with others for most of my life. Being 'nice' morphed into me becoming the type of person that was a punching bag for others, quiet about my beliefs because they were not what everyone else deemed to be 'nice'. Everyone else. The strong little girl that didn't care about what others thought as long as she was fighting for what is right became entrenched in pleasing everyone else and never ever rocking the boat.
Being nice put a rose colored tint on all my relationships. I thought the best of people even they were stealing from me and lying to my face; when I was being taken advantage of in the worst ways and even when I was assaulted. Everyone in my life deserved love and kindness in my eyes. Even when they refused to show any to me. Forgiveness is good, forgetting is better. Being alone is worse than being walked all over. I owed them all my 'nicest' version of myself, whoever that happened to be at the time.
Somewhere inside I think that little girl was raging when everything came to a head before my wedding. I was getting married. It felt like a slate was being wiped clean. I had found someone who loved ME, the real me and now I had to figure out who she really was. That little girl was whispering to me from somewhere in my heart, daring me to come and find her again.
 I went through an intense healing process with a very gifted seer, who helped me to peel back the layers and meet myself once again. I had come full circle and right back to my core. And you know what? She's nice, but she's also kind to herself first. As I started to notice the toxicity in myself, I noticed it in other areas of my life and was able to start shedding those too. I became lighter as I left the things and people who no longer served me behind. I was obsessed with feeling lighter and being simpler, being less. I also realized people that I wasn't healthy for either, and let go of them with no thoughts of regret or worry of what they would think of me. I found my voice again, and it is strong.
I have always liked the saying, 'What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.' I had allowed being well received and liked become more important than what is right. My strong sense of the 'golden rule' didn't extend to myself or to those who it wasn't popular to treat well. You will no longer find me placing your feelings above what I know is the right thing to do, or lying to you about what I think in order for you to like me. That woman is gone. I have let her go.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson

Wolves

One evening a Cherokee Elder told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside of us all.
One is Evil.
 It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good.
 It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"
The Cherokee Elder simply replied,


"The one you feed."






Author Unknown

A Vegan Pagan's Prayer

A good friend shared this with me once, and now I'd like to share it with you!


A Vegan Pagan's Prayer

Lord of the forest and field, Lady of the starlit night,
I acknowledge the truth that for me to live, something must die.
I give thanks for the gift of free will,
And I acknowledge the responsibility that comes with the freedom of choice.

I choose then to abstain from the cycle of unnecessary suffering.
I pledge to be an agent of healing, not a bystander to slaughter.
I say to the animals:
You do not have to suffer and die for me.
I say to the workers:
You do not have to kill for me.
I say to the corporate death machine:
You will no longer profit from my blindness. 
I say to the Earth, and to all that is holy,
That though we are taught to feast upon war,
I choose to lay down the sword
And take in peace instead.
I ally myself with Nature, not as her master, but as her child.
I will not claim dominion over that which is wiser than I.

Lord of the forest and field, Lady of the starlit night,
May compassion fulfill and transform me
May I give as You give, may I love as You love
And may my choices bring grace to my life
As You bring grace to the world.

So mote it be.






Namaste,




H*

She Thinks I Am Beautiful

This is a post that I wrote for This is a Woman a little while back. This site, and  The Shape of a Mother, are two truly beautiful communities of women and mothers navigating the world of self worth and body image.

I’ve posted on SOAM before about my body and how birthing my daughter had affected my self esteem and body image. I’d like to write a little bit about some realizations I have had since then about my health issues and how I feel as a woman.

I have been ‘sick’ for most of my life. It started out as a case of mono that just never seemed to go away. At eleven years of age I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and told I would feel sick for my whole life. Whenever I tried to talk to a doctor in the years to come ( I always thought there must be something else besides fm going on with me) I was told I just wasn’t taking good enough care of myself, and that was why I felt awful. Seriously, I simply CANNOT remember a time in my life that I wasn’t tired and in some type of pain, but to put all of that on someone? It was MY fault, even though I was doing everything ‘right’, that I felt awful? I hated my body and all of its pains and limitations. I hated my small stature and pale skin that I felt just advertised to the world even more how ‘fragile’ and broken I really was. I had some anxiety that went along with this. I always felt like there was something MORE I needed to be doing. From cleaning house, to raising my daughter, I NEVER felt I had everything taken care of. I never thought I would feel like a REAL woman. REAL women were strong and vibrant, not small and weak. I tried to convince everyone in my life that I felt better than I did, never wanting to upset them or have them think I wasn’t doing ‘enough’ to care for myself. After years of having conventional medicine fail me I found an amazing energy healer who not only helped me feel ‘normal’ at last, but helped to calm my troubled heart.

I know you are probably wondering what all of this has to do with how I feel about body image, but I am getting to it I promise!

Fast forward to this year. I found out about a member of my community who was desperately in need of a kidney transplant and wouldn’t live the average three year wait on the national donor registry to receive one. I felt moved by his story and decided that I needed to get tested to see if I was a match. I researched the safety of the procedure and felt that there was probably little chance I would pass the rigorous tests I would be put through to be deemed ‘healthy’ enough for surgery. Wouldn’t you guess it? I was found to be in amazing health and matched wonderfully with him! Valentine’s Day this year I gave my kidney to my new friend. It was not only the best gift to him, but the best I could give myself! I had spent years at war with my body to come out on the other side healthy enough to improve the life of another human being. I have five little scars on my tummy from the surgery. Five little scars that seem to orbit around the network of stretch marks left from my daughter. I love they way they look and how they make me feel, my little marks that love left. No matter HOW sick or tired or any amount of pain I may have in my life in the years to come, I’ll never feel weak again. My body gave life, twice! It can do amazing things!

I woke up this morning to my daughter snuggling in bed next to me. She rolled over and put her hand up to my cheek and stoked it lovingly. “Mommy,” she said, ” I love you”. “Mommy, you are beautiful”. Strange as it sounds her tiny little voice seemed to echo a new one in me. I never used to think I was beautiful. Having potential maybe, but not beautiful. Now? Now, I know I am.

I Smell a Smell

I remember reading when I was pregnant with the Peanut, that pregnancy can seem to enhance a woman's sense of smell. I beg to disagree, helpful pregnancy book. I think it is something that lies dormant in every woman, a super sense if you may, that becomes activated the minute you are pregnant and stays until the day you die.
My mother is a perfect example of this. I swear she could have worked with the police on sniffing out drugs on people at the airport. I'd be sitting in the kitchen, enjoying a pb&j, and my mother would come in with a look on her face that I can only describe as the 'I Smell a Smell' face. Of course I could never smell whatever it was that she was talking about, but that never deterred her. She would hunt down whatever the offending scent was with such singleminded determination it would put any pig to shame( pigs have an excellent sense of smell, did you know that)? Sometimes she would never find the source of the smell but I remember one occasion where she walked in from the backyard, triumphant look replacing the I Smell a Smell face, to announce that a man had been walking past our house smoking a cigarette. He had been smoking and walking past our house that had all of the windows and doors shut, there wasn't even a breeze that day.
From that day forward I would drive my smoking friends NUTS by insisting they never smoke around me. "You don't understand MAN! My mom is like the domestic version of Spider Man, with a tingling 'Mother sense' for shit like cigarette smoke."
I was very proud today to realize that I too have the I Smell a Smell face. Although my husband calls it the 'kitty stink face'. You know, the look that cats make when they smell something strange, mouth partly open and slightly disgusted? I wasn't quite sure what it was that I was smelling at the time, but I found a small piece of carrot that Ari (puppy daughter) had hidden under the couch cushions and I can no longer smell anything out of place in the house!
So, how about you? Do you have a kitty stink face? Did your mother? Curious minds would love to know!


Namaste,


H*

This thing called blogging

After one previously failed attempt at starting a blog, I decided to launch this one. Why you may ask? I often find myself throughout the day narrating my own life as if I were reading about what I was doing and not actually experiencing it myself. While I know this makes me a big weirdo that spends entirely too much time reading fiction, I think it also warrants an outlet in the form of this blog.
I think the title says it all as far as what I will be writing about. I am each of those things, but not simply just one at a time. Lacking a specific community of other Mothers who are Pagan and also Vegan, I just decided to start one myself.
So there you are folks! I may actually post something of significance later today or tomorrow, and would very much appreciate comments!

Namaste,


H*