Songs of a Former Vegan

My journey back into true inner wisdom and full-bodied nourishment.

Meat is murder….

So they say 

Those words dripped from my very own mouth for years before I remembered the innate reciprocity between me and the land.

For the animals, they say 

So I said too before I embraced the natural law of ‘I eat you and you eat me’.

Meat is killing the earth, they say 

That ideology rang in me so thoroughly that I was convinced there was no other way, until the earth herself met me in a moment of embodiment and told me of her everlasting life.

Hi, I'm Marija, and I am a recovering vegan. 

Okay okay, not so much recovering. It was a really profound journey for me to re-embrace my innate, ancestral and fully nourished ways of eating that stepped out of toxic diet paradigms of health and wellness and deeper into true wholeness, nourishment and reverence for life. Coming back to the truth that sang its song inside of me, not something out. Not something someone told me to believe in, or convinced me was true, but what was fully felt, lived, and known within me. Ah yes, that inner wisdom. That tool they have taught us to ignore. Reclaiming it is our greatest strength. 

For many years I believed that by no longer eating meat I miraculously removed myself from the inevitable cycles of life and death that keep the earth replenished. The vitality bringing songs of the earth. As though these ancient cycles can be dissected and picked apart based on what is clean, kind and orderly to humans. As though one can take what is "good" and leave the rest. I thought that eating meat was some kind of spiritual sin that I rose above through my own awareness and discipline. lol. I thought I no longer participated in the killing of the earth - as though we mere mortals could kill such a magnanimous creature. There were many thoughts that swirled in my head about how I did better as a human due to my food choices. Veganism as a whole - now that I am no longer participating in its narratives and can hold a more expanded perspective of it - feels almost like a cult of those who think they are better, more spiritual, more loving, than these dirty hunters, carnivores and overall ignorant folk. 

Stay humble friends. 

I don't know if you caught that, but I noticed a few years ago a huge shift in consciousness on a global scale around our food and nourishment. I too was taken by its vibrating threads of wisdom and recalibrated to truth. It is beautiful how these shifts can and do happen in these greater planetary attunements. Many of those who once called themselves vegan, suddenly, weren't. 

Some months before I was visiting my sister in Serbia and she was telling me about the potent medicine of bone broth and raw beef liver. At this time I was a big no to all that, and I won’t lie that I internally judged her for it. Ah yes, I was indeed one of those judgemental vegan pricks, thinking my way was the best, no matter how much I said I wasn’t. There really was nothing she could do or say to me at that point that would convince me otherwise because I wore this identity like a badge of honour. I was not open to receive anything else. I was knee-deep in my saucy hyper clean eating phase. What I thought health looked like. Oh, how times have changed. 

Fast forward a few months, I'm living in Mexico and am noticing my body feeling depleted. Perhaps it was all those years of backpacking. Or perhaps it was my lack of true sustenance in my food sources that caught up with me. Both probably. Well anyway, my hair was falling out like mad and that really made me question everything. While that was happening a friend was talking to me about how she had started eating eggs again (she was also vegan) and now I found myself at a point where I felt open for change. I listened and felt intrigued. My body was guiding me really, because I felt like something was missing in my nourishment. I felt it so tangibly in my being that I could not ignore it. There was a pull from inside my belly - a sort of get inside of me right now feeling - at the thought of delicious, savoury eggs and I didn’t resist. And oh baby did it feel good. The lights that I didn’t notice had dimmed inside me suddenly switched on with fantastical colour. At the same time, I was learning through the beautiful World Wide Web of all those former vegans who were beginning to eat meat again. There was talk of true nourishment, ancestral eating, and general reality-crushing thoughts for my former vegan self. Where a few months before I was very much a no, this time I saw myself taken by it all as though my ripe loins finally surrendered to the pleas of a sweet lover at last. After all this time. 

At first, I started with just eating eggs again, until cheese greeted me like a forgotten friend and finally meat came galavanting in like a wise grandmother, reminding me of where I come from, and what I belong to. 

Finally being out of it, I saw my former lifestyle in a new light. After years deeply immersed in this way of thinking that had totally infiltrated my being without any room for questioning, I felt…….expanded. I felt alive with a sense of clarity. I felt fucking vibrant. My body was nourished in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. I realized how my body was communicating uneasiness to me all that time, I just couldn't read the signs. After coming back to a more natural way of eating for myself, I saw how my body recalibrated back to her fully nourished self. 

And just like that, this stream of consciousness washed over me. Of all the things I couldn’t see before. All the things I didn’t let myself see, refused even to see. First of all how arrogant I was in thinking that my way was the best way of having a loving, nourishing and wholesome relationship with life. I sat my ass back down on the earth and kissed the feet of all those I claimed were devious misfits. My world was cracked open into the arms of my ancestors in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. Through my belly. Food became an altar to life through which I could commune with and pray to. It was no longer laced with judgements and criticism and dogmas, it became a sacred thing, each meal an act of communion with the world around me. It was no longer steeped in toxic diet culture of good food and bad food and restrictive eating, but softened, grew more compassionate even. For myself. For the food I consumed. The land that gave me sustenance. It was allowed to be what it was. Through all this I realized how tightly I was holding my body on a leash - again, based on the human’s concepts and not my body’s innate and ancestral nature. That is something that really rocked my boat, letting my body be an animal again. Letting my body rip into flesh and devour. That primal desire that was suppressed because I judged it as uncivilized was finally set free. And the floodgates opened. 

I remembered this innate love I held inside of me for ALL of life. The animals that I overemphasized, yes, and also the crops, the trees, the rivers, the mud, the air. It all came alive with importance and memory. I remembered the aspects of life - which are all of them - that are fed through another’s death. That are born in the flames of another’s demise. That are killed so another may be nourished. The cycles of life/death/rebirth that I spoke about as a spiritual concept suddenly came alive as actual lived realities of life on earth. Rooted. Experienced. Here I was integrating myself as a part of it all again. I saw how my time as a vegan was me trying to remove myself from an inevitable, loving, and grounded cycle. From natural law. The spiral itself that gives life and takes it away. I was trying to remove myself from acts of harm - as though my food choices suddenly exempted me from any. As though I could be a participant here on earth without participating in death. As though I could pick and choose based on my human opinions of good and bad. I see now that those realities I thought I was living in were illusions of embodiment. The truth was that I wasn’t genuinely connected to the needs of my body.

It was in this reintegration with life that led me back into the embrace of wholeness. Stepping back into the spiral. Becoming a part of it all again - not that I was ever really, truly removed from it, but separated through my own detachment. 

One cannot remove themselves from this cycle of life and death, because it is the fabric from which we all live and breath

Now yes, does the mass production of animals in agriculture have its significant side effects? Yeah, sure. That is not the same connection to one's food source as what our ancestors had. Neither is any of the food we buy in our grocery stores btw. Life looks different now. And that's okay. Mass production as a whole is harmful, not just when it comes to animal farming, but for food crops too. For factories. For our clothes. For our cars. Our apartments. On and on. That is just life right now. One can always find something to complain about. In this web, there is always something that affects another. Yet claiming to not participate in this is an illusion. It would be to not live. To just sit on the ground and meditate your whole life. Maybe that is some people's journey here. It’s not mine. And it’s not the majority of beings here. Again, thinking you can step out of this just by refusing to eat meat is dilutional.

Maybe the point isn’t to “do no harm”, but to LIVE in WHOLENESS. To live as life is meant to be lived. In connection with the land. With our relatives. With our birthright of sustenance. To let yourself be taken care of by the earth, and in turn, take care of her. To step off that high horse and greet your kin back down here on the ground. 

My journey back to eating meat has led me to meet death in a way I have never known before. That is healing. To connect more deeply with my food sources. To live in reverence of what it takes for me to be nourished. And for the ways I may nourish others. It is reciprocity. To fully take my place as a creature upon the earth. It's okay to take up space dear love. You are here. Your presence affects others, that is inevitable.

What do I want now? I want to know it all. I want to fully participate in life's unfolding. To claim it as my own. To be the hands through which it may take root. I want to feel the blood on my skin, to see how a life has been given for my own. I want the soil in between my fingernails, to know what it takes to grow my food. I want to see the earth transform, to remember her aliveness and all the ways I am nourished upon her back. I want to be a part of life, rather than something separate or above. 

For me, it was a journey moving out of falsehood and deeper into truth. Veganism no longer felt like it was about the earth, the animals, or your health. It became another activist shouting on the street as though that is what creates change. It was another someone telling people what they should do, teaching them to bypass their own body autonomy and wisdom. It has become another something that people need to FIGHT for. People always need something to fight for huh. Well, I don’t wanna fight anymore. I just wanna LIVE, with my heart open and my belly full, my bare feet on the ground and my hands upon all that I love and cherish. 

May it be so.