Thanks to Len Fleischer from Keene State College, I ended up on this site today! He was my professor for my Honors capstone class during my senior year of college (September-January 2013-’14) in which each student had to write an autobiography and tell his/her life story. After five months, including one month of re-writing and editing about forty pages of information I had already written thanks to a crashed hard-drive, my 80something page story was written and handed in.

At the beginning of the semester 80 pages seemed like a lot to write about solely myself. And of course as time went on, it became very easy and I found myself in disbelief that I had to cap my writing. The goal of the paper was actually to write 50 pages, which was entirely impossible after getting lost in the rhythm of reflection and introspection.

Throughout writing my own story, I was forced to reminisce in old and difficult memories that I’d stored away throughout my life. A topic that kept reappearing in my writings was my relationship with food. How it came to be, what problems it created for me, what joys revolved around my relationship with food, and eventually how food dictated my everyday life.

The truth is, at the time I began viewing my own life story as just that, a story, I hadn’t felt like I truly had the power to be in a good relationship with food. I was a constant failure. I tried every diet, where trying to lose weight and trying to be thin were my two main goals, though maybe the other way around. Towards the end of high school, being thin became the most important thing to me. And if I didn’t achieve a certain look each morning when I started my day, my confidence failed.

Throughout trying different ways of eating, and failing miserably after each time, I was living in chaos. Until I found the one lifestyle, notice I didn’t say “diet”, that actually made sense to me and made me feel great. And it is the plant-based lifestyle. Upon discovering eating this way, my entire day-to-day life changed, and not just by the foods I started eating. There was a whole plethora of information out there about food, farms, the history of the human diet, environmentalism, the local economy, the real price of things, and mental and physical wellness, among so much more… waiting to be uncovered and reVealed.

So here it goes. I am Velvet. I Am V. And this is my Truth sanctuary. Nobody liked brussel sprouts the first time they smelled them. Don’t be so quick to turnip your nose at this blog. See what I did there?

Welcome~