What If We Just Stopped Looking Away?

A gentle invitation to see, to feel, and to choose with compassion.

As I walked through the grocery store, moving quietly past the meat and dairy cases, the weight of it hit me again. Row after row. Package after package. Cold, clean, and brightly lit.
And yet, all I could see was pain.

Not in a melodramatic way. Not in a “let me make you feel bad” kind of way. But in that quiet, soul-level ache that happens when you know—when you can’t un-know—and you wonder how we all keep walking past it, pretending we don’t.

I'm not writing this to pass judgment. My goal is 'awakening'.
Because I didn’t always know, either.

I was raised like many of us—on milk, eggs, meat at every meal. My family were cattle ranchers just a few generations back. Texas stock. Early Mormon pioneers who moved their herd to northeastern Arizona and made a life from the land and the animals they raised. My own father kept chickens, rabbits, goats. Much of our food came from these animals and our garden. It was part of life. We were taught this was healthy.  Virtuous, even.  

It wasn’t until my fifties that I began to truly question the deeper cost.
The cost to the animals.
The cost to the planet.
The cost to my own alignment.

Now, nearly five years into choosing a vegan lifestyle, I can’t unknow what I’ve learned—and I don’t want to.

I know that billions of animals are bred in America each year—not to live free, not to be honored—but to be used. Artificially inseminated, separated from their young, confined, mutilated, and eventually killed. Every hot dog on a grill, every gallon of milk in a cart, every neatly-wrapped package of chicken breast… it all came from someone who wanted to live.

It’s overwhelming, I know. It was for me, too.

But here’s the thing I believe with my whole heart:
Most people are good.
Most people care.
They just haven’t been told the truth.  Or they continue to choose not to look because they know there is no going back from the knowing.

So I’m not here to shame anyone. I’m here to say: maybe it’s time we stop looking away.

Maybe it’s time to get curious. To ask questions. To read the label—not just for calories, but for conscience.
To try one plant-based day a week.
To swap almond milk for dairy.
To notice how it feels in your body and your heart when you choose food that didn’t require suffering.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do know this:
We weren’t born to look away.
We were born to care.
And when we let that caring lead us, even a little, the world begins to shift.

If you’re feeling a nudge, let it be a beginning.
If you’re grieving, you’re not alone.
And if you’re already walking this path, I’m honored to be walking it beside you.

With compassion,
~ V