Sta.sh
~vegtomato is going to translate this journal into chinese to post into his website Vegtomato.
So, I'll create some new journal entries to make you, dear members, participate! Hope you'll like the subjects and be talkative
THANK YOU ALL for submitting your testimonials! It was a real pleasure to read your stories and I'm sure you were glad to read the stories of the others members as well
Of course, this journal is not closed, any new comer is welcome to post her/his story too
HOW DID YOU BECOME VEGAN?
All vegans love animals and respect them, that's a fact. But how did you turn vegan? Are maybe were you born in a vegan family?
How does it happen? How old were you? Was it hard for you to make the decision? How did react your family and friends?
Veganism is always a main subject of discussion with people. So, I'm sure you have plenty of stories to tell us, don't be shy.
Sometimes, we feel lonely because we think nobody understands how we see things. Sharing are stories will cheer us up, I think. We'll see how much we're alike, that we all go through the same things but maybe in different ways.
I'm waiting for your comments!
I was born in an omnivorous family.
We had a dog (my mom's) and later we had goldfish (my brothers' and mine). We also had birds.
I was told to love animals, that they were part of the family as we were ourselves.
For my 8th anniversary, I had a female guinea pig: the love of my life. And also the start of the infinite love I've had for guinea pigs ever since.
On rainy days, I took away from the path snails and slugs and worms to put them back in the grass. When we saw an injured birds or hedgehogs (even a bat, once), we tried to ill them. Sometimes they get better and were released but mostly, they died. We buried all of them in our garden.
We were against corrida, hunting and any sort of animal abuse... But every day, we had our share of dead flesh called "meat".
I grew up in a small town in the countryside, so, people don't like change and "new ideas". We only knew one vegetarian woman and we made laugh of her speaking about her diet.
Years went on...
Around 17, I tried for a very short time to be vegetarian, but it wasn't enough well thought and I supposed I didn't know at that time why exactly I was doing it. And the "vegetarian diet" wasn't good enough for me, I still felt like there was some injustice going on. So, after less than a month, I get back to meat, eating the food my mom cooked.
Then, when I entered university, I lived for the first time out of my parents' place, leaving all week in my student room with food to cook and... to buy. This is when it hit me.
I remember being in front of this meat in the store and that I thought "I can't buy this, I'm not giving my money for a murder".
So, I bought instead soya steaks and all other stuff like that. My roommates asked questions and accepted with no laugh my diet.
When I get back home, I told my parents I was becoming vegan (yet, as we had hens at this moment, I ate their eggs). My father answered me "As long as you keep yourself informed to be healthy, it's okay". And even though he was still omnivorous, during family diners (with aunts, uncles...) he supported me against them and told them about animals, the miserable conditions they live in.
At once, I quit meat, leather, wool, tested cosmetics.
Quitting meat wasn't hard at all for me. I stopped eggs when my hens died (mostly of illness, because rescued hens from egg farms are very fragile). Milk was very easy to forget because I was already drinking soya milk as I've never been able to digest cow milk. For cosmetics, I've always been against testing, but I didn't pay attention when buying my shampoo, though, I always refused to put make-up. When I found brands that were vegan, I started putting make-up on my face.
The hardest part was cheese. I'm french. I've always looooved cheese. I didn't buy any but it was very hard for me to say "no" when I was proposed some during a diner. For many years now, even if I'm missing the taste of it, I'm strong enough to resist the temptation
This year 2013 will celebrate my 10 years of being vegan.
Last year, my mom told me that my father and she were thinking of becoming vegetarian.
to make the club a bit more alive, I propose you something :
Hungry ? Or in need of recipes ideas ? 
Deviants
