I have lived the raw vegan lifestyle for two decades. I raised my two children, Gabriela and Marco, on the raw vegan lifestyle and was able to heal Marco from asthma, chronic ear infections and multiple food allergies when he was 3 and Gabriela was 5. They are young adults now.
I have watched Gabriela and Marco grow up healthy as raw vegans and then decide to experiment with processed and refined foods and animal products as vegetarians during their teen years to fit in with their mainstream peers. Then I witnessed Gabriela return to vegan and raw vegan as a junior in college as she became fed up with being sick and watching her friends living unhealthy lives. She began to view the vegan diet as the primary path to healing our world and she saw the raw vegan lifestyle as a door to healing the human body. This vision motivated her to major in Global Environmental Studies while in college. This close look at what was happening to our environment gave her an even larger view of the real situation occurring in the world today.
At age 21, Gabriela listened to her inner wisdom rather than simply following the crowd. She compared how she felt on raw vegan foods when growing up at home with the standard dietary indoctrination surrounding her away at college. Questioning what she observed of everyday standard lifestyles, she came to a conscious realization—resolving to return to raw vegan foods. She also learned the truth about the torture of animals in factory farms and profoundly understood being vegan is fundamental toward reducing global warming and healing our planet. Her return to always feeling wonderful on raw foods has given her a deep insight—fresh fruits and vegetables are the optimal “species-specific” foods for humans.
During her later college years, Gabriela interned at Auroville Ecovillage in India and was able to remain eating raw vegan foods for the entire semester even though green leafy vegetables were not plentiful when traveling there. Coincidentally, an Indian woman named Anandi lived at Auroville and had studied at Dr. Gabriel Cousen’s Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona. How wonderful for Gabriela to spend the semester with Anandi, eating raw food meals together, sprouting and talking about the benefits of the raw food lifestyle.
Another semester, Gabriela interned at Turtle Lake Refuge in Durango, Colorado. I had met the Founder of Turtle Lake Refuge, Katrina Blair, at the 2007 Raw Spirit Festival, and asked her if she took interns to work with her. Katrina and Turtle Lake Refuge have been another model of natural living through wild foraging, raw food and environmental education. Gabriela has remained there as an employee. The mission of Turtle Lake Refuge is to celebrate the connection between personal health and wild lands.
Internships such as these provide support for young adults wanting to return to their natural roots. Raw food lifestyle festivals and expos, such as The Woodstock Fruit Festival and Raw Living Expo, provide much needed support for these young people desiring to learn about the healing power of raw foods, raising healthy children, creating delicious simple raw vegan recipes and other aspects of a healthy lifestyle as they move away from societal pressures to live with conventional processed and refined foods, animal products and medications.
In my workshops at these events, many of the attendees are single young adult women who are fascinated with the topic of raising healthy children through attachment parenting and raw foods. So many of these young women are grateful for the valuable information focused on following the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs of children from the time of conception throughout the growing years.
Marco, now 24, who also experimented with vegetarian junk food in college, returned to a high-raw vegan lifestyle upon graduation as he also wasn’t feeling his best. Through the return to natural food, he is also spending more time in nature, sprouting beautiful sunflower greens, enjoying the abundance of fruit and vegetables he’s always loved and spending much more time outdoors, replenishing vitamin D from the sunshine.
Gabriela, who is 26 now, has gained much confidence in maintaining this healthy lifestyle over the past years through being raised raw vegan and then later, given support through volunteer work, internships and raw food events.
In this sometimes very confused world we live in, we must teach our young adults, the future parents, how to nourish the next generation with the superior raw living foods.
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