A year and a half ago, I made a decision to take my body back.
For 25 years I’ve been pouring into other people. Teens. Families. The community. My own household. And somewhere along the way I had stopped showing up for myself. I was tired in a way that sleep didn’t fix. I was carrying weight that wasn’t just on my body. And I knew if I didn’t make a change for me, the work I do for everybody else was going to run me into the ground.
So I went vegan. Not because of a trend, not because somebody told me to — but because I needed to know what I was actually putting in my body. I needed to learn it for myself.
And once I started paying attention, everything shifted.
What actually changed
I lost the weight. I got stronger. My energy came back. My head got clearer than it had been in years. I started recognizing what was food and what was just something packaged to look like food. I started reading labels. Asking questions. Understanding how the way I eat affects how I think, how I sleep, how I show up.
I didn’t do this overnight. I’m still learning. I’m still adjusting. But I know more about my body now than I did at any point in the last two decades — and that knowledge is its own kind of freedom.
Why I’m sharing this here
I’m sharing this part of my journey on PlantTheVegan because of the women I keep thinking about — especially teen moms and young women on the West Side who’ve been told, directly or quietly, that their bodies and their wellbeing come last.
I’m here to say: they don’t. They can’t. Because you can’t pour out what you don’t have.
Rebuilding your community and rebuilding yourself aren’t separate projects. They’re the same work. Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish — it’s how you stay in the fight long enough to actually change something.
So whether you’re vegan, plant-curious, or just trying to figure out where to start — welcome. You don’t have to do it all at once. You don’t have to do it perfect. You just have to start paying attention to what you’re putting in your body and what it’s doing for you.
That’s where it begins. That’s where it began for me.