Sophie "Facon"

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...

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 ...