While cooking with my mom one day I asked her, “Mom, what do you do about your hands getting itchy?”

She replied, “Uh?” which is an acceptable foreigner’s way of saying, “What?”

“After seasoning the beef, don’t your hands feel itchy? What do you do about that?”

She pressed her eyebrows together, “Itchy?”

It took me twenty some-odd years to learn that it was not normal to have itchy hands after working with raw meat. Every time I seasoned chicken, made meatballs, or marinated pork or steak, my hands would get a little red and prickly. I couldn’t wait to get to the sink to wash my hands off and I just assumed this was everyone’s experience. (There’s a huge lesson there, but that’s for another post.)

“Oh, wow,” she said examining the backs of my hands. “Tu, filha, és alérgica.” You, daughter, are allergic.

What does this mean? Why do I experience an allergic reaction on my skin after handling raw meat? This was the first of many seeds that would get planted in my journey to vegetarianism.

Inflamed hands didn’t stop me from consuming meat at just about every meal. I loved the smell, the taste, and the comfort that having foods like alcatra would bring, a traditional pot roast from Terçeira, my mom’s island. There’s nothing better than hearing the sizzle of frying linguiça on the skillet, knowing I’ll get to snack on some with queijo and pão. (Cheese + bread + fried meat = love.) So many traditional dishes, often created out of necessity using scraps and leftovers, involve meat; their flavors associated with home. And who doesn’t want to feel at home?

Meat eating is absolutely entrenched in my Açorean culture. I grew up going to festas do Espirito Santo (Holy Ghost festivals) where roast beef, cabbage, and “wet bread” as my non-Portuguese friends would so lovingly call it, otherwise known as sopas, are served for free. These festivals are a tradition going back centuries, an act of service and love of community. We even had special buildings erected on the islands (usually next door to churches) for the offerings, the women carrying the over-sized loaves of bread in baskets on their heads, and the food being served in a nearby dining hall. Sopas without beef would be like community without people.

Growing up here in California as a first-generation American, our Portuguese roots ran deep. If anyone were to come over unexpectedly (yes, unexpected visits were welcomed back in the day), we pulled out all of the food in the refrigerator out for you, even if it was all we had, because food is community, and so long as we are together, we could figure anything out. And if we knew in advance you were coming, you can be sure there would be some type of fried cod or roasted mackerel somewhere in the mix. I can’t even begin to describe how much I adore this sentiment of connection and service.

With all of this meat so effortlessly interwoven with a sense of belonging, never would I believe it was something I could remove from my life. Until…

College. Ah, yes, the institution of higher learning. What a beautiful place, made even more so by teachers who actually give a fuck and who are morally sound. (Shout out to my high school history teacher, Mr. Dwyer!) It was in college where I dug deep into the gross machine that is factory farming. A research project that would be something I would hold on to for life. There were a ton of documentaries out there boasting the positives of a plant-based diet, but none of it felt practical. Yes, I care about the environment. Yes, I care about animals. And it sucks that “farming” destroys both, but it’s just the way it is and what can I do? I learned a lot by researching and presenting that project, but for whatever reason it wasn’t enough to spark a real and lasting change. Brain, insert seed.

I looked up veganism online, the pros and cons, the protein debate, and figured it was too hard for me, but I met up with a local and outspoken vegan in my community and had a conversation about the why and how. I left with a lot of good information, albeit from her lens, but I still wasn’t convinced.

A couple of years ago, I found myself having a really hard time chewing meat. Wouldn’t matter what kind, how tender, or if it was something I loved—I just couldn’t bring myself to swallow. I would take the tiniest bites and chew for days, trying to get the morsel into a manageable size and force myself to choke it down. I ended up leaving a lot of meat behind on the plate and filling up on sides. This didn’t happen at every meal, but it happened often enough to ask myself what was up. Was this yet another anxiety trigger? (I seem to add more and more as I get older.) Or maybe this was just my body’s way of saying, “I don’t want this.”

Ever since I had my firstborn, who is now fourteen, I’ve had slightly high cholesterol. Not too high, just right on the precipice of being high. Until about nine months ago when I had blood-work done that revealed I was now on the “low” side of high. I’ve otherwise always been healthy—no blood pressure issues, no heart concerns, etc.—but that cholesterol was a nasty thorn on my side. Add to this that my father died of a stroke in 2012, and I knew it was something I had to get in order.

First stop on the “lower my cholesterol” train was reducing my meat intake, which was really a welcomed change given my struggle with wanting to eat it lately. To my surprise, my husband was on board, so we started looking up vegetarian recipes and began to add them to our repertoire.

One of my good friends likes to encourage me to listen to podcasts or watch TED Talks in my spare time, as a caring way of helping me be my best self. She listens to them, too, and we’ll share ideas. (Get yourself a friend like this. Seriously.) During one of these phases, I came across a TED Talk on why this doctor had decided to become vegan. I had just gotten my blood-work done, so I guess that’s why I gravitated to the title, but one of the first things he said hit me like a ton of bricks.

He was an ER doctor for a time, and he described all of the gore and violence he witnessed daily. He left the ER because, as someone who wanted to live as non-violently as possible, he didn’t want to be surrounded by the carnage anymore. He described his decision to leave to a friend over a steak dinner and the friend pointed out to him that if he wanted to be non-violent, he may want to start with his plate.

Something about that clicked for me. Yes, I knew about the violence at factory farms, but I distanced myself from it by attributing it to someone else. It was their violence, not mine. And as obvious as it seems now, it hadn’t occurred to me that with every bite I was complicit.

That was it. No profound moment, no deep conviction, just a simple desire to be less violent, to put ethics in action. And finally all of the seeds I’d collected over the years took root.

Truth be told, I don’t even like animals all that much. I am highly allergic to cats, dogs, horses, cows, etc. and being around them leads me to feeling absolutely miserable, so it’s not like I’m heartless toward them, but I don’t have a deep affinity for them either.

I also don’t believe that eating animals is inherently bad or wrong. (Yes, you read that right.) BIPOC have been sustainably eating meat for centuries. It’s us white folk that came around and fucked everything up as per uzh with the ‘Merica attitude of making everything bigger and “better.” I do believe that animals are here as helpers for us and that includes consuming their meat for nutrition. I can see how it could be/has been a sacred act done with love and respect. But I also feel that given the resources we have now and the available alternatives, there’s no reason any sentient being has to die just for our consumption, or worse yet, our pleasure.

Although plants don’t have nervous systems, we do know they can communicate. [1] As such, I’ve heard it argued that being vegan is also an act of killing by consuming plants. As common-sensical (I’m going to go ahead and make that a word now) as it may seem to note the difference between animals and plants, I also know there’s a shit ton I don’t know I don’t know, so I won’t discredit the potential for sentience. We all know that, although not sentient in a sense we can perceive, plants are living things and by consuming them, their life ends. Just as I believe animals are our helpers, I believe plants are our helpers, too. It all comes down to respect.

Or we could all just live off of prana alone, but that’s another theory for another day. (Probably another lifetime.)

I don’t personally feel that eating meat multiple times a day is part of a healthy diet for anyone, but I do believe that for a lot of people, having some is necessary. I don’t judge or make assumptions about anyone’s food choices, even when someone chooses to consume meat unsustainably. It’s a complicated topic that’s very personal and rooted in culture and economics, and I’m not here to point the finger. This is simply my journey and where I stand.

It’s been seven months since I have eaten meat. I occasionally consume foods that have milk and eggs in the ingredients, but I’m currently about 90% vegan. Will I ever eat meat again? It’s possible. I try not to live by absolutes, but for the foreseeable future, I couldn’t imagine it. I feel better physically in that I’ve been pooping regularly and without constipation for months, as well as emotionally and spiritually because, for me, ingesting the energy of death was really bringing me down. I feel like I’ve been vibing (another word I’m going to let be a word) higher than ever, and I see no reason to come down.

Who are you? No, I mean, who are you really?

With each evolution of self comes the obvious growing pains, and with this recent shit, I found myself grappling with the social dynamics that make me uncomfortable or question my self-worth.

In a group setting, I can be either outspoken or very quiet depending on a combination of who else is in the room and how I'm feeling in my own skin at that particular moment, and THAT BOTHERS ME SO MUCH.

I wish I could just be...free, but sometimes it feels like my brain just shuts off, I can’t think of anything to say, and I want to shrink. And I can't pinpoint WHY, thus turning the hamster wheel of why am I this way, woe is me, everyone hates me, I need to stay home. (I don't recommend it.)

The healing work is ongoing. I'm working on loving myself every day and not continuing the unhelpful patterns of poor perspectives, and I recently realized that it's not that I don't know who I am--it's a matter of EMBRACING what I know about myself (all of it) and giving myself the space to change. In time, I will be able to walk into any room and relax into myself. No need for a set outcome or to be (insert adjective here).