Ella Magers, shares her transformative journey of veganism and how she learned to live a healthy, fit, vegan lifestyle while helping others to do the same.
Part One
It all started when I was seven years old.
My mom had picked me up after school to take me to gymnastics practice and asked how my day was. I told her we had learned about Daniel Boone (in case you don’t know, Daniel Boone was one of our first American folk heroes who infamously carried around a shotgun and wore a raccoon hat).
I was confused. “Daniel Boone was supposed to be a hero mom, but he was not.” I said. “He was a mean man. He killed and ate animals!”
My mom was honest with me. She said, “Well Ella, we are just fortunate now-a-days. Unlike Daniel Boone, we get to go to the grocery store to buy our meat.”
It was at that moment that I connected the food on my plate with the animal that it was. I was horrified! I told my mom, “I’m not going to do that anymore.”
That was it – I never ate meat again.
I was extremely fortunate to have such loving parents. They gave me the freedom to explore who I was, and what was most important to me in this world.
Not only did I stop eating meat, but I had also discovered my purpose in life. Every chance I got, I wrote about how it simply made no sense for people to eat animals. Why would we kill another living being when we can easily live without inflicting such suffering?
I couldn’t understand how anyone could love their dog and then turn around and eat a pig. I saw all creatures on this earth as equal in their right to live. And I saw us, as humans, the only species with the ability to consciously choose whether or not we eat other animals.