Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes

Little Pink Pigs

Lettuce pinned under my left arm, tongs stir bacon with my right. Grease fills the pan, bacon shrivels up. Jack and Fiona keep asking, “where’s my dinner?”. I bring out broccoli, beats, onions, sautéed asparagus. A bowl of lettuce. The bacon goes first, Jack and Alan eat most of it. Fiona only takes a couple bites. They eat the sautéed broccoli but won’t taste the asparagus or beets. The next night I make asparagus and broccoli soup, my kids won’t taste it, even though they love broccoli. I decided Last Wednesday to become a Vegan again. I explained it to the babies, I told them I was eating vegetables, fruits, and grains, and that I wasn’t going to eat animals anymore. It didn’t seem like they understood.  I focused on the health aspect of eating a vegan diet. I said it’s the healthiest way to eat. My husband does eat meat, he loves meat. He was also brought up Catholic. I get nervous to talk about my belief in God the same way I feel nervous to talk about vegetarianism or veganism. Animal rights, animals as sentient beings, that bacon is a pig, one of those cute little pink pigs in your story books. God and Animal Welfare are such sensitive topics. I am nervous about talking to my children about these topics. I don’t believe in God and I believe animals are sentient beings. I would love my children to follow my footsteps. But I also don’t want to influence them or make them believe what I believe. They can make their own choice.

I wonder why I feel like I can’t be free to talk about my own beliefs? I have always felt uncomfortable telling people I don’t believe in God, they always seem shocked. Now that I have kids I feel they are judging me, “how can you raise your kids without a belief in something?” They say.  But I do believe in something, that we’re here and then we’re not. We can leave behind our words, our art, our buildings we build, but we turn back into earth when we die. Why is one belief system more valued than another? Why is any religious belief better than being an atheist? But I’m not going to tell my kids, “You’re an atheist” because I do believe when they get old enough they can decide if they believe in God or not. That’s how I grew up. I visited all kind of churches and learned about religions, and ended up an atheist, vegan(ish) person.