For the Love of Animals… and Other Stuff

You may know that I just adore Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks. She and her staff are rallying for people to write to Oprah with the ultimate goal of getting Colleen on her show in support of veganism!

Compassionate Cook’s email is as follows. Won’t you help??

—–Original Message—–
From: Chris Marco [mailto:chris@compassionatecooks.com]
Subject: Oprah’s gone vegan! And, we need your help.

Hi everybody,

I’m emailing you today because we just found out that Oprah is doing a 21-day “cleanse” starting today. Thanks to her cleanse, she will not be eating any meat or animal secretions for the next three weeks! Additionally, she’ll be blogging about her experience everyday, sharing recipes, and encouraging folks to participate in the cleanse discussions on her message boards.

This all started when Oprah read the book, Quantum Wellness, by Kathy Freston. In the book, Kathy describes her eight pillars of wellness, practices she believes are the staples of an engaged life. You can read about “the most important pillar” in the text below which was taken directly from Oprah’s site.

There’s one wellness practice that Kathy says should be observed above all others. “The mother of all pillars is conscious eating,” she says. “It doesn’t only make a difference to our own personal health and well-being, but conscious eating means you stay aware of where your food comes from, how the animals are treated and how the environment is affected by the foods that you eat. You take in the energy of whatever went into creating that food.”

Kathy is a vegan, which means she doesn’t eat meat, eggs, or dairy. “Nobody was harmed—that’s conscious eating,” she says. “If I want to be someone with spiritual integrity, I have to think about the principles that I want to adhere to—compassion, kindness, mercy and the alleviating of suffering when I see it. … I thought, ‘If I want to further myself on my spiritual path, as well as my health path, I need to have more integrity. I need to be conscious about it.’”

I’m working with Colleen to put together a package for Oprah that will address some of the questions she asked on the show like “What’s left to eat?” We’ll also be making Oprah aware of the podcasts and Colleen’s unique style when it comes to talking about veganism, the animals, and transitioning. I believe Colleen’s approach is so similar to Oprah’s that there is no better, more compatible, voice to represent Joyful Vegans on Oprah’s show. I’ve been to Colleen’s classes and I’ve seen Colleen speak. She is funny and warm, sensitive and charming. She is the friendly vegan-next-door and we need her to go on Oprah and show people how easy and fun it is to cook nutritious, delicious, cruelty-free food.

Rest assured, we will do our part to get Colleen in front of Oprah, but we need your help. We registered our 400th member on the message boards today (welcome Haas!) I’m thinking that if 400 Joyful Vegans write Oprah to tell her about the help they’ve received from Compassionate Cooks, from Colleen’s supportive and informative voice, and from the message boards, it would go a long way toward getting her to consider Colleen as a potential guest.

I’d encourage you to read through the show’s synopsis so you can really get a sense of why Oprah was motivated to do this. If you’re able, you can watch, or TIVO, the show tonight when it airs at 1am. Every animal organization and vegan group will be emailing and sending letters to Oprah. We need Compassionate Cooks to stand out amongst that crowd. When you write, tell Oprah about your own transformation, tell her how Colleen helped, tell her how you feel about your own integrity since making this shift, tell her whatever you feel, but please, oh please, mention Colleen and ask, or suggest, that she bring Colleen on the show. You could ask her to do a show with an audience full of vegans that could speak to the joy of living in accord with their values. I know you people are all sensitive, thoughtful, eloquent vegans. And I know that to be vegan, is to want others to be vegan, since there is no sense in doing it alone. We have a chance here to put a voice that represents us !
up on Oprah’s stage. Billions of people could see and hear Colleen! Please take 30 minutes today or tomorrow to write Oprah and tell her that you love being vegan, that it brings you great joy, that you feel empowered after every meal, that you know you’re doing the very best thing you can for your health, for the animals, and for the environment. And please don’t forget to tell her how you feel about Colleen and the work she does through Compassionate Cooks.

In case you’re not certain, I really, really, really want to get Colleen on Oprah’s show. It was one of the first things I said to Colleen when we started working together. I nearly had a heart attack today when I realized it could actually happen, right now, not next year, or the year after. If she gets on the show, I will be inclined to bake chocolate chip cookies for each and every one of you. I’m seriously the happiest vegan in the world right now! Let’s pull together and make this happen! Colleen is the one and only person that inspired me to go vegan and made me believe it was easy and doable. If she did it for me, and one or two of you, you know she can do it for at least a million of Oprah’s billions of viewers. Below are the links you’ll need to write Oprah and get involved in the discussions on her boards.

Thanks so much for reading (and writing)!

With all the joy I could muster (and then some), Chris

• Here is the synopsis of Kathy Freston’s segment
• Oprah’s 21-day cleanse page (with tabs at the top for her blog, menus, recipes (uploaded daily so keep checking back), and the message boards)
• The message board discussion about this specific show
• Register to participate on the boards here
• Comments on the show
• Ideas for a show

Categories: In the Media, TV
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