In this episode Kelsi Sheren, CEO and author shares her impactful work supporting Canadian veterans’ mental health and her fight against MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying). Kelsi shares her personal journey, the detrimental effects of MAID on vulnerable populations, and the alarming expansion of such policies in Canada and the U.S. She also discusses broader societal issues, including the draft of women into the military, the victim mentality in modern society, and the importance of community and steadfast values. The episode concludes with reflections on resilience, purpose, and the ongoing need to act against injustices.
Episode Highlights:
03:06 The Fight Against MAID in Canada
15:28 The Draft and Women in the Military
18:01 The Struggles of Veterans and Advocacy
28:24 Gratitude for American Support
28:51 Cultural Differences Between Canadians and Americans
31:30 Facing Adversity with a Positive Mindset
33:28 Challenges with Canadian Healthcare
39:12 The Impact of COVID on Personal and Professional Life
42:14 The Role of Parents in Shaping the Next Generation
Kelsi Sheren is the CEO of Brass & Unity and author of “Brass & Unity, One Woman’s Journey Through the Hell of Afghanistan and Back”. A distinguished Canadian veteran, she served across Canadian, American, and British military forces as an Artillery Gunner & “Female Searcher” during her impactful deployment in Afghanistan. Kelsi’s resilience shines through adversity; from Taekwondo National Champion to overcoming PTSD and TBI post-deployment. Founder of Brass & Unity, transforming spent bullet casings into an iconic jewelry brand, donating 20% of profits to veterans’ mental health. Her journey inspired The Brass & Unity Podcast and as a TEDx speaker, she shares insights on resilience, overcoming challenges, and growth.
You can learn more about Kelsi here: kelsisheren.com
Episode Transcript:
00:45
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Kelsey Sharon, CEO of Brass in Unity and author of Brass in Unity, One Woman’s Journey Through the Hell of Afghanistan and Back is a formidable Canadian veteran who served across Canadian, American, and British military forces.
01:12
as an artillery gunner and female searcher in Afghanistan in 2009. This woman is making a huge impact on the Canadian health care system, supporting veterans with their mental health. We have a lot of new things to talk about in this interview as well. And I’ll just shut up so we can get started. Thank you for your time, Kelsey. Thank you for the courage that you’re exhibiting every day. Well, thanks for having me, man. You’ve got a great show. You’ve got great guests. And I believe that you are doing something different. So I’m happy to be here. I’m trying. I’m just trying to.
01:41
do what you’re doing, which we find that voice, we find that direction, and then we just fucking lean in and that gives us that juice to keep going. Absolutely. That’s what’s so incredible because you have this experience, you also have the entrepreneurial perspective, which a lot of people don’t understand that exactly what we’re talking about, having this vision and this knowledge that you want, it’s not a path that you see directly in front of you and it’s not ever simple. Lots of times it looks like it’s overgrown with stuff and we have to hack through those things, but that’s why it’s so important to do them.
02:11
Yeah, it absolutely is. Frankly, I’m really tired of people who talk. So there’s that. And so I live every day by looking at all of these individuals and going, I want to be nothing like you, because I want to be of substance. I’m not a social media influencer. I’m somebody who does what I say I will do to the fullest extent, regardless of, and sometimes at the sacrifice of myself or my time or my body or my mind, but there’s always a greater purpose or bigger reason. And I think…
02:41
if we were to lean into what it means to truly be everything we say we are, it’s exhausting and it requires work and it requires effort. But I believe that, and I always have, that I’m cut from a different cloth and I’m quite all right with that. I think that that’s the key. And I think that boldly embracing that is what makes you unique. And it also gives us that continuing push, especially when it gets tough, especially when we face adversity. But all this hard work that you’ve been doing.
03:09
there was some good news about Maid. Can you tell us what you were telling me right before we hit record? Yeah, so we can never really know 100% what changed someone’s mind, but we know the influences of the things that we have done. And I am by no means the only person fighting against Maid in this nation or across the globe. Everybody from Liz Carr in the UK, to I’m gonna butcher his name. I always butcher people’s names and he’ll get over it. He is the actual international prevention.
03:37
executive director Alex Schadenberg, as well as Alicia Duncan, Dr. Joel Zivot, all the way to Angelina in the Delta Hospice Alliance for Life. There’s a ton of people that are fighting up against what’s happening in Canada and now in America. And I was brought in in a very weird way in this through the veteran space made being offered to veterans in Canada in lieu of treatment. And I started covering that and speaking about it and on the…
04:06
Rebel documentary that I’m featured in with several of these other individuals, Mark and Alicia and their family stories. But you know, I’ve been brought into May because I don’t really have a choice. If I find out that they’re attacking our veterans, I would not be who I said I was if I didn’t start advocating and fighting for and standing up for. And it’s exhausting. But I’ll tell you, yesterday in the state Senate in America, so the Americans listening, please pay attention.
04:33
you have 11 states that provide MADE. The difference between Canada and the United States is America provides palliative care, which is a 50-year medical science to help somebody to transition from a part of their life where they’re either terminally ill or otherwise and in excruciating pain, and they have a management protocol to keep them alive, not feeling pain, being present and being with their families. Whereas Canada has banned palliative care, traditional palliative care, meaning…
05:01
We don’t allow for palliative care facilities any longer that refuse to do made. Angelina and the Delta Hospice out here, were evicted from their 35 year lease because they refuse to do made in the hospice. And the reason I bring that up is because if we’re doing it, it’s coming. And if we’re expanding, it’s going to expand for you. So yesterday…
05:21
on the Delaware floor, there was a bill, HB 140. It was defeated. And here’s why this is a wild story, is because the own Democrat sponsor of the bill who brought the bill forward and was the co-sponsor to push this thing forward, flipped his vote on the floor. He flipped it. So this was Brian Townsend of the 11th district, Senator Brian Townsend, who’s the Democrat. He…
05:50
ended up voting no on the final vote. So it was a tie of nine, nine, and the bill was defeated. Some of the reasons they believe this happened was because the Senate debate brought several key questions to the floor, which had never been asked before. And these are the ones we spoke about on Jordan Peterson, which were how do the assisted suicide drugs work? And nobody could give an answer, and nobody could provide whether the death was peaceful or quick, which we know it’s neither of those. What came up was the fact that
06:20
major clip is about to hit a million views. It should hit a million views today on the Jordan Peterson podcast clip page and it has gone viral. And that was the discussion point around how do these drugs work? What do they look like? And how can we prevent others from thinking their loved ones are going to die in a peaceful manner when we know that should not be factual at all. And so the fact that any of our work is making it across the border
06:47
and helping your senators realize that made is never the answer and Canada is using it as the treatment. Not even as Canada uses made as a treatment, not a last resort like the Netherlands does. So it has been a very interesting space to be a part of, as well as it has been a very fulfilling space to see that there has been movement from our advocacy work.
07:14
And these have been people who have been doing this for 25 years. I stepped into this the past couple of years and kind of put every piece of weight I have behind it, whether that’s speaking with Piers Morgan, whether that’s getting it to other individuals, whether that’s getting it to Jordan was already speaking about it, but whether it was given the we were given the platform to discuss it publicly. And since then, we’ve we have reached out to Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Russell Brands, to anybody that will.
07:43
sit down and let us describe in full depth what these drugs do, how they work, what is the repercussions, who’s making the money, why is it being pushed, and why is it the first line of treatment in Canada instead of mental health care? And I think you could probably have a great point, which is this idea of all the money, who’s benefiting from it, right?
08:07
Well, we know it’s not the doctors because the doctors make about 200 and some odd dollars per patient. But when you start to dive deeper and you realize that they can bill for five sessions before, they don’t have to see you in person, they get to bill for writing the prescription, they don’t actually have to do the deed themselves. So how MADE works, so there is euthanasia and then there’s medical assistance in dying. And so assistance suicide.
08:33
This is what was legalized in Canada in 2016 with Carter versus Canada. And what it is, is it basically amends the criminal code so that a doctor cannot be charged with murder when they kill someone early, essentially. And so this is the crazy part for me. I actually found this out like two days ago, which is Alex is such a incredible, if you ever wanna talk to somebody about not only the research behind this, but the long standing.
08:59
growth of assisted suicide in Canada. Alex Schadenberg is one of the best, most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met. And I said…
09:08
When somebody is killed, can they do it at home? And he goes, absolutely. But here’s the sneaky part. They can give you the drugs to your loved one. No medical professional has to be in the room. They can do it at home, which means my husband can kill me. And he falls under the protection of the criminal code because he’s doing made. So let’s talk about why that’s a problem. It’s a problem because.
09:35
Yeah, your face is everything right now. If you guys aren’t seeing this, your face is everything. But this is what I mean. Wow. I know. So we’re turning everyday people into murderers and then we’re not providing care for anybody who does the deed. When you take someone off the face of the earth, that is a very unique feeling, trauma, whatever you wanna call it, whatever words you wanna attach to it, it’s gonna do damage. So…
10:04
You can do assisted suicide in the hospital, the doctor or nurse don’t even need to be a doctor, a nurse can do it. You can do assisted suicide in a public park. You can do it in your home. You can do it anywhere you want. And the thing about it is the doctors have to approve it. They don’t have to do it.
10:23
And the reason this is also a major concern is because the maid kits, they don’t always work. That’s why you have to have a second one on hand. So what if, just hypothetically, what if your loved one, you gave them the injections and they start vomiting, which is a, this does happen. About 17% of people at the time during this, they will have vomiting, they will go into a seizure, even though they’re in a paralytic. So now you’re at home, you’re by yourself, you think it’s gonna be this peaceful thing.
10:53
What if your spouse starts vomiting? Do you keep going? Do you stop? Do you, like, how do you handle this? If you’re not a medical professional, you haven’t been able to handle, been trained to handle death. So it is really hard for me to watch and witness because you only need an underlying cause. Everybody says mental health is not a reason, of course, not legally yet, but right now, we have a young girl in Alberta who is autistic, who…
11:22
applied for maid and was given maid with no other pre-existing conditions. Her father fought it in court and is still fighting. He’s a quarter million dollars in debt trying to fight to protect his daughter and the medical system. And it’s gotten to the point now, because with autism you fixate, right? So she’s fixated. Now she’s stopped eating or drinking. So now, Freddie, now the hospitals say she’s not a candidate for maid, but she can reapply.
11:51
So now she’s gonna die by not eating or drinking, and that’s okay. So my point I’m trying to express is that they say they’re not killing people with made who are not terminally ill. We just know that to be a flat out lie. We know that dying with dignity as of two days ago is petitioning the courts for legislation to force every religious hospital to start doing made.
12:19
And let me preface this with people like St. Paul’s in Vancouver, will not do maid. But they also won’t stop you from doing it. Meaning they won’t do it there against the religion and I agree with them. But if you want to do maid, they’ll transfer you to a hospital that will. And so that’s like, they’re not taking your rights away to say you can’t. They’re saying we’re not doing this at our facility. Well, dying with dignity is now going after them and is going to bring this to the Supreme Court and force Catholic institutions to kill you.
12:49
There’s going to be nowhere that’s not safe. And people say, Kelsey, it’s not being pushed. I have reports of family members, time after time after time, who have left their person’s room and gone to get a coffee and dying with dignity has come in and waited and done their best to convince them. And this is a, and I’m not saying one or two or 10 or 20 or 30, I’m talking about serious numbers here. Their whole job is to push people to die.
13:17
Every waking moment of every single day, these people wake up and find ways to make it legal for children and the mentally ill to be included and to push the people who are at the end of their life or just in their 80s, and they’ll be too expensive to care for. So we have to open our eyes and people say, Kelsey, well, how do you get the right to tell someone who’s dying a painful death that they should have to keep living?
13:47
Really simply, give them healthcare. Give them palliative care. Do not tell them that it’s suffering or injection. We don’t do lethal injection in Canada. Why are we doing it to the people who are suffering the most then? So this is the fight I’ve picked up because they started coming for our veterans and they have, we have it in writing, we have it in audio recordings. There is a lawsuit.
14:16
being brought forward towards Canadian Armed Forces because they’ve, Veterans Affairs, because they were offering maid. So by definition, I’m an anti-suicide, this is my whole job is to keep people alive. It would be remiss, I would be remiss if I turned to my back now, just because it’s not traditional suicide. And so I can’t do that anymore. So I’m hoping that eventually one of the other big names, aside of Jordan, will have this hard conversation. And I’m hoping that even if it’s not with me,
14:46
It’s with somebody who knows what the fuck they’re talking about. That’s all I ask. It’s infuriating because this is a battle of semantics that actually if makes somebody it’s taking their life. It’s about litigation to try to justify it, to make them right. They don’t care about this person. They just care about trying to get that number and being able to say, look, we checked the box again. Look, it’s on the rise. Look, we’re doing the right thing. Look, this is being well received by everyone. And just like you pointed out Americans listen.
15:15
Fuckin put your hands like up, put your phones down, make some noise. If it’s in 11 states now, we guarantee that it’s going to be pushing other places. We see what’s happening in the U S military right now. They have, what are they fucking doing right now? They actually have a draft. We haven’t had a draft in years. They’re drafting females as well. Well, here’s the crazy part. I actually got an email this morning. You’re going to love it. Let me pull it up. This is good timing. So I got an email this morning from news nation.
15:43
They wanted to have me on with Nicole Burley. They actually asked me to come on this morning and I didn’t get the email in time. They wanna talk about women being required to sign up for the draft. Are we intentionally attempting to eradicate American women and Canadian women and other women? Because last time I checked, anytime a draft has been instituted, it’s been male only. Number one, I don’t agree with the draft. I don’t agree with the draft.
16:11
I’ll be the first person to pick up my family and fuck all the way off out of this country because there’s no chance in hell, either my son or my husband are going to the draft and there’s no chance in hell I’ll go fight on behalf of this country ever again, or any nation in that war, unless you show up on my doorstep. We learned that the hard way. I’m also not a special operator, meaning there are good dudes that do this effectively, people like Dallas, they don’t need to be five foot me anymore, I have another life to live. And the fact that we are,
16:41
The governments are saying that women need to be brought in. Women are powerful and women are good at what we do on the battlefield, but do not get it twisted. There’s a reason why a draft is being put in place. If you want to guarantee that we have no one to look after our children, to run factories, to build bombs if we need to, if we need to go back to old school World War II, we need women in the nation holding it together. So I hope it-
17:11
never comes to that. But when you have egotistical children near major red buttons who only care about financial incentive, mass amounts of control, and reaffirming the idea that war is the answer, yeah, you should all be getting up and going, yeah, I’m not doing this. And if you’re a man and they’re drafting you, just tell them you’re a woman. Let’s see how that works out.
17:39
Because I’m pretty sure they just argued now for the past five years that anybody can be anything. I’m sorry, I’m not a man or a woman. I identify as a cat. Therefore, I’m not draftable. There you go. Prove me wrong. It’s ridiculous. It’s just bananas. We have this, my husband and I had this conversation this morning. I said that they’re drafting and he’s like, that can’t be a good sign. I said, we won’t stay. That’s fine with me. It’s insanity and in the United States as well, like you said, I mean, they’ve treated the veterans horribly for clearly.
18:09
clearly for decades, for generations now, but again, this whole idea of like forcing them to get vaxxed. If you don’t get vaxxed, we’re throwing you out. And then, so they threw a bunch of people out and they purged them and all of a sudden they’re like, holy shit, we don’t have enough people to actually go out and fight these wars, to actually go out and to justify this money laundering that we’re doing to these other countries so that people can make money off of it. How do we have this international police force to do these things unless we actually have an army or armed forces in the US to do it?
18:35
Last I heard Canada had only 15,000 deployable individuals. Well, let’s take a look at what those deployable individuals look like. Have you looked at any of our service members lately? Have you taken a look at the, they just reinstated, instituted the dress rags because they were just so out of control. There was a photo yesterday of a Pride flag being raised in Gagetown. They were completely delusional and paying attention to the wrong things, i.e. tampons in the men’s bathrooms. When you remove people, because
19:04
their unwillingness to get a vaccine or to put a mask on. They do not understand like what the JTF2 did with the sniper units after Dallas’ situation. You just checked out some of the most combat savvy, brilliant shooters that this country, your country and others need to actually go fight your wars. You’ve taken the real fighters, the people who have been in war and said, we don’t need you anymore. But
19:34
When the next war comes, we’ll just hope you’ll forget everything that we did to you, including ruining your career and taking your pensions and ostracizing you from the community, not even allow you on the bases. We’re gonna do that. And then we’re gonna ask you to come back and fight for us. I mean, you guys gotta really sit here and realize and there’s gonna be a subset of the military who are like, go to another war, I can go fucking, I can go play. I get it, but.
20:01
I’m not that person anymore. And I don’t believe that my service to the military was the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my timeline and it won’t be either. So I don’t also feel like I’m a naive 19 year old anymore, which means you can’t tell me to go do shit because I’m not going to blow anybody else up. It didn’t deserve to be blown up. There’s so much there. And for everybody that’s listening, you have to understand.
20:25
Having this plausible deniability to say that they’re just following orders, it wasn’t me, it’s what I was told to do. This only justifies the behavior of these people. And it gives these people the deniability to say, Oh, well, that’s what I was given and that’s what leadership told me. But if we don’t stand up and make noise now, even though we’re making noise now, even though that you’re making an impact with all your, your efforts, we don’t slow down a bully, you smack him once and he’ll push back. You have to keep coming. If you’ve been the need once, you will always stay there. It’s been.
20:55
a very convenient fallacy to say that once that we take this from you, we’re going to give it back to you. Once you have a right taken from you, we’re going to give it back to you. And you and I are slapping because we know that that is not the truth. And they are slowly inching towards us every day. And if we allow this, it literally says we’re complicit in allowing it to occur. Well, not only look at how obviously complicit we are, if you want to go down the rabbit hole, you could look at the what they did all through the C word.
21:25
And you can see very quickly that we were test subjects to see what we could control, what we couldn’t control, how much pushback will we get. And then once we get too much, we’ll pull it back. It’s just a test line. I believe that wholeheartedly. I witnessed it with our companies. I witnessed it with our friends, our families. Canada, my neighbor’s mom still wears a mask. Like it’s out of control up here. The level of just disgusting delusion is just sickening to be around on an ongoing basis.
21:55
Now knowing what we know, they’re not only now saying, okay, let’s get ready for a major world war, let’s institute drafts. So as we’re instituting drafts, we’re expanding for made. So we’re removing a population base at an extraordinary rate. People wonder why people don’t wanna have kids. When you start talking about a draft and then you look at America’s map and you line up every piece of land that the Chinese own and then you go, wow.
22:23
And then you have the CCP working in Canada in 2020 on Salt Spring Island in the capital of Canada. And people act as if people like me and you are going crazy when we’re just paying attention. When we go, I don’t want to only worry about my kids’ soccer game and driving to work and my bills. That’s how people get steamrolled. And anybody who says I was just doing my job, yeah, so did the SS. So did the Nazi party.
22:53
So did every other person that stood there as they dragged people out by their hair and kids, and then they went and put them in gas chambers and burned them alive. Don’t tell me this shit doesn’t happen. It wasn’t that long ago. Eugenics is happening in this country. It’s been happening in this country and no one’s saying anything about it. And you can’t argue it’s not eugenics. And I’ll tell you why. Because the Netherlands has loosely been doing assisted suicide since the seventies, legally since 2002.
23:22
We surpassed them with the death count in less than eight years.
23:28
And they euthanized down to one. We only go to 18 as of right now. So what does that tell you? It’s a slippery slope. When you open the door, you don’t get to just sort of walk through those bills. Now you’re seeing what’s walking through our bills. Mentally ill, children down to the age of 12. What is that for? What is that for other than to remove a population? Like, that’s ridiculous. And people say, well, but Kelsey, immigrants aren’t gonna have access to that if they don’t have healthcare, they don’t have, yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:56
Okay, cool. So what are you telling me? We’re just gonna wipe out all Canadian born citizens and keep flooding in every person from every single other country. And then when they get here, they complain about the country. Like fucking go back then. Like if you don’t like the way Canada runs, you don’t like our flag, you don’t like us doing Canada Day, you don’t like us singing our national anthem, changed our national anthem. You don’t like us doing what we’re doing. Like I never ever thought I’d be that person because my family’s are immigrants, but like get the fuck out.
24:28
Why is that so hard to say? If you’re gonna stand on my streets and you’re gonna block traffic and you’re gonna get down and you’re gonna pray and you’re gonna act as if we’re cool with that, what happens if a Christian and Catholic gets out there and does that? What happens if a Jew goes and does that? What happens if any other person ever goes and does that? You would be arrested by the police. You’d be charged with criminal mischief. You’d be charged with disruption of the public. They would come up with any sort of charge.
24:55
Like in Toronto right now, there’s a truck driving around sponsored by Rebel News, okay? And it says, is this Iraq? Question mark. They’re saying that’s hate speech. When a month ago, a Islamist organization brought up and did a billboard about Zionism equal, literally the word said Zionism equals terrorism, but they weren’t charged with shit. So,
25:23
We didn’t even say anything about anyone being a terrorist. We said, is this Iraq? Fun fact, that’s what it looks like in Canada. Surrey, I don’t go to it. You know why? Feels like the Middle East. Little triggering for me. Just like anybody else who has been in a war. Toronto. Canada doesn’t look like, walk like, talk like, smell like, feel like anything Canada at all, unless you go to Alberta. That’s it.
25:50
We got the Texas to Canada and thank God we have Danielle Smith because we got nobody else. So this idea that Canada is fine, it’s fine because our media is blocked by the CRTC. So you Americans cannot see it. The reason I go on American shows and not Canadian shows is because it will not be seen anywhere else. The reason I travel every single month, like I’m leaving on Sunday to go down to Texas is because we cannot get traction in Canada. We cannot get our stuff seen.
26:20
4,700 subscribers on YouTube. The show’s been going on for four years, and I’ve been on every big platform across the world. Do not tell me they don’t fuck with you. There’s no way they don’t. No way.
26:33
My rant is done. No, no, no. But that’s it. And if it doesn’t fit the narrative, they push it back. They don’t allow your stuff to be seen. They don’t allow it to be shared. And just like you said, like all these things you’re telling me, like all these ins and outs, again, as an American, if I’m following you so I understand and I pay attention, but all the stuff that you’re giving me, like that is the insight that if Americans knew more about that, they would be bent, livid, pissed, like rage, quitting, throwing the table. Like what the hell’s going on?
26:59
And they normally are. Like, I’m so lucky so many Americans have embraced me. And I will be grateful to the day I die for that. And I’ll tell you why. Because it was one single American that saw that I was struggling and reached out and said, do you need this help? It wasn’t the Canadian Armed Forces. It wasn’t any of my dudes I served with in Canada. And I’m not shitting on them. I’m just saying, like, they’re not in that world.
27:27
Like we don’t, Canada is so spread out and our veteran population is so spread out across this nation. We don’t have a ton of events unless they’re like in Ottawa where the capital is. And even then it’s not the same. And the reason I bring this up is because we just don’t have the community America has. And it was one army ranger, one ranger who said, do you want to get some extra help?
27:51
And without Griff, I wouldn’t be anywhere. I probably still wouldn’t be alive. Even though my husband is amazing, my child is amazing, my business was great, I needed more. And it took an American to step up and say, I got you. And then it took another American organization to stay up and see, watch my podcast and go, you look concussed. It took Defenders of Freedom to look at my stuff and go, you look like you need help. Veterans Affairs Canada is still fighting me in court right now telling me my TBI is not service-related.
28:21
Second time around, still, they’re telling me nothing that happened to me is service related. And so they had to treat me, America treated me, American taxpayer dollars, American support, Americans. And between the Americans and the British and my one sergeant and one amazing colonel in Canada, they are the only reasons I have that community. America has embraced me because Canada, number one, can’t see me. I don’t know if they just, well,
28:51
I know a lot of it. I’ve spoken to a lot of Canadians now at this point and they said, let me just hand it for a second. I did a speaking gig on the weekend and they said, we have never had a speaker like you. And I said, why? They said, because Canadians are too quiet and they’re too nice and they don’t want to rock the boat. And I said, yeah, this is why we are where we are right now. So you’re very American. I said, no, I’m just honest. And I’m not willing to skirt stuff under the rug anymore.
29:14
So every American that has either supported me, listened to me, had me on, just shared my stuff, tagged people. I’m only able to do it because Americans are doing this for me. This has nothing to do with Canada. These are my people who are showing up. So I’m eternally grateful to the Brits and to the Americans and to people like you that’ll even let me talk about these things. So thank you. This is a conversation that needs to be had more often, louder, longer, with more.
29:44
more communities, more people seeing this. And again, that’s why I want to get this message out because if you have even a sliver of warrior within you, this should be burning a fire within you right now. This should have bolded everything that you’re wanting to do. All those things that you know that are wrong, that you’re allowing, all these steps of semantics, all these times when you allow people to switch words, you have to call that bullshit out immediately because they will…
30:11
be egregious in doing it and they will continue to do it all of a sudden because we allowed them to walk down this far on the path. Well that’s what you guys thought was okay. I mean up until now you didn’t say anything about it and now you have to say something. If you don’t, you’re just as guilty as the people that are doing these atrocities. No, absolutely. And I mean, you know you hit on something when Alex Jones retorts you.
30:36
You know you found something nasty when the king of conspiracy retweets your Jordan Peter Sir Clem’s. Yeah. Even he’s like, oh damn. Oh, I want to talk to him about it too. Cause I saw that somebody said it to me and I went, oh no. Oh man, I tell ya. I made it. Congratulations. I’m sorry. Here we go. Forget Joe Rogan. When Alex Jones hits it, you know you hit on something spicy.
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coming in hot. Yeah. Right. Yeah, man. I want to be respectful of your time and there’s a million things I want to talk about but… We can do it again too, I promise. Don’t you throw me with a good time. I’ll have you on here tomorrow if you have time. Hey, whatever you want. So you received some news about your knee as well. Can we talk about that? Yeah, I found out about an hour ago. So I haven’t like emotionally processed it but I mean as like anything else that happens in life and anything that happens to
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us, we can choose to see it as happening to us, or we can see it as happening for us. And the difference between, you know, I’d say like circa 10, 12 years ago when I did my knee last time, I was very sick. I was as knee deep in, as far as neck deep in my post-traumatic stress and in my victim mentality and in my injuries and the drugs they put me on, the 11, I was still rocking on those. I was still not who I am today. And
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The difference between then and today, and it’s so important to bring it up, is because we can choose to see everything as a victim, or we can choose to see even the hardest things in our life as these opportunities. Something like a knee injury to an everyday person might not be a thing. For me, it’s kind of everything.
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I plan on doing a hundred mile race this year. That’s not happening. I plan on doing my road bike race, my world grand Fondo race I do every year. That’s not gonna happen this year, which is fine. And I’ll tell you why it’s fine. Because maybe there was something else that needed to happen. Maybe there was something else that needed to be there and I couldn’t do it if I was focused on all these other things. And so I choose to see even the worst, most negative things.
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an opportunity for me to show up differently, to show who I am and how I’ve grown since then, to present forward a positive mindset even in a really hard, very, because I’m Canadian, very expensive surgery. And to realize that it’s going to suck, but I’m going to be okay. And I’m going to be okay because my mindset is rock solid. And even on the days that it tries to test me, I know I can pick up the phone and call a b****.
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million other people who are going to say, what’s going on? I got you. What do you need? And so that’s why community is so important and purpose is so important. And moreover, that’s why it matters so much who you know and who you surround yourself with. And I want to explain why. So I’m Canadian, which means we have free health care. I’m going to tell you what free health care looks like. It means like your family doctor can be your neighbor and still not be able to get into an appointment for a week or two.
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And then I say a week or two, but if your child does strep throat, their throat is closing and you still can’t get in. It’s kind of an issue. And so I know that’s not big. Most people don’t have family doctors, by the way. We can’t even get them. I got mine by fluke because I got pregnant. So that’s what happened. And the other reason it’s so important to bring this up is because for me to get an MRI, it would have been a four month wait list. But I went and paid $680 last week to get it done.
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The reason it’s so important is because I know for a fact that I won’t be able to get a surgery for 18 to 24 months on this if I went through the traditional system. So fortunately I have a mentor that’s hyper-connected and I called her and then she called somebody in a major sports team and then called another major sports team and I will have surgery as soon as I decide. So what happens here is if you don’t have the community, you don’t have the support, you don’t have the people, you’re left to your own devices, the difference between
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everybody else in this world who is like, you know what, I’m injured, I’ll just wait, I’ll deal with it. That’s not an acceptable answer to me. That’s not an acceptable answer. And that’s because I am accountable every minute of every day in everything I do. And if I’m gonna have a major injury, I gotta make sure that everything else around me is dialed. Meaning my mental, my eating, my movement, my family, my community, my businesses, it has to be dialed. So I found out.
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I mean, I’m a bit of an overachiever. So we weren’t going to go for a tear. We’re going to do it. So I have a full complete ACL tear. I have a meniscus tear and I have an avulsion and fracture on the top of my tip. Good Lord. So you. And then I hiked down two and a half kilometers off the top of a mountain on one leg with it. So, Wow. Well, you only have one speed and that’s 10. So you just go and that’s what you’re going with.
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Yes. And it’s because I don’t have a choice. And when I say I don’t have a choice, I choose to not have a choice. I choose to not sit in the victim mentality of going, well, there goes my summer, there goes the next six months on a bike, there goes my running, there goes my travel. Nope. Get a cane, slap the brace on, off we go. As long as I can handle the pain, which I managed quite well, then I’m going to be fine. But I refuse to allow things that
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to us to be the things that hold us back and to be the things that hold us down. It’s going to propel me forward. It’s somehow for sure going to connect me to someone cool where I’m going to end up having a relationship and that’s going to end up spring into something amazingly positive. I’m not that worried about it. It just sucks because it’s expensive. And most Canadians and people in the world right now don’t have 10 to 15 grand to just drop. And I’m also one of those. So it’s, it’s the, I’m seeing it as a positive. There’s a reason for it. There always is.
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Always. That’s why my first book is called Adversity is a Gift because it punches you in the face, it makes you look at your weaknesses, it strips away all the bullshit to what you really are. And that’s when we learned who we are. The way you conduct yourself in the face of adversity is an indication of how you would do everything else in your life. So everybody else, all this false bravado, it’s like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s easy to be brave when there’s no barbarians at the gate. It’s easy to flex whenever you know you’re not gonna get called on it.
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But the reality is in this world, for anything worth fighting for, you’re gonna be called on it over and over and over again. And you have to know who you are before that call comes, because if you hesitate in that moment, you’re already lost. Well, I love that you say you have to know who you are. Most people don’t have a, like the majority of people are walking around this earth and have a few things. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know what they want. They don’t know where they’re going and they don’t know their goals. They don’t know how to get there. They also don’t know their lines in the sand.
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Who will I kill for? Who will I die for? What are your lines in the sand? What are your belief systems? What’s okay with you? How far can you push on a certain thing, right? And so if you don’t know, how are you ever gonna stand up for yourself, your family, or for that matter, anybody in your society that is vulnerable in any way, shape or form? And I think that people are afraid of that. And so they wanna distract themselves with empty social media, empty conversations, empty calories, empty relationships, so they don’t have to look at that.
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And the fact that they won’t even look at the potential of having to know how to defend themselves or having to know who the hell they are leaves them lost before they even get started because as it happens, it happens so quickly when the adversary engages. If you don’t understand that you’re under attack, even now we see when people, if they get mugged or they get sort of ambushed urban style, right. They’re in denial the entire time thinking, Oh, well, this can’t be happening. It is happening. And because you’ve waited so long, you’re already two or three steps behind.
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And now it’s impossible for them to catch up. And now they’re always fighting behind. And then they have the audacity to be surprised when they’re the ones that allowed it to happen. And well, and that’s the other thing too. It’s the audacity to be surprised. Then you’re not the one I’m going to fight for. If you want to sit there and be that shocked, I’ve been telling you, I’ve been since the trucker protest in Canada, when I came out and began publicly supporting them and the Canadians that were genuinely willing to lose everything.
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you know, like Tamara and everyone else, that just was immensely incredible. You know, we have a subset of people who are weak. We have liabilities and we have more liabilities than we have assets. And I think that that’s just being shown and that’s coming through. It’s not only coming through, but COVID tested the hell out of people. And I gotta tell you right now, I’m so grateful for it because…
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for how absolutely disastrous it is. It gave me an opportunity to pivot a business that I was losing happiness with. It gave me an opportunity to see that I could actually handle more. It gave me an opportunity to see that there were lines in the sand for me with this government and I was willing to lose it all. And when we went to bat and started speaking out, we definitely lost a lot. And I mean, as some people lost their entire homes, their businesses, I was fortunate that I was able to hang on to the last 30 days. And I was fortunate because
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people in our community came to our aid and said, like, there’s no chance, we’re letting you crash out. And so because of, you know, our idea that we, if we band together with the right people, we can do anything, but that’s why the people you band with matter. And I’m glad COVID happened for another reason. It showed me who I can trust, showed me who I can’t, it showed me what people really thought.
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And it showed me what they really thought of me and my family. And I will never apologize for how my family and I handled it and my companies handled it. I will never bend a knee. I never did. I won’t start. And it showed me everyone that is. And those are the people that would have stood outside when my family got dragged. Furthermore, they’re the people who called the cops on my family and I when we were outside. So all I know is when push comes to shove, if you come to my door and you try that shit.
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I know who won’t stand up for me and I know who won’t. And that’s all I need to know because then you do very, very, very quickly become somebody I will not stand up for. And I have been so grateful to lose a ton of people because I realized that they have always been liabilities and I refuse to surround myself with liabilities. It’s a huge litmus test. It’s a huge understanding of who really believes what they believe or what, or who’s just talking the talk.
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And here’s the thing, if you act like prey in front of a predator, you will be treated as such. You can’t just hope that you’ll turn away or they won’t see me. And I’m not saying that you have to be this person that’s going out and like being violent at all times. But if you don’t have the capacity to at least have that, what sort of deterrent are you going to have? There’s nothing that’s going to stop people from continuing to just go through and victimize you. And as you mentioned, the victim mindset, what else happens when that person
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put themselves into that place, or they paint themselves in that corner intellectually, mentally, psychologically, now they can’t wait to be victimized again. Now they’re offended by everything. They can’t wait for the next thing on social media or the wake of what just happened to spew more venom towards this thing, because what does it do? It stops them from having to look at themselves, taking ownership of themselves, accountability of their lives, and it allows them to continue to talk about anything other than the fact.
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that deep down they’re a coward to stand up for what they believe. I just feel bad for the children with parents like that. I feel bad for the next generation. I’ve seen it with my son’s class. The amount of weak parents that inhabit and are procreating is terrifying. I feel like there should be some sort of program or test you should have to do before you’re allowed to reproduce on this earth. Otherwise, it just feels like we’re populating with just…
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just liabilities left right and center. And it’s just because we don’t deal with our own stuff and then we have kids and then we put it on them. That’s why you’ve got such like, that’s why you’ve got, we’ve got the trans movement is you’ve got these sick parents who just want attention and community and just don’t admit their own faults, problems or traumas that happen to them. And then they push this ideology on their children so they can be seen as the heroes in the community and so welcoming. It’s like, no, you’re sick. It’s called monotresum by proxy. We know what it is. We’re cautiously aware of it.
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And I spoke to Buck Angel about this and he’s the only genuine transsexual I’ll actually call he because he doesn’t try to be a he. He knows he’s a biological woman. He walks the earth as a man. He wants to be a man. He knows that it’s, he goes, it’s a mental health disorder. I have a script, I have a diagnosis. And he goes, what we’re doing to children is dangerous. And that’s the most beautiful thing. When you’ve got people who are willing to call out the shit from within the spaces, right? It’s no different than the veteran space.
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Nobody hates a successful veteran other than another veteran. There’s massive amounts of that going on right now. And that’s because how dare you go do something greater than what your service was. And to me, it’s no different than career when you have children that are different or anything else. You decide what you wanna do in your life. You have to decide how you wanna walk the walk and talk the talk. You can also decide to just stop trying.
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And most people, it does feel like they just stopped trying. They let themselves believe that their service will be the greatest thing that they’ve ever done. And on some levels it will. But there’s other acts of service you can do, other ways you can help community, other ways you can help people. There’s other ways you can go do great things. Same with children. You don’t have to be a mother that works. Your job can be to raise amazing sets to the world.
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But we keep this generationist telling women that women must stay home if you wanna have a healthy family or they’re telling them you must go to work if you’re a feminist. And it’s just, the conversation isn’t one way or the other. I’m a mother who drops my kid off almost every day of the week and picks him up almost every day of the week while running the business, while having the podcast, while traveling the world and doing what I do. You can balance, you can be successful.
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But no matter what you do, you have to look at your why. Why are you doing what you’re doing? And within what you’re doing, are you making assets or liabilities? Are you opening yourself up to have children who are so dissociated with the parents that they believe the social contagions because the parents are on their phones 24 seven. Or are you the parent that can do all things, which I have a lot of those really awesome people that do.
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and their kids are solid and their conversations with their kids are like some of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard and it’s because we realize that there is more to life than just what we used to do. You can be a great parent if you show up in your present, you can be a great employee, you can be a great CEO, you can be great at everything you do, but you have to realize that you can do more and we have to stop resting on our pasts and our laurels and our careers and whatever it is we used to do and start acting constantly every day showing up.
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Every day. And that doesn’t mean a work hustle culture either. I’m not a big fan of that. My phone chats up at five, unless you’re a friend, you don’t ring through. It’s important to show your children that mothers can work and still be loving and supportive and cook dinner and clean the house and do your laundry and do everything else. That mommy and daddy can have healthy communication and talk and not scream, but can have hard conversations. And also talk to them, not like they’re stupid. Your kids aren’t stupid.
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They’re smarter than you give them credit for. So speak to them with respect and they will respect you 10 times more. This isn’t rocket science. And one other thing that drives me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. I posted something this week and it was about a doctor doing a Ted talk about how she doesn’t work or study men. And I said, I predominantly only work with men. And I do that because I hold a different type of space. And somebody else came forward and said, I don’t believe men.
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should be talking to women about their problems because it will come back on them. And also no woman wants a weak man. No, and this is like, and my favorite part about this is like a male podcast guy who’s got like a male dominated group, which really sucks because he just also going through a divorce. So I’m a big believer that who you are in your real life, if you ain’t got the shit to back it, you shouldn’t be teaching it. I’ve been married 14 years.
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to one man and when that man cries, it’s fucking beautiful. And it’s healing. And it is something that I am so glad our son is willing to do and I’ll tell you why. Because he knows how to be a tough protector and get after it and hard man. And he knows when the right time is to let it out. But the difference is at least I know he won’t be the guy that bottles it up to the point where he goes and shoots himself in the face. He’ll go to his wife and say, I’m really in it right now, hon.
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I’m not really sure what to do about it. And the reason I bring that up is because the idea that men should only be talking to men about their problems in my opinion is wrong. We’ve just got to show other men that there are women who want to hear you be emotional. There are women that want to hear you need us. We don’t have to rely on men only, men only. That’s the most like feminist flip.
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bullshit I’ve ever heard. You sound like a woman with blue hair that’s screaming, stop it, stop it. It’s disgusting to tell a man that only a man should be talking to a man about man issues is gross. You’re pigeon-holing them from healing because they’re gonna think now, oh, I can’t talk to a woman about it because, you know, that makes me weak. I’m so tired of this male dominated conversation that men are weak when they cry. I’m over it. I’m done with it, man.
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Kelsey, I want to be respectful of my word with your time. No worries, man. Kelsey Sharon, go get the book, Brass in Unity. She reads it to you on Audible if you want that. Go listen to her podcast with Jordan Peterson. Share it out. Tell more people about it. Make some noise about it. And at some point in the future, I’m sure we’ll have another conversation. Thank you for everything you’re doing for fighting the good fight. And I look forward to seeing what else you have in store.
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Thanks for having me. And I mean it, anytime. You wanna do it again? I know we only had a short period of time, so that’s on me and I apologize. But I mean it, as much as time as you need, man, I love what you do. I love what you stand for, more importantly. I’m a big fan of your show and I am a big fan of how you give people space and you hold space, even though you’re a man. So thanks for that, dude. And know that I’m always here and I’ve always got your back in any way you need, okay? I got you, thank you.
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Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
