✿ My Vegan Journey | Gentle Growth Wellness with Raine Chase

✿ My Vegan Journey | Gentle Growth Wellness with Raine Chase

The Disconnect Between Love and Lifestyle

If you ever loved animals but felt like your lifestyle didn’t actually match those values, you’re not alone. When I was younger, I used to say I was an animal lover. Every bug or animal that I ever saw, I would pick it up and I would hold it and I would kiss it and it would be my bestest friend. I would watch so many different movies and TV shows about animals and then I would go home and I would eat meat cuz that was just normal to me. and I never put the two and two together. So, this story is about how I finally matched my values with my lifestyle and how I grew from loving animals and eating them to loving animals and not eating them.

Childhood Norms and Cognitive Dissonance

So, like I said, throughout my childhood, I had always loved animals. And then, like I said, I would go home and I would eat them. I specifically remember every single year asking my dad to make a steak barbecue for my birthday. And at one point, I even helped my dad pluck feathers from a bird for us to eat it for dinner that night. And I didn’t even think twice about it. I never put the two and two together. That to one, I would love it and I would care for it. And then to the other, I was eating it and talking about how good it was. As a child, you don’t even think about that. It’s just what you’re raised with. And if everyone around you is doing it, including your family and authority figures and your parents, then you never second guess it.

Dietary Experiments and New Information

I always had that in the back of my mind knowing that I loved animals. And it wasn’t until I would say late high school that I started realizing that something felt off. So, growing up after those high school days or late middle school days, I wouldn’t eat very much meat. It was maybe going out to eat or at family reunions. I was more of a sides and dessert girly. Anyway, then in 2019, that’s when I started being on and off a bunch of different diets. I was pretty self-conscious, so I was pretty much trying anything I could get my hands on. And one of those diets was the keto diet, which if you don’t know is very meat and fat heavy. And that was extremely hard for me because I love fruits. I love desserts. It took away everything that I wanted to eat. So obviously that didn’t last for very long. And then within the diet space, I was coming upon articles of veganism or of plant-based eating. And I would click on them because I was curious. And like I said before, in my mind, I loved animals. So, it just made sense. I was slowly trying to put the puzzle pieces together. And so, I came upon a veganism article. I think it was like, I tried veganism for 30 days and this is what happened. And he was just raving about how he felt. And he was talking about the health benefits and all these recipes that you can try. I was hooked.

The Academic Turning Point

So, I was slowly looking into that stuff, implementing less and less meat into my diet. A little bit after that, I took environmental class and one of our projects, we had to pick something to write a paper about. So, I chose to write the paper on veganism. And she said to be more specific. So, I chose cow farts and how they influenced the environment. And so, after doing that research on that paper for the whole semester, I couldn’t ignore the evidence. I knew that veganism was so good for the environment. And then from the research I did before about plant-based eating and the benefits on your health and I also knew it was good for the animals because the animals aren’t dying for you to eat them. I like to consider myself as environmentally friendly and I try to thrift and all those things. So it was one of the best things you can do for the environment, one of the best things I’ve ever done for my health and one of the best things you can do for any animal. So, it just finally made sense when I was 2 years into my college degree that I finally made that switch to being fully plant-based. Or so I thought.

Living a Double Life: Vegan at Home, Vegetarian in Public

When I first started eating plant-based, I would call myself vegan at home and vegetarian in public. And if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that that’s something that I labeled myself as for a really, really long time. I started going fully vegan in about 2020. Now, it’s 2025. So, it’s been about five years or six since I’ve been slowly implementing less meat into my diet. But of those five or six years, I would say at least three of those years or four of those years were me being vegan at home and vegetarian in public, which means that I was the only vegan in my household. My parents weren’t vegan. My boyfriend at the time wasn’t vegan. He’s now my husband. And so it was really tricky for me to feel so alienated, to be the only one who saw the truth, to be the only one who knew all the benefits for your health and for the environment and for the animals. And I felt so passionate about it, but everyone around you was going to those steak barbecues for my birthday and going to Texas Roadhouse and getting a steak. You know, it was still so normal and I was the weird one.

Social Pressure and “Cheating”

And so in order to make it easier for me, which now looking back it’s hard to say, I would cheat a little bit. I would say I would make vegan meals at home. I was in charge of the food that I was buying and making and eating at home, which was pretty easy for me at that point since I’d been plant-based for a while. And then when I would go out to eat, I would get the mac and cheese or I would eat the Cheezits if they’re on the table or I would eat the birthday cake. It felt like cheating. It felt like something that I was trying to hide. And people would ask about it, too. They would say, “Rain, I thought you were vegan.” Like, “Oh, well, sometimes, you know, I try to be.” And it was just me not wanting to make it awkward. I didn’t want to be the weird vegan one at the family reunions. I didn’t want to make a big huff and puff. And so, I would just deal with it. There was one time that I that I did even eat meat because one of my younger family members just ate like a bite of her burger and then she was going to throw it away. I was like, “Oh, don’t waste that.” So then I took a couple bites out of her burger. And that showed me that I wasn’t missing much. It was almost something that I feel like I had to do to realize why I made the change in the first place. I was like, “Oh, I’m really not missing the meat that I was eating before. I don’t really like the taste. I’d much rather eat the desserts and the sides, like I said before.”

Embracing Imperfection in the Transition

And so I was just really cutting myself a lot of slack back then. And now looking back, it’s not perfect in terms of veganism. I think it’s so important for me to have that time in my life to make the transition. I think that that’s what so many people struggle to come to terms with. It’s just like, oh, if you wanted to be vegan, you would and you would be perfect right away. But with anything, you’re not going to be perfect right away. It’s just not sustainable or it’s just not realistic. And even my husband, he went vegan shortly after I did or vegetarian shortly after I did, but it took him a while. And it was him slowly implementing the meals that I would make. It was a slow process for both of us. And it’s so so important to have that care for yourself or to not be so hard on yourself, especially when you’re first starting.

Setting Boundaries and Gaining Acceptance

So when I would eat those non-vegan things, when I would go out and about, I eventually started implementing some alternatives into my diet and I started setting a bit more firm boundaries with my friends and family. The longer I was vegan, I would find a cheese replacement that I really liked and I would bring it to family reunions and set it on the table and say, “Try this vegan cheese. This is what I made.” Or I would make my own entree to bring to Thanksgiving and say, “Try this lasagna. Tastes the same as regular lasagna.” And so it was just those little things that I would do every day that would make it so much easier for me to be fully vegan. And it made it so much easier for my friends and family, too. When I finally set those boundaries and said, “I am fully vegan at home and in public,” my family started bringing me to vegan restaurants. Instead of going to Texas Roadhouse, they would go to the little local place down the street. Instead of me having no food to eat at Thanksgiving, my other family members were finally bringing and making their own vegan dishes to share with me. This whole time, I was just ignoring myself and I was trying to make everybody else happy and trying to make everyone else comfortable. But when I finally set those boundaries within myself and within other people, now my friends and family are so much more open to me being vegan and asking me questions and trying new food. And I’m so so happy for that.

Introducing Gentle Growth Wellness

And that is what I want to try to help people with in the future. So that’s why I started Gentle Growth Wellness. It’s to help people go from feeling unaligned with their values to knowing that they can live fully aligned with their values in their lifestyle. For example, you know that you love animals. You’ve always been an animal lover. You know that going plant-based is better for your health and you know that it’s better for the environment. You’ve heard these things trickling all around, but you’ve also heard the opposite. And you’ve heard of all the bad cases or the bad things that happened to people when they went vegan. And that can be with any diet. You can either it can work really well for you or it can’t. And it’s all about finding that balance. And like I said in my journey, it wasn’t linear. It wasn’t perfect. But I knew that I loved animals and I knew the benefits to going vegan for my health and for the environment. And I slowly started implementing less meat and more healthy alternatives into my diet. And now I could never go back. So I want to help people find that same journey within themselves.

Finding Holistic Balance

I want you to finally feel happy in your choices. So whether you’re debating implementing less meat or debating going vegetarian or even debating going vegan or even if you have been vegan for a really long time, it’s about being clear with your choices. It’s about making those positive choices within your diet. So you’re not just vegan for the animals, which means that maybe you do harsh activism and you eat Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for dinner every day. It’s also not just vegan for the environment because there’s you too. I think all of this, it’s so important to know that we are well-rounded humans. We can care about the environment and animals and our health. That last part is just so so important that it’s not just about what you’re eating. It’s also about your relationship with yourself and with your friends and family and with the animals is so well-rounded. And there’s so many different facets that I want to help people find that balance and I want to help people finally get to where they’ve always meant to be.

An Invitation to Align Your Values

you love animals and you don’t want to eat them. And it’s as simple as that. And there’s so many benefits to doing that. And sometimes people just don’t know where to start. So, I just want to show that I am an open vegan. I do consider myself vegan because my lifestyle reflects those values. But I do know that some people have negative stigma around that. So, if you don’t want to go vegan, if you don’t consider yourself vegan, I am totally open to that because me just five or six years ago is totally different than the me that you see here today. And same with my husband. We could both never imagine that we would be fully vegan right now. But now that we have, we would never go back. And our friends and family are coming to us for advice, and they’re willing to try new recipes and go to new restaurants. And it’s amazing seeing that effect that it can have not just on you, but on your friends and family, on in your mental health, and your physical health. It’s multifaceted. And I am so excited to work through this with you and to help you finally live aligned with your values. Thank you so much for watching. Please comment, subscribe, like down below, and then follow me on Instagram where I post most frequently. I would love for you to be a part of this