A Freaking Spiritual Awakening

In 2018, I was ready to leave behind everything I had known for 18 years. Again.

I had done something similar in 2000, when I left my native Netherlands after 26 years and arrived in South Africa with nothing more than a backpack and a heart full of hope.

What I needed then was freedom and space to grow – however the universe would allow it. Pain and suffering, as much as love and friendship, shaped my heart and soul during those first 18 years and prepared me for the next step.

By 2018, I was ready to transform again. I left Hoedspruit after five years of reading, writing, talking – with myself and with others – digging deeper and deeper to uncover the key to wholeheartedness. Not in spite of my scars and painful experiences, but because of them. I knew this would be a lifelong journey, but I was done making life all about me.

I was ready to serve something bigger.

In August 2018, seven years ago, I went vegan. It felt like spreading my spiritual wings for the very first time. Though I am 100% atheist, veganism was – borrowing the words of Brené Brown – a freaking spiritual awakening.

I made the change overnight, yes, but not out of nowhere. My close bond with Bug, my little township dog, had slowly been shifting my view of the world and of the place all animals hold in it. I began to see speciesism for what it is: the indoctrination that teaches us to cherish companion animals (dogs, cats, horses), to admire wildlife as beautiful and worth protecting – yet to view 62% of the world’s mammal biomass (pigs, cows, sheep, chickens) as food, commodities, and property to be used and abused.

That realisation made me question everything I had been taught – by teachers, parents, society – about food, nutrition, and the systems that are destroying us.

“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

I began connecting more and more dots:

• The link between our food industries – especially industrial animal agriculture – and the degradation of our ecosystems. Animal agriculture alone accounts for roughly 16.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, driving deforestation, water and land depletion, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss.
• The link between these industries and the decline of human health.

But the real reason I am writing this is not to list statistics. It is to appeal to you – to your heart, and to your common sense.

Think about it. Really let yourself go there. Ask the uncomfortable questions:

• Why do we live like this?
• Who benefits?
• Who decided animal products are a necessity three times a day – and is it true?
• Who told us cow’s milk is essential for health – and is it true?
• Why are we drinking the breast milk of cows, yet not that of dogs, pigs, or hyenas?
• How are our food choices linked to humanity’s deteriorating health and to collapsing ecosystems?

And perhaps the hardest questions of all:

How can we say we love animals, yet pay others to breed, exploit, and kill them by the billions every year – just so we don’t have to get our own hands dirty?

When did we decide, as a culture, that some animals are family while others are disposable?

And how can we celebrate charities that save dogs, cats, rhinos, elephants, or pangolins, yet turn away from the colossal industries that mutilate and kill over 90 billion land animals each year – including babies – for food we do not need? Food that is devastating our planet’s life-support systems?

I know this is uncomfortable. I felt that too. But seven years ago, I chose to lean into that discomfort. And it changed everything.

I am not weak.

I am woke, for sure, for my eyes are wide open.

I am strong, in body and in mind.

I am fierce, and a force that will not be denied.

I am a voice for the vulnerable, the Planet and Mother Nature.

I am vegan.

Forever.