I went vegetarian first, and my parents thought I could and should put that whole project aside during Christmas or whenever there was some big family meal. So, it was a painful process of explaining how I had actually forever said farewell to meat, and that it was based on ethical principles, not health reasons, and that no, fish were animals as well. And I would cook my food separately from theirs, and I wanted clean serving spoons, not cross contaminated ones, so I didn't want their fishy/meaty/cow juicy serving spoons, thank you.
Fortunately, there were no insults that I can remember, only a few from my drunkard uncle, and he didn't mean to be unkind (he even said so), just to have a laugh. My mother had always instilled good values about treating animals well, and also put those values into practice with the cats that were part of our family, and other animals that crossed our path. So, in many ways going vegetarian, and later vegan, was just the logical conclusion of that.
I think in some ways I was lucky. While my parents were/are quite old-fashioned and set in their ways, they always tried to be supportive of my various projects. Incredibly, my father even cooked vegan food for me, and found vegan speciality foods when he went grocery shopping. Maybe they also admired my strong convictions, because let's face it, it takes character to go against the grain and be the only one to follow ethical principles. (It also probably helped that I'm an only child, so therefore by default their favourite child!
)
