There is a grief that lives beneath the surface, hidden along country roads that most certainly do not take us home. It is an ancient grief, one that runs like a silent stream—or, rather, scream—beneath our collective skin. It is the grief of mothers and babies torn from one another, a pain repeated daily in the dark corners of an industry whose sacrificial practices have been normalized over generations.

To truly understand sacred relationships, we must widen our circle of compassion beyond the human. We must be willing to hear and feel what we have been conditioned to suppress: the primal cry of the mother cow when her newborn calf is taken from her so that humans can fatten on her addictive and mucus-filled secretions. Her milk, meant to nourish and bond her child, is stolen instead for our consumption. In the process, her female babies are similarly enslaved, and her male babies are either discarded or confined for a few months before being slaughtered for veal and leather, barely having felt the warmth of their mother’s breath or heard the rhythm of her heart.

We have created an entire culture that glosses over this dismemberment with words like “humane” (it protects the calf from disease) and “regenerative” (the grazing of dairy cows restores the land). But what could be humane or regenerative about the rupture of the mother-baby bond? What scrap of redemption could ever be found in a system built on the violation of the feminine—on the repeated, forceful impregnation of beings who do not consent?

As women, grandmothers, midwives, daughters, and sacred life-bringers, how have we allowed ourselves to be blind to a suffering whose underlying cause so clearly mirrors our own values? Can we truly advocate for birth sovereignty, for conscious mothering, for the protection of our own children, while we drink the milk of another grieving mother? The question is not a scolding. It is a beckoning. A soft knock on the heart, asking us to re-member.

To re-member ourselves, regain our sovereignty from usurping lies like “milk makes strong bones and is our main source of calcium.” Just as we fiercely protect our own children from harm, so must we extend the same protection to all sentient beings.

The breast of a mother—whether human or bovine—is not a commodity but a source of soul connection. There is something uniquely spiritual about the mammalian bond. It is not just biology; it is divinity in action. Oxytocin, the “love hormone,” flows between mother and baby during nursing, creating an invisible current of safety, attunement, and trust. When we interfere with this bond—whether through premature weaning in humans or industrial calf removal—we fracture something sacred. We see that fracture manifest in a kind of collective numbness, the difficulty people have in attaching, in trusting, in softening into the arms of another. Could it be that this disconnection begins not just in our childhoods but in our food systems? Could it be that by consuming the grief of disconnection, we grow disconnected ourselves?

If we are to rise into a culture of Sacred Relationship, we must begin by questioning the systems we ingest. The dairy industry is not about nutrition; it is about power, control, domination over the feminine, and the violent rupture of a sacred bond. Veganism, therefore, is not merely a diet—it is a spiritual and political stance. It says: I will not be complicit in the severing of what is whole. I will honor the cries of all mothers. I will not consume the grief of a baby denied. Veganism is an act not just of eating but of listening. Of witnessing. Like Sarah McLachlan sings in “Make Me a Witness”: “I have no need for anger with intimate strangers / and I’ve got nothing to hide.” When we truly witness the suffering of others, without defensiveness or justification, we begin to dismantle the veils that keep us separate. We begin to heal.

To all the mother cows who cry in the night, to the babies whose short lives flicker like candles never protected from the wind—we see you. Your grief is not invisible. It doesn’t go unheard or unspoken. We will be your voice.

And to all the mothers—human and nonhuman—who long for sovereignty, may we walk beside you. May we build systems in which your body is honored, your baby is safe, and your milk is sacred.

Let us build Compassion Circles wide enough to hold every mother and every child. Let us remember: there is no sacred relationship that excludes the suffering of another.

Milk and the Mourning
We have stolen
what was never ours to take—
milk meant for another’s suckles,
soft and searching,
fresh into this world,
Wet with “after-birth”.
A mother’s body opens—
gives life—
and we tear it away.
The baby cries,
but not for us.
Every carton in the fridge
Is a severed bond,
Hearts broken
for our momentary pleasure and at the cost of our sovereignty!

We don’t see her—
the cow with swollen teats,
her baby dragged from beneath her,
her grief howling through sterile steel barns and milking machines.
We forget:
milk is not a product.
It is a promise—
of safety, of warmth,
of I am here. I am yours.
How would we feel
if our own infants
were snatched to make room
for another’s appetite?
This is not nourishment.
It is violation.
It is motherhood turned into a “cash cow”,
love commodified.
But we can remember,
The way we remember
to honour the milk that is ours to give,
to protect the mother-child bond.
whether human or not.
We can remember to say:
no more!
All babies deserve their mothers,
Whether human or not.
All mothers deserve their babies.
Let the land be soaked in our grief.
Let our choices be healing ones.

Let us sip compassion—from oats, soy, hemp—
instead of cruelty.

Join us on May 14th, 2025

The Million Vegan Grandmothers will be meeting twice on Wednesday, May 14th, 2025. At 8am Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) in the morning, we will be speaking with Renee King-Sonnen of Rowdy Girl Sanctuary and at 5:30pm PDT in the evening, we will be brainstorming on the International Calf and Cow Mother’s Day, 2026.

Please join us in the Convergence Zoom room on Wednesday, May 14th, 2025.

See you there.

With Much Compassion,
Tami Hay for MVG
Million Vegan Grandmothers