Less isn’t more; it’s really less. A friend and I were chatting and I commented that less is not more. He applauded stating he was so grateful I stated that truth. What people really mean when they comment that less is more is that the eye can only see so much at one time. In the world of design, we can fool the eye to believing a space is more expansive than it is, draw the eye up or down, all based upon colours, shots of material and decor. Things too busy can become dizzying to look at. In our old Edwardian, we had many sitting rooms and loads of tchotchkes. In our new home, which is a modern, all the stuff had to be paired down significantly or eradicated prior to moving because it was not right for the new place. It wasn’t meshing well with the new us. We wanted a pad all one level so all the pets and family could be all on one floor. Pairing things down meant more space between stuff, giving the eye a rest. Having space make things easier to clean as well. And as you build up your interior with decor pieces, you find the truly great items really stand out when they have some room to say something. Less is more.

I’ll be 59 this year. Creating some space, making things easier to clean and not having to do a bee dance or agility course to get from one room of the house to another, make sense…makes peace.

Then I was laid off suddenly. Here’s the thing with the whole less is more bit….When you feel wealthy, feel at least comfortable, there’s food on the table, good food, and fluffy pillows on your nice sofa, you have a bit of discretionary income for the things, yoga class, pottery, the housekeeper, chef school, that you really want to include into your lifestyle, then it gets easier to spout on about how less is more. When you feel needy, feel like you may not get all that you want, is when the tendency is to fill your surroundings with more stuff.

My knee-jerk reaction to suddenly having my contract terminated was to get re-employed corporately swiftly as possible with an offer my Contractor brought to me the same day I was let go. That work, sadly, didn’t materialize and then I spiraled. I’m not used to marketing myself or being out of a job. I am used to being in the top 10% at whatever company I work for at whatever job I do. I excel at working with people and love to help solve problems. If only I could get my arse into a new job. I began having nightmares about this job loss and between the overly long hours at a company I worked at for 28 years and this latest that actually forgot to tell me when I was laid off so I continued working at a job I no longer had, I decided perhaps I am done with corporate work. I had just traded in my paid for car so I had a car payment. After a couple of months where I didn’t see a new job on the horizon, I cashed that car in at the dealership. Not having a car in Dallas is not an easy thing at all.

I’d love to segue into this blog, helping folks detox their daily lives, get them using the amazing organic products and help a few animals each week with my massage therapy practice and call it my new life. I don’t require 10k/mo but 5k would be nice. Building this business has taken a lot of time and expense to get up and going. I went from 10k/mo to my $576.00 pension and whatever I sell. So it is with my new situation that I have begun to think about frugality and how less isn’t more at all, it’s freaking less for pete’s sake! But having less may not necessarily be a bad thing. It’s our nature to assume whatever is happening currently, for better or worse, is the way of it. If you’re up high on life right now, the feeling is that this will never end. This high will always be. Conversely, if you’re doubled over in agony, having a pity party on the epic scale, it, too seems to be far more permanent than it actually is as life’s magic twists and turns leaving tendrils of joy, pain, loss, hope, attainment and finally transcendence.

There can also be too much clutter in our heads, in our thoughts. As we clutter our lives with spent magazines, empty cups and too much of even the very nicest of things, we can overfill our heads where there isn’t space or room to quietly contemplate.

Lives and situations change. Also what we can label good or bad really are just experiences and how we choose to classify them. Things are not always as they appear. It is important to be grateful and see all the blessings around you, even in the face of adversity. Whether you are downsizing on purpose or a decision was made for you, take a look around and see where you can scale back so that
as you build up your interior fortitude, with careful meditation on your next steps, you’ll find the truly great ideas really stand out when they have some room to say something. Less is more.

I’m a plant-based lifestyle coach and my focus is on helping people detox. I took my studies with Hippocrates Health Institute so my guidance is based upon that as a cornerstone. Heading into veganism I was way out of my element at first. But I had already detoxed my makeup bag, personal care and home care 2 decades ago so that bit was easy. What wasn’t, was trying to educate others about these toxic dangers and also provide them fully researched clean, potent and pure options. Now that I was a coach, I wanted to incorporate a holistic practice that wasn’t just about food but the overall lifestyle which is also what Hippocrates and I agree adamantly on. In researching products I could promote with clients, I became a Brand Partner for what I believe to be the top 3 certified organic companies that offer partnerships or affiliations and downstream business opportunities for me and my clients who are also passionate about health and the planet and animals. A friend suggested that by scattering myself between these 3 organizations, I am diluting my message. I don’t see it that way. I see it as providing clean options to my clients and staying fresh and unbiased. Rather than align with and be wholly loyal to one company, I don’t believe any one company can do everything, so I am loyal to my brand, to PureTemple and what she represents. But this comment stuck with me so I wanted to put it out here.

Most of us must work for a living and it can be tricky to align our goals, ethics and monetary needs to the need for monetary sustainment. This blog is about the whole body, holistic wellness so if your spirit isn’t right, that throws the entire system out of whack. Whether the role you do today is temporary or a more permanent one, or in my case where I thought Sprint was temporary back in the early ’80s but ended up working 28 years there, what spirit we take into our day truly matters because not everything is as it seems. Even temporary place holders can be magical places to be.

Honoring wherever you are by acceptance and a willingness to learn is key to moving onward. My husband is in management. Folks these days don’t even give notice when they decide to stop working there, they just no call, no show. I would never dare be that disrespectful because I would prefer to pay goodness forward and never be saddled with the negative karma of purposeful rudeness and lack of empathy. I have seen some weird stuff in my time and you just never know who you will eventually cross paths with so some proactive diligence and attention are very important. Taking the high road leads to peace.

Wherever you are, what you are doing shouldn’t only be a paycheck, it should in some way align with your morals. If you’re vegan, adore animals but work in a slaughterhouse, that is going to be a rough sell, wearing you down and out. Hardening yourself to the truth will also wear you down and out. A friend of mine believes in reincarnation where we get new bodies and try this earthly stuff all over again, after having made plans and agreements ahead of time that we work out on this plane of existence in as many new bodies as it takes. If we get it right, we move onward and upward. If we don’t, we are right back to square. The buddha teaches that this life is pain. When you think about it, that is true. No matter what greatness you achieve in this life, no matter what joys, eventually you are smacked hard with pain. It is a part of this world. I was taught the pain of this world is due to the fall of man. But while some rest upon that and tend to cause more pains than necessary, I actively pursue avoiding unnecessary pain both for myself and others by trying hard to be proactive and diligent in my care. While we will not completely know the truth of spiritual matters on this plane, we can see good and evil at play, we can dial into our moral compass which is God-given and understand that on some level what we do matters as our actions ripple out into the universe of things.

I have gradually learned that it is only with an open mind, that I am able to add to my body of knowledge. When I think I know all the truth of a topic, that is when I let go of opportunity to be better enlightened.

Never lose sight of the opportunity to learn. A couple of decades ago, I left Sprint to work for one of its’ (and my) customers, LabCorp where, as a telecom manager, I was privy to the workings and failings of my old competition. I got to see first hand how ATT, MCI and other smaller players dropped the ball hard while Sprint had a real team behind its clients. After a couple of years, I returned to Sprint and commented that where I once saw our foibles, how we perhaps lost an account to our competition, I now saw, and from a clients perspective, how much we brought to the table.

I adore the saying where you stand depends upon where you sit as it is so true. This is why we all need to sometimes shift positions. It is exactly for this reason that I have shifted careers and am loyal to myself, to my agenda rather than one company or product.

What is your agenda? Other than getting paid, do you love helping people, calming tense situations or making folks laugh? Whatever you do, find some joy and your superpower in it. Coming from my typically long hours as a Project Manager over Implementations, I get that most folks don’t have the time, inclination or energy to double check themselves at every purchase, read every label and be equipped with the knowledge to actually understand what that label is telling them. People are still buying deodorants with aluminum, still getting toxic toothpaste from their dentist, buying toxic laundry soaps and house cleaners and wearing unnatural petrochemical clothing. The average person applies/ingests 200 chemicals by 9am just in getting ready for their day. My agenda is changing all that because I lost my entire immediate family to cancer. Enough with this darkness, let’s get out into the light and make things better! What, deep down, is your leading agenda and how do you incorporate that goal into every day living for yourself?

Who are you loyal to? Nix the Myopia. What and whom are you loyal to and why? You should be able to clearly define your answer and it should be deeper than earning a paycheck. Loyalty is a good thing, and I am saddened to see loyalty crash and burn in Corporate America these days as employees are tossed aside like empty take out cartons. Loyalty should not be misplaced. People get misled and companies can change direction. Remain aware of where your fielty lies. I see misplaced loyalty all the time over money. Most folks believe what they are sold/told and either don’t understand or have the time to take the deeper dive into what it is they are really selling. I was a Brand Partner with a company whom I was told was all natural and chemical free. I know my upline really wanted to believe the lies, however, I began ordering their products because I could not get a full disclosure on ingredients otherwise. With the products came full disclosure on all ingredients and much of it was toxic, full of chemicals and synthetics. I raised the flag and heard crickets not action. No shock no outrage no ‘Yes, I see that now, let me look because I want to help my people live truly cleaner lives.’ With whatever you do for work, try to keep an open mind and do your research rather than sell something less than which slowly erodes your soul.

Be Loyal to You. Here’s the problem; People put all their energy into one place, and can lose sight of themselves, their reason for being there. At the end of the day you have yourself and what you have done. I was taught not to put all my eggs into one basket as a child. And this made a whole lotta sense to me. Sure, you don’t want to get too scattered, but you do want to create new opportunities for growth and minimize your downstream risks. I work in Multi-Level Marketing. When one of my MLMs turned out to be not so natural, I immediately stopped promoting all but 2 decent products. And there went that revenue I was building. But I am loyal to an end goal of detoxing peoples lives so I must honor that. This is what I mean by being loyal to you, to what guides you and never compromise this. Never be comfortable just because you are earning money. End of Last May, I was earning 10k a month in the corporate sector. It was great. I was working an 8 hour day after over 17 years of thousands of non-paid overtime hours that affected my health so I was absolutely in heaven, loved learning something new, helping people, having my time back and earning a fair paycheck. Layoffs were not discussed. Even worse, I was not even told when my job ended because folks forgot to tell me I was laid off. I came to work the next day and started working at a job I no longer had. I mattered that bloody much. I had just bought a new car with a hefty car payment and begun a to the studs master bathroom remodel. Had there been even a whisper of contractors being laid off potentially these are two things I would NOT have started as I moved into a new year at this company and thought I had at least a 2-year contract. Within the week of my sudden departure one of my friendly co-workers read the signs and booty scooted too! She got the upper hand jump and with her mad skills got employed swiftlyhat and elsewhere. Sure, you may have a primary basket, but don’t put all of your eggs there. Build up other baskets, safety nets, revenue streams. I see with folks that people feel committed to remaining in something because it is familiar, they have built a team camaraderie, they are earning comfortably. But few companies are loyal these days to anything but their bottom line. They no longer even pretend to care about you. Ps, you were laid off yesterday, pack your shit up.

Why the tendency to keep all our eggs into one basket? If you really love the team you work with, you can always invite them into your new gig. The band can get back together again. If it doesn’t, then a higher purpose is being served so don’t worry about it. Keep yourself focused on what truly matters for your plan. Don’t be afraid to go off grid, off-roading. The worst that can happen is you will learn what works, what doesn’t and something about yourself you didn’t know before.

Nix DEBT and leave your stones behind. We all have bills but I want to caution about cash flow because not living your financial life in balance can mean an ethics slip or just flat working someplace you really would rather not just to pay the man. A friend going through a rough time a couple of years ago was really struggling with big decisions during a divorce. She was taking a very high road. I admired the path she was attempting, the elevation was very high so I applauded this, however, I myself would have definitely been throwing down some boulders along that high path of hers and stated as much. Well, I am very good sometimes at telling people what to do, not that they ever listen, but I do try. And sometimes I should simply shut up. My friend was stressed. She needed to vent not be told what to do, she was a full on adult capable of making her own smart decisions. I suddenly had the right thing to say to her and I have kept this question alive ever since because it applies to so much that we ever go through. When contemplating decisions, ask yourself ‘If I do that, will it bring me ultimately closer or farther away from peace?’ We can get edgy and jumpy and just want to think about right now, this moment, that shiny car or cute kitten but this question is a keeper. It keeps me focused on what truly matters and it will help you too. As we create ripples with every action we take, isn’t a focus on what brings us the greatest ultimate peace a great way to look outside ourselves and any immediate agenda into selflessness, into deeper matters?

What’s your slogan? Whether you work for yourself or a company, you are also a brand. How you engage with others every day helps create that brand, the brand of YOU! At Sprint I worked with a great manager, Scott Willis, who was responsible for giving me the opportunity to be an IPM. His slogan was ‘Where there’s a Willis, there’s a way.’ He lived up to that slogan. I want to make money but I never want that to become the main driver for why I do this work. I also want to spark others to question their motivations behind doing what they do as well so I created a slogan last year: If what you do for a living pollutes the earth, harms animals or people, then it’s not worth the effort or any amount of paper.’ This is on the signature line of all my emails. It helps me focus on how I can take my knowledge and apply that in the best service of my clients. It helps me to remain honest with my intentions and ever be humble I am able to do this work. As I build the brand, my brand, PureTemple, dedicated to learning and sharing ways to save our planet and detox our daily lives. I hold my goals in focus, progressively pursuing enlightened living. As you hone and manage your personal slogan, know that nothing is ever static. All of us are changing, evolving. Who you are today is not who you were yesterday. We learn from yesterday simply to inform a better future. Be blessed. ♥

The quiet worker – My next article is going to be about raising awareness about what you bring to the table. Because I typically work quietly, I have seen over the years that what I actually have contributed has gone completely unnoticed. Ages ago, when asking for a better raise, my manager, who I thought knew me well, knew my value, had not one clue. She gave me a smile and a pat me on the knee and explained that once I had a few escalations successfully dealt with under my belt, and become more seasoned, (I had been there 7+ years) that she’d give me that raise then. At the time I supported large accounts like Huges Aircraft and Taco Bell. And somehow she thought there was never discord? Ha! Of course there was. So I smiled and patted her knee as I explained to her that dear lord YES, there have been numerous escalations, several upsets a week in fact. The difference is that I know how to handle my people. You see, when I do my job well, it means nobody above me ever has to lift a finger which reduces the costs of doing the business.’ BOOM! 
There need not be histrionics that upset your co-workers (Sure, let me cancel MY lunch plans to help YOU do Your Job) or some other less than professional missive that insults your coworker and just makes everybody feel negative but definitely raise some noise. And always remember in the process, blowing out someone else’s candle won’t make yours burn any brighter.

Friends and family are so important, provided these relationships are healthy ones. These relationships help us feel bolstered, supported, less alone and enrich our lives in so many ways.   As people couple up, they tend to spend far less time with friends.  Add kids into the mix and you can feel even more estranged.  While coupling and having life sort of take over and back-seat your friends is part of the nature of things, it is also something we must be mindful of by working to carve out time for our near and dear.  Maintaining friendships and healthy relationships helps our self-esteem and keeps us balanced too.  Whether that’s a monthly friend lunch or beers after work or what have you, it is important to maintain your healthy friendships.  Healthy friendships are a necessity.  But what about codependent and abusive relationships?  They can be subtle like a light breeze through a doorway or a full-on hurricane. We all need a shoulder from time to time or a shared belly laugh.  We are driven to socialize and feel communion.  But co-dependent abusive relationships are not worth time or effort. The best way to spot them is by asking yourself how you feel after an exchange with the individual. Are they so wrapped up in themselves they forget plans with you or never bother to ask how you are doing because it’s all about them?

My mother came from an abusive background and it turns out we had a very codependent relationship.  And this book by Melody Beattie, Codependent No More, set me free of that.  It also ended a codependent relationship I was in with a man that exactly mirrored how my mother treated me.  For the very first time, I could see how I had played the victim and been manipulated and I could read it in 5 minutes in somebody else.  Healthy relationships always give and take and the relationships are not about getting something from you but looking out for your best interests.  Do you look out for your own best interests?

Some folks in your life, no matter how superficial or how deeply entrenched they appear to be, are just there for the beer.  And Facebook has made this far worse.  Yes, FB is great for those out of town friends and ex-colleagues to catch up with that you otherwise wouldn’t or only do so very sporadically, but FB has also taken place of actually seeing people!  If you have a car and live in the same city, you should connect physically periodically and talk live, do lunch, have a glass of wine together and catch up, have real conversations that you really cannot have on FB because on Facebook, it seems that most people get on there to hear happiness and flowers. There is only a very short attention span for any real dramas.  Most aren’t on there for serious issues and private messaging is cumbersome and wordy at best. The same thing applies to Facebook that applies with emails.  Much can be lost in the translation.  The bottom line is that anyone that lives in your city that’s also on FB should be able to see you a few times a year, and physically visit or it really isn’t much of a real friendship, is it because much of FB is fake.  Fake news!  It’s called gas and a car key if the friendship really means anything at all. With that, I want to talk about self-sabotage.

Most of us create some kind of self-sabotage from time to time, whether it’s losing it with a coworker, deliberately stretching your personal finances too tightly, dating a loser or listening too intently to the wrong people. The GREAT news is that each day provides us with abundance and opportunities to co-create change. As we end this year, think about ways of being that no longer serve your highest good. Are you trusting people that always let you down? Working at a job that perhaps pays well but drains your soul? Living someplace that depresses you rather than uplifts? Keeping what’s in your best interest at arm’s length rather than embracing joy? Stuck in a rut? Feeling conflicted? My neighbor Dennis commented that he often feels misled because he assumes the way he cares for others means he gets that level of care back and that’s not always so. I’m generally an open book but one of my adult tastes of such was when I had two family members with an emotional breakdown and nobody to talk to. I reached out and was simply told ‘We don’t do well with mental illness topics.’ That couple immediately went to the balcony of our lives rather than a seat in the front row where I had thought they were well placed. I was wrong. Guard your heart and test friendships mettle. You can do this while still being open and compassionate but also judicious. Coupled with self-sabotage comes the blinders we also wear. What patterns happen for you? Are all your friendships on FB or do you have real ones?  Are those relationships truly supporting or downers? Do you find yourself always giving, such as supporting a friends shop by buying stuff but not getting any ROI?  Do you have a habit of overcommitting, promising and not delivering or is someone in your life doing this to you?  Do you keep forgetting plans or have someone who consistently forgets you?
I was laid off and had sold my car so that I would not have a car payment while being unemployed.  A friend who is well off offered to give me a good working vehicle he wasn’t using and, as he put it, didn’t want to bother taking it to Carmax to sell.  He said ‘It’s yours’ and that he would bring it by that week.  I followed up with him about the car, 4 times asking if he was serious and each time he said yes.  I am still not over the fact that on FB he told everyone he had given me a car yet the reality is I am still on foot.   I cannot tell you why anyone would promise something and not deliver but I can assure you that this behavior is absolutely toxic.  I didn’t ask him for anything, he just knew my situation and made a great and grand gesture.  I actually cried tears of joy.  I had bought cars for other people and never once have I had someone buy me a car in my 58 years.  How karmically sweet to finally be gifted in this manner!  And then it never materialized. 

Surround yourself with people who mean what they say and follow through on promises.  Honor the good people in your life by following suit.  Don’t wait for the car to show up!  Or any other empty promise! Move on!  And please respect yourself enough to never make empty offerings and end relations with those in your life who do.  When you find yourself in repeated codependent relationships, know that while you can absolutely change this by removing those blinders, it also requires some diligence, particularly in the beginning as you are learning about the old patterns, how to spot and stop them while learning new and healthy ways of being.  So in addition to the book above, I also highly recommend this daily meditation which has always seemed perfect for the day, whatever page I open it to.  Melody Beattie The Language Of Letting Go

Some people are just here for the beer.  They are there because something better has not yet come up so they are hanging out with you temporarily.  They may like your beer and may enjoy your company when it suits them but they are not filled with compassion and loyalty towards you personally when help and friendship is really needed.   

Do the same stories keep coming up in your life? If so, and you don’t like the story, change it! Where you see repeated abusive relationships or financial constraints or any other negatory pattern, there’s a spot to start working on. Honor yourself by acknowledging the needed nudge. We all have our personal pet bitches and gripes and crap that happens. As long as you’re seeking ways to minimize drama in your life ( and also drama for those around you) and working to create goodness, you’re on the right path. When you begin to see things frazzle and fray, it’s time to pour a cup of tea and reassess. This life is short. This year nearly a wrap. Live your best life in 2019.

Plant-Based & NOT Vegan! I have a few conflicting thoughts on veganism after witnessing just how political and polarizing it can get. Someone wished me, my pets, my entire family to die of cancer, and my business to fail, over a discussion about cashew cheese the individual (and later all her Facebook Friends)  misunderstood as dairy. I will be 58 in November. I had never before encountered that much hate and from a fellow vegan and I was just starting this journey. To my knowledge, nobody on earth before had wished me and my entire clan dead by slow-acting cancer. This was in late 2016 and I still carry all that hatred. I feel sorry for any vegetarian that crosses her (their) path.  I wonder about some person who decides to help animals and the planet and their own health by cutting out meat…or perhaps just cutting back. And then they get an earful of hate from this ‘lady’.  Boom, they are back to eating meat and whatever else, screw it!  I want nothing to do with the crazy people, right?  This is exactly how I was feeling at any rate.  The person spewed so many insults I had to block FB and shut down. And then I just wanted to spite eat meat and cheese.  This movement is never about one individual, but about the end goals.  When we get so angry at a person we don’t even know because they had a bite of something, and we make the adult decision to act out that rage, then we become accountable for that ripple effect.

We must come to this table with logic not just ‘I love animals.’  I have clients who still eat meat, greatly reduced, but still, it is a part of their life. I must acknowledge it may always be so as I suggest healthier and kinder ways.  In short, if my job is to help spread the reasons to go plant-based, (health, planet and animal kindness) then I must place myself in some trenches to do this work. My husband is an omnivore by choice and he loves his local honey. On this plane of existence, none of us are perfect and there will be a compromise at some juncture in everyone’s life. Thankfully I had great training at Hippocrates and this greatly helped when encountering the death threats, the unrelenting hate and refusal to acknowledge logic. I endeavor to read labels, do and know my research, think before speaking and act in compassion. This would be compassion for human animals as well as the rest of them we share the planet with. We are overrun as a species, so I made the choice not to bear children. This also saves the planet.  Hippocrates Health Institute trained on the avoidance of all sugar. Eggs contain a protein our bodies do not process well. We were also instructed to avoid any processed foods, bread, alcohol, caffeine, and do good food combining and aim for 80%+ raw food.

While many of us espouse an all-or-nothing approach, and that is absolutely fine, it is compassionate to realize not all of us will be 100% all-in.  I want also to reach these people.  If I can get a daily meat eater to go all organic, to know the farm where the meat comes from, reduce his dependence upon fast food and consider some plant-based or vegetarian meals with no meat at all, that is progress.  When a client has a kindness meal, then more, then an entire day of kindness, then several, I consider this a win.  This individual has grown in awareness, has developed a foothold on the logic that his current way of eating is not planet sustainable, isn’t healthy long-term, and is cruel to the fellow souls he is ingesting and is incorporating change.  Rather than turn people off and alienate them with judgment, it should be about sharing facts and options, with the compassion I was never offered when discussing cashew cheeses.

Veganism is a passionate endeavor but we all must realize that the individuals who come to this lifestyle do so for various reasons.  Some are focused just on animals while others want to save the planet and still others are riddled with Chronic disease and want to reverse those ills, lower their blood pressure and risk of diabetes or more stints in their arteries and live resiliently.  For me it’s about all 3. What the evil vegan wishing me and mine dead didn’t know is that I had already lost my entire family to cancer and yes, the slow way.  Breast for my mother, bone for one brother, Prostate for another, colon for a cousin and breast for an aunt and kidney for my father.  Two of these people died within 12 months of each other right on the heels of me losing my job of 26 years.  It was after losing my employment that I took a year of studies with Hippocrates.

When working with a client, I follow the Hippocrates guidelines and then tweak that towards what my client is willing to do.  I am there to help educate and coach.  I make a lousy judge, I am imperfect myself.

Recently a company I rep for discussed a body butter that had beeswax in it. I was adoring this product and now realize it isn’t vegan. This term can mean many things but essentially espouses to act daily with the purpose and intention of causing no harm to animals, from what we eat, drink, sleep on, wear, use or ride. But veganism also delves into what can be considered exploitation. This issue can get very tricky.  

Exploitation is wrong and all of us encounter it by our fellow humans, such as at work. Big corporations, such as those who sell honey to Costco, kill the bees in the process of stealing the honey.   Below is a great article on honey bees.  I have always espoused supporting local beekeepers because they truly care about the bees and as bees are in decline, somebody should be supporting these folks. Our neighbors are the Zip Code Honey people and run the Texas Honeybee Guild. They take very good care of their bees and while I don’t eat honey, my husband does and buys from them. BlendItUp Bee Free Honey makes a great substitute.   

Exploitation can be so many things.  One is eggs.  I am actually happy to see more families raising hens in their backyard and I once had a harem of hens myself.  I took great care of them and learned so much having them.  I was told growing up that chickens were stupid.  Nope, not at all true.  So if you have hens, are feeding them organic feed, augmenting with calcium and allowing them to live out their days in enjoyment and love even when they stop producing eggs for you, I am not sure that I have a right to complain about that.  One of my vegan friends will on very rare occasions, once a year perhaps,  enjoy such an egg.  I would far better prefer to see this than my neighbors buying eggs from hens that suffered at the hands of factory farming methods.  I know from raising my own, the hens were happy and were not, as someone insisted they were, ‘forced’ to produce eggs.  As a plant-based lifestyle has taken over, I no longer raise them but have compassion for those that make this choice.

What about horseback riding?  Or vegetarianism? There’s so much backlash with the vegan society towards vegetarians when in reality, they are making a huge dent in the cruelty and planet sustainability.  True, there is a big difference between being vegan and being vegetarian but can we not be a bit more kind? People change given the right support and motivation.  I have known several vegetarians go vegan.  And meat eaters go plant-based, on a weekly basis, across the planet.  Is the horse being exploited if he is well cared for and loves being ridden?  My horse loving friend, Laura, told me the story of how her horse Dovey spawned Little Dove, who actually never went through any coaching or training to be ridden.  No, she just lined up at the post and waited for her bit and saddle and off she trotted with her tribe, not one buck.  Wherever human animals and the rest of them cross paths, animals are and should be in a partnership with us; an acknowledgment of respect and kindness.  We learn from them and they from us.

I use the term human animals because I believe so much of the time we humans forget we are just mammals.  Sure, biblically we were called to watch over them and wow we are doing an abysmal job for the most part now,  but this really doesn’t make us ‘better’.  What it makes us is an animal having an assigned task directed by our maker that we are epically failing at, in spite of every advantage to do the job with aplomb.  Am I exploiting my dog expecting him to guard my home?  It’s his job and it goes with his natural instincts but would this be exploitation?  I also adore him, keep him company and we go for walks and play together.  He is living a great life and eating homemade meals with every need catered to. What is exploitation?

Expand the mind – If our ways were that of the 50’s or 60’s, from the way we cared for our livestock and also the amounts ingested on an annual basis, I don’t believe our vegan movement would be so passionate or so large looming.  There would be far less of us.  This cause exists and is growing because our lives, as a species, are out of balance with nature.  We have allowed cruelty, conceit, greed, and arrogance to rule us rather than compassion and wisdom. Wisdom sits at the seat of compassion. Nothing else matters without it. So when I hear someone say they cannot condone horseback riding that a fellow plant-based individual does with their horse because that is exploitation or goes on the attack with local beekeepers, my heart aches.  We have far larger tofu fish to fry, with the big corporations that are the cause of at least 95% of the pain rather than fight amongst ourselves or nitpick everything in a less than educational and loving way.  In a world where nothing will ever be 100% plant-basesd, let’s focus on bringing awareness with kindness and celebrating the wins.   I used to joke that where it says in the bible the meek shall inherit the earth, that we would end up overrun by cockroaches.  Could it possibly be that the meek discussed would be us human animals becoming more like gentle lambs, not eating each other literally, emotionally or spiritually?

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