Sophie "Facon"

For 10 years most people didn't know I was vegetarian; it only became apparent when I went to eat out with anyone. When I ate at school I'd often get "enjoying your rabbit food?" thrown at me and my default response became agreeing and some kind of imitation of a rabbit. I never stood up for myself and made people realise it was upsetting, but mostly annoying. When people say things now, such as "don't you miss meat?" "we are made to eat animals" "and the classic "but, Bacon?!" I don't shy away. Learning how to voice your beliefs, educate people and be proud of you lining your morals up with your actions feels great. When you begin to become confident with showing your pride it is difficult to not get angry at times. When people can't see that their lives clearly don't line with what they believe to be right and wrong it's infuriating to try and reason with people. You can talk to people and fin...

Daily life is a struggle for some. Anxiety and stress overpower people. Some people have figured (some of) the triggers and for others it's still a journey. For myself, going vegan made me realise some triggers for my own anxiety and depression.  Growing up I always had a distant relationship with food. I was that kid in the YouTube video crying because she doesn't understand why we eat chickens, pigs and cows. Then due to situations out of my control I suffered with an ED as a teenager. I went 6 months only eating custard creams, bananas and my nans homemade Quorn spag bol. I was vegetarian from the age of 12-20.  The decision to go vegan was one I'd thought about for a long time before transitioning. The main reasons I didn't do it straight away was because I didn't want to be awkward, a nuisance, or to draw attention to myself (oh, and coleslaw). When I realised my food choices were contributing to my anxiety I knew I had to stop putting myself...

Confrontation is something we all have to deal with. Some cope better than others. It's all about keeping calm and collected and getting your side across in a convincing, compassionate way. I've never been very good at that. There's an important person in my life that I've always clashed with. We are polar opposite. Doesn't mean I don't care about them still though. Over the years we've found ourselves in many heated discussions and we both always have to be right. Recently though they found themselves in a room with 3 vegans, including myself, and they are far from even considering veganism (no matter how how I've tried). They bought up the topic of veganism.  In the room was my mum (for the animals), my other half (for his health) and myself (for the environment) so there was a wide array of opinions that even clashed within the 3 of us. The non-V (we'll call them) knows what happens to the animals, we've made them watch enough foot...

Everyone has a tipping point; that one moment where everything syncs in your mind and you realise your morals and compassion have to align with your daily lifestyle. Some come later than others and that’s okay, as long as we all get there in the end for humanities sake. My realisation didn’t come until Christmas 2015, I was 20. Some may say this is early in life to realise but I’m still astonished it didn’t come sooner. After being vegetarian for 8 years, purely because I thought it was weird to eat a living being and didn’t feel comfortable doing so, I watched Cowspiracy whilst eating a cheese pizza. That was the last dairy I knowingly ate (apart from the occasional curry shop mint sauce that I will come back to later). School was constantly feeling left out, being called “rabbit” and people finding my ironic surname “Bacon” hilarious on a daily basis (people still mention it when they find out and I just let them have a little giggle and get over ...