Sharing this story of my life's journey to veganism - and the psychic empath experience that awakened me 15 years ago. I hope it will be educational and open the hearts and minds of some who are ready to awaken! Please share! Looking forward to being a voice for animals as a keynote speaker (Animal Communication Partnered with Veganism) at the May 2nd Vegan Awareness Festival Fundraiser for the 4th generation Texas cattle ranch turned vegan farm animal sanctuary - Rowdy Girl Sanctuary. MY STORY:

 

As a child, I came into this world feeling a connection to all animals that portrayed the inherent love, kindness, and equality towards them that most children naturally have – that is, before society’s programming usually imprints them otherwise. My especially deep solidarity with animals was evidenced by my desire and acceptance of only toys that were in the likeness of animals (with the exception of one ‘human’ doll my entire childhood). ‘Stuffed’ animal toys, little plastic animals of all species – including wild and ‘farmed’ animals - were my delight and happy zone. I spent hours every day ‘rescuing’, setting up little sanctuaries, and ‘feeding and watering’ the animals. 

 

During the two weeks spent every summer at my grandparents small crop farm, the three cows there were my gentle and trusting friends. They nuzzled my hands and affectionately kissed my face. As most children would feel, this was a cherished and exciting experience that filled me with awe…until one day I was told that my beloved friends had ‘wandered away and couldn't be found’. As a child, I detested eating ‘meat’ and would chew one bite over and over without swallowing for an hour.

 

But by my high school years, society’s programming and my desperate need to fit in had effectively, albeit temporarily, grasped and dominated my soul. I enjoyed ‘steaks’ in the nice restaurants my boyfriend took me to as much as anyone probably ever has…convincing myself that I hadn’t liked ‘meat’ as a child because my mother didn’t know how to 'cook' it. Now, cut to me in my mid 30’s…a full-fledged fledgling of societal tradition. And, here it is…the easiest choice I’ve ever made.

 

Two days before Thanksgiving (1996), I was cooking what I referred to then as a 'pork roast' for a pre-holiday dinner at my house for visiting family. While mindlessly picking this raw body part up out of the sink where I had just cut its fat off, and while simultaneously thinking about a million other things to be done to prepare for the 'holiday' (with no thought anywhere in my mind that this had once been a somebody), I suddenly, spontaneously, out of the blue, with no warning…had my first psychic ‘empath’ experience.

 

All combined (within a matter of seconds), I felt this pig's lifetime of extreme agony and terror...both ‘seeing’ and feeling a slide show of his/her unbearable suffering both in life and in death. Everything that this pig had suffered (physically, emotionally, and mentally) which was obviously extremely intense and unspeakable, coursed indescribably through my own body and emotions. The experience was so shocking and consuming that I involuntarily dropped the pig's body into the sink - my hands no longer able to maintain their grasp - and collapsed to the floor...the breath gone from me. While in a heaving, broken heap on the floor, a spontaneous and unprovoked message thought entered my mind that said, 'If you want to be on the path you say you want to be on, you can no longer eat your animal friends'. That message wasn’t necessary…I had ‘gotten’ it.

 

Regardless of the impact on my ‘path’, what I had just experienced was something I knew I would never ever again willingly be the cause for another living being to suffer. No words can describe what I felt, in what was surely even a watered down version of what this highly sensitive and fully sentient pig had actually suffered day after day...absolutely no words…none. Later, when I learned of factory farms (which at the time I had no idea existed), what I had 'seen' and felt this pig experience matched the worst abuses of that industry. (Though I hadn’t seen the movie ‘Powder’ yet, what I had was the same intensity of experience that the hunting sheriff in the movie experienced when Powder placed his hand on him, causing him to feel all aspects of the dying deer’s suffering and fear.)

 

When finally able to gradually, inch by inch, pull myself back up by holding the kitchen counter, I staggered on weak and wobbling legs to the room where my then husband was and said in a low, quiet voice I hardly recognized. 'I'm vegetarian now. I don't buy, cook, eat, or wear animals anymore.’ (I didn’t know the term vegan yet!) For dinner that night, everyone dined on the other food dishes I had already prepared that contained no animals...for I had given the pig's body a sorrowful and respectful burial.

 

From that moment, I decided that even if veganism was something that 'wouldn't work for my body' or was somehow impossible, I was going to make it work because...my heart had said so in that moment of quantum revelation, end of discussion. At a sibling’s house two days later for Thanksgiving with the usual faire of 'turkey' and other food items from animals right in front of me (of which I had always participated in), there was not even a hint of a desire or temptation to eat them. Instead, I sat in the glow of a soulful joy that I was harming no one and I enjoyed with sacred relish the non-animal food that was there. I had seen through the programming and the specieism matrix that imprisons both animals and the true spirit of a soul with a human body, and that was it from then on. I was free.

 

I had no cravings to cause and eat the suffering (in life and death) of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks or any other animal. Except very sadly, I managed to convince myself that I would still need to occasionally eat fish and that they didn't feel pain or fear. Two years later, when I re-visited what happens to dolphins in tuna nets, I instantly – from one hour to the next - became fully vegan. I later learned that scientists (as if we needed validation for what our hearts surely already know) have found that fish absolutely feel pain and fear...and they want to LIVE in peace and freedom...just as we all do.

 

I have now been fully vegan for 15 years, and to my knowledge - except during a time of extreme emotional addiction to chocolate when I heart-wrenchingly ate several packages of a friend’s non-vegan chocolate cookies and now regret the marring of my otherwise solid journey - I have not eaten, used, or worn anything from animals (including fish!).

 

After becoming vegan, the ‘hypoglycemia’ I had experienced throughout my life dissipated, and other multiple health issues I had improved dramatically to no longer being an issue. I am not on any prescription medications, and have not gone to a medical doctor in 8 years, except for routine tests. I have more energy than even as a child, and have done things I would never have imagined my body and psyche being able to do….such as animal disaster rescue in ground zeros. And, although I became vegan for 100% ethical and compassionate reasons, another wondrous benefit has been that my natural intuitive gifts awakened and have heightened synchronistically in lieu with my compassionate vegan journey!

 

We all have inherent intuitive and empath abilities, and those gifts are awakening in us all. It’s really just a deeply open heart. I believe a more compassionate day is dawning on earth when, as our hearts open even more, we will not be able to ‘turn off’ the suffering of other living beings so that we can live in complacency and self-absorbency. If we even begin to cause or contribute to the suffering of another, either knowingly or unknowingly, we will ‘feel it’ empathically. We can then use that as a gauge to make different lifestyle choices that fulfill love, compassion, and non-harm to others.

 

It’s easy to no longer use animals - once we go from disconnect in our heart, to connect…and remember what our spirit has always known: that we didn’t come into this life in bodies that require us to harm any other sentient being in order to live… or to thrive. Once awakened, we make a quantum leap with no going back and no desire to go back. Gravity in the heart for a leap backwards just simply, and beautifully, no longer exists. 

~ Kathy Landry / © 2011 Kathy Landry 

     www.KathyLandryPsychicMedium.com

 

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     Psychic Medium Kathy Landry