Lex Fridman Podcast - #230 – Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Kelsi Sheren is a veteran, artillery gunner, and founder of Brass and Unity. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get 14-day free trial - Justworks: https://justworks.com - Novo: https://banknovo.com/lex - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit - Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off EPISODE LINKS: Kelsi's Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelsiburns Kelsi's Website: https://brassandunity.com Kelsi's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelsie_sheren Charity: https://www.heroicheartsproject.org/ Do the F*cking Work (book): https://amzn.to/3mGhguF Notes from Underground (book): https://amzn.to/3mN5TRF Brothers in Arms (song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhdFe3evXpk PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:50) - World War II (18:54) - Yeonmi Park, starvation, and mental health (33:10) - Kelsi's 9/11 experience (36:39) - Becoming a soldier (43:07) - Artillery: The Hand of God (52:49) - Weapons training (1:10:35) - Pre-Deployment (1:26:42) - Arrival to Afghanistan (1:48:55) - Tragic war story (2:13:59) - Feelings after tragedy (2:17:41) - The Taliban (2:23:17) - Retrospective: 20 years in Afghanistan (2:39:57) - How war changes people (2:45:18) - PTSD (3:14:13) - Ayahuasca and mental recovery (3:46:09) - Love (4:04:12) - Advice for young people (4:07:33) - Death (4:13:22) - World War II

The following is a conversation with Kelsey Sharon. Canadian forces veteran, artillery gunner, who served in Afghanistan at 18 years old and came home with severe PTSD. She went on to found Brasson Unity, which creates unique jewelry, large part of the proceeds from which go to help rehabilitate the lives, limbs, and mental health of veterans and first responders. LIMS and Mental Health of Veterans and First Responders. He has a big personality, big heart, and an intense passion for life. So when our paths happen across, I knew we needed to talk.

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Choose wise and my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, with a great looking online store that brings your ideas to life and tools

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If you have cool t-shirts ideas, maybe you should open up a Shopify store and maybe I will buy some from you. This show is also brought to you by JustWorks, an HR platform that makes it simple to onboard and manage remote employees. They help with employment and tax regulation and requirements, give access to National Health Insurance Plans, help set up sick leave policies, time track that sinks with payroll, plus access to 24-7 experts support. I think there's a lot of components to running a business that are very difficult. So you have to definitely have the right tools for the job. Managing employees, especially remote employees, both the onboarding and the ongoing sort of once they're hired process, is exceptionally difficult. So it's really nice to have a tool like JustWorks that makes that

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of conditions apply. Join 3 million businesses that use Indeed by going to Indeed.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Onit, a nutrition supplement and fitness company that make alpha brain which is a Neutropic that helps support memory, mental speed, and focus. I use it to boost my deep work sessions when I know I'm going to be thinking through a difficult problem. I don't rely on it. I don't take it every day. But when I need that sort of super char, super boost, whatever you want to call it, it

really clears the mind and helps me maintain focus. And it's just like this catalyst for a serious, focused, deep work session. Anyway, go to lexfreedman.com slash on it to get up to 10% off alpha brain. That's lexfreedman.com slash on it. I highly recommend you read the book book Deep Work by Kyle Newport. It kind of puts the right terminology and structure around how to put long structures of focused work as part of your day. And then once you have that structure, I think you have to make sure you have the right to supplements, the right diet, the right exercise to support that. And that's where on it can help out. the right diet, the right exercise impact on you and that your grandfather

was a World War II vet. So people that have gone to World War II and my family too, they don't seem to talk about it much. Like the worst, the tragedy, the less they talk about it. I mean, it's understandable. I can respect that, but I don't think people fully understood the value in human stories over time and sharing that. That certain civilizations don't have written language. The value in that being passed down is extraordinary, but we didn't really have that with the World War II vets.

It seems like. Well, they kind of want to protect you from the pain. Like my grandfather, my grandmother went through Hallet or Moore, which is the Ukrainian starvation of millions of people, and then obviously went through World War II with the Nazi occupation and same on the grandfather side who on my dad's side the grandfather fought in World War II and they seem to not want to talk about those experiences to protect you from the suffering to protect you from the evil that they've experienced which is sad because

the lessons from that history and not then propagated through you. And also, there's something about the strength you carry with you knowing that that's in your blood. Those great heroes are in your blood. And that's suffering, overcoming that suffering is in your blood.

I would argue that's exactly correct. If you have someone you know that comes from your lineage that has done something super gnarly, that's just been a badass and in so many different ways, you want to know about that person, you have that person's blood in you, that's important to acknowledge and when that isn't shared, I feel like it's just a detriment to that individual. What do you make a world or two in terms of history? Do you think about those kinds of wars where two times more civilians died than the number of military personnel?

So most of the wars basically just the death of civilians and the invasion of homes, the burning of homes, the bombing of homes, all that. World War II for me, I find that was the first experience where I became just obsessed with history. World War II really did it for me. I'm not sure if it's because of the dramatization of film and TV and the way that our generation has looked at it. But for me, it was more than that.

I felt a deep connection to it and I still can't figure out why. Like a pull almost. People joke around about those past lives and those things or those connections and there's something deeper within me that feels a pull towards that. And I'm not quite sure if it's because I had family that escaped Hungary once the Soviets came in. So thanks for that. Or if it was because my grandfather served in it or for whatever reason, I just, I have

this pull to it. And so when you think about the mass casualty of the civilian population, that's very difficult for me to wrap my brain around after being in a war and seeing When you have a small subset of civilians die How much of an impact that has on that community right there and just in just a tiny area? So to try to wrap my brain around what happened in Europe and all across and and all that I really struggle with that because I don't know that I can comprehend what that would truly mean to somebody if I didn't experience it or see it for what it is. Does that make sense? Yeah, but so first of all, you're right. A lot of people are drawn to world or two for

different reasons. So one is Hitler and Stalin trying to understand how it's possible to have that scale of evil in a very different flavors of evil. It's almost fascinating that human nature can allow for that. And then also it's fascinating that so many people can follow leaders like that with the pride and with the love of country. Yeah. And that's like, it's almost like this weird experiment. It's like, wow, I wonder if I'm the same. I'm made from the same cloth as those people. Like, would I be a good German if I lived in Germany

and was, you know, during the time of Hitler? Would I believe that Germany has been done wrong? I'm Jewish, by the way, which makes me a little bit more comfortable talking about this. What I would I believe in the dream sold by a charismatic dictator who says that wrongs have been done and we need to correct those wrongs. That to me, this is the compelling thing that draws me to world or to the human nature question. I would agree with you on that.

I think there's a way to look at people like that. And at that time, there was no real... There wasn't a full understanding of the psyche, the way that we're starting to. I mean, we still don't understand any of it. But it seems like the time gap back then, there was no real understanding of sociopaths and narcissists and psychopaths and really what those traits were. And I feel like people will follow blindly if they're given a good enough reason. Well, if you have an individual who is ranting and screaming at the top of his lungs in the

middle of these town squares and he's getting this attention, it's human nature to wanna understand and be a part of a group mentality. It's human nature to wanna fit in. And so, I don't know if it's more of people were, at the beginning were just, this is the cool thing to do.

Or if it was, they were genuinely terrified. Or if there was an they were genuinely terrified. Or if there was an aspect that was like, this guy is saying something that resonates with me. There could be a lot of different things. I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get to, or no one got to really examine this individual's brain and this person and why they thought the way they thought. Because that's always been the biggest thing for me is I'm really curious about why people

do what they do. Like deeply, deeply curious about it. I'm not sure who's more interesting, the people that follow Hitler or Hitler himself. So I mean, the question that's coupled with that is what history roll out in similar ways even if there wasn't a Hitler. You know, it's the people that created a Hitler or did Hitler create the events of World War Two. I think the people would be more interesting in my opinion.

That seems to be the that the charismatic leaders are all out there. The failed artists in the case of Hitler, they're all out there. Right. And it's just when there's this environment of anger and fear, charismatic leaders can take over. And it doesn't matter if they're evil or good. It's like a role of the dice in terms of history. What how evil, how truly insane they are. Like I think Stalin was much more cold and calculating. He wasn't as insane as Hitler. Hitler was legitimately insane,

like especially later on in the war where he would do irrational actions, I would say. So, but that's like a weird role of the dice. You could have gotten a totally different leader. The invading, wanting to take over the entirety of Europe and then invading Russia. That's a insanity. Yeah, that just even just the first part of that wanting to take over Europe.

If you really think about the scale, if you really sit down and go, he want this one individual was like, I want all of this. If you really sat down and you were to sit down and put him in his traits that we know of into any sort of document nowadays that deems somebody a psychopath or a narcissist, this guy would set it on fire. There's, you know, he himself was so, I think, so damaged and he reminds me a lot of people now who struggle to find their way. He reminds me a lot of angry individuals who are told no,

either by women or by business or by whatever the sector they're in. He reminds me very much of that. Like, there was the word I'm looking for, just that individual who's just like the world is shit. And the world owes me everything. And it's that mentality.

He really came from that. It seems like. And when you foster that too long, you get that. There's a book called, what is it, Man from Underground by Dusty Usky. I might be misnaming the book, but it's about the bitterness of a man. It's like it breath breeds within his mind, and it just grows that bitterness. I mean, we all have that sort of resenting

of the world when you're younger. When you have a choice, when you fail, do you blame the world or do you hold, it's the jaco thing, do you care the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because of that? That's the jockele thing. Do you care the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because of that? That's the decision. And in some sense, I mean, unfortunately, because he took responsibility and leadership, you can't say he wasn't a leader. So it's not that he's a failure. He's not a person not a failure, but it's you can't say he's his powerless did not take action I think he's just basically embodiment of the anger and the fear of people at the time and

But the insanity of obviously many of my relatives not just murdering them, but putting them in camps and torturing them but many of those people, Jewish people, were also some of the best scientists. The insanity of murdering some of the best Germans is, it makes no sense. But so that's why it's fascinating to kind of look back at that time in history, and think, are these the same humans?

And also, are there echoes of that now? Yes. And and are we is that going to happen again? Is there going to be a World War three? This in some other kind of way? Is there going to be some mass scale injustice in some other kind of way, which we're not yet like because of our blindness and maybe not learning the less as a history will allow to happen again. And then obviously it's a very common thing to whatever political leader you don't like to call them Hitler. Of course. Which is that, that to me, I got to, I got to tell you, when somebody calls somebody Hitler, the weight behind that has been completely lost in this generation. This generation does not understand what that truly means to call someone Hitler or

a Nazi. Or Stalin, to be honest, the starvation has just been talking to a lot of folks recently, especially like North Korea, what you own me, Park, starvation. And I remember from my grandmother, it wasn't any time and time again, not having food to eat is the thing that people say is the worst, everything. It's way worse than murder, not having food, and the places that takes your mind, and the actions that forces you to do,

that's terrifying. And all of that seems very distant in our history. Yeah, I love her. I watched that interview with her. She is, I wanna talk to that woman so bad because when she was on Joe and she sat there and said, Joe's like, do you have you done any therapy and she laughed? I was like, oh, that's my girl.

It's such a fascinating. I mean, I would love for you to kind of talk to her and explore her mind because we kind of explore her story. Right. And that's there's power and importance to the story. But it's so difficult to understand like how does she become healthier and better, even more so than she's already.

She's recovered quite a bit. She's found herself quite a bit, but I wonder is she haunted? You're saying questions I want to ask. That's what I mean, because after being in a war, there are certain things, there are certain atrocities that you see that it doesn't matter the therapy that you do. And I don't care what all the special

ops guys say. Like I know plenty of them that have a light switch and they turn it off and they can function. But I also know them when they've been out for 10 years. There's things that haunt people differently, but there's no way there's not something going on there deeply. Yeah, but it's also extra levels of complexity in her case because I Mean, this is what just looking at history about family is she spent much of her early life loving the dictator

Right, we like the water or something. We like water or we like this because there is no like individual like when they said there was no love or anything. But there is a love for the just that individual for that individual and so I mean it's like the ultimate abusive relationship. Oh yeah. And but but it's still love. The experience like you don't know the alternative. So it's not even it's complicated because like the alternative. So it's not even, it's complicated because like, I wonder if she truly explored it what you would find because the trauma, much of her trauma, I think comes from when she was escaping North Korea, went to treatment by China. It's like the mom, when she had to witness within that and being helpless with that on the phone. Yeah. So it's like evil men essentially abusing her, trading her, you know, and doing so nonchalantly.

Like it's part of just the way of life that I wonder if she sees kind of, yes, it's so complicated because childhood, it would be normal to her because you didn't know any different. Exactly. And there's like a I grew up poor, but I never sense that because your parents didn't make you. Well, everyone else around was too. Right. And so you don't notice it.

I mean, it's a cultural thing. So the way you grow up, you only start to notice it when you compare yourself to others, when you learn of the alternative. That's a dark reality when you're abused. You, I wonder, I mean, you truly begin to suffer in some kind of way when you understand that you were being abused. That's a dark kind of thought that I wonder if you live your whole life just in that abuse. If you don't know better, that's a safer that's like

What's a better life going suffering and then learning that you are suffering or just Suffering until the last days. There's a two ways to look at this I'd argue on one side that suffering and suffering till you die You know no different so you can different. So you can't have hope, you can't have this idea that there's better. And sometimes that's just keep that in its box. But then if you have kind of what you have with Park where she she knows now that there's different, she knows that there's better, then you run into those,

what is the damage that has been done, what is going to be passed on as intergenerational trauma? I know she's a mom. So it's like, now you got to look long term a little bit because now she's an influence on a child. And there's a positive to looking at both, I would say, and I know that sounds horrible for the living and trauma your whole life and just not knowing any better. living and trauma your whole life and just not knowing any better. But there's, I don't know if that saves the brain and the body and just that overall or if it actually would be better because there's no way to really find that out. I don't. Yeah, I think, but the reality is when you give people hope and you make them realize that they're suffering, you're putting a burden on them. That's the first step on a long journey. And so, and obviously she, now that she knows that the suffering she wants to make people in North Korea currently suffer less, and that's that admirable goal.

It's, it is what we do to each other. It's tried to like, when you see suffering in the world, you try to make it better. And unmasked, that's probably in a long arc of history going to make for a better world. I'm hopeful at that idea for North Korea. I'm hopeful for that because you never want to leave individual suffering when you know that they're actively suffering while you're just living your day-to-day life in the western world, just out grocery shopping and you see all this food and you know in the back of your mind, like that interview fucked me up a little bit, I won't lie.

Like, and I had some of the girls in my office listen to it, they're just bawling, because there's, we're all parents, and there's this idea that not being able to feed our children, that, just the idea of that damages the psyche. It brings up the pain in the chest, like just the idea of it. And so going to the grocery store for about a week after that. I just remember standing there looking and just going, fuck are we doing? But then there's that snap reality that comes into play and goes, so how do we fix that? You got to take on China.

That's never going to happen. And the reason that's not going to happen, it's happening again. So a conny comes down through Afghanistan, Chinese are all through Afghanistan. Iran makes the deal with China for the road way to get the oil. Well, that's done in the blink of an eye without anyone knowing. There's no way. There's just so much at play with China. They control such a large aspect of our world. Unfortunately, that to take in free North Korea a drastic action

would have to happen. And then your people would come in. It would be a mess. What do you mean your people? What do you mean your people? Your Russians. Did you hear what she said about Russians? Did you hear what she said? Russians, I love Russians. You know what I didn't love? The Russian Recruiting Video that came out. That shit was terrifying. Did you watch it? I told you about it. Of course you didn't watch it. I didn't watch it. Oh, shocker.

The USA put out a recruiting video. Yes. And then like a day or two later Russia put one out. And the recruiting for video in the States was a animation of a a female soldier. Yeah. With two moms. And she was going to go change the world. Right? Russia came in with one. It's like it's the the character from like Rocky essentially. And they're guys in the mud and just in the range I can do and push up just pushing it out. They're just like they see their boot They're just like crushing things and I'm like and it's all like and the deep Russian voice. I'm like, oh my god

Which one is better would you say which bothered you more? What do you mean by bother specify? So deception is a funny thing because when you're young and you're choosing to go to the military or not, it's not like you know, like none of us know what the best trajectory for life is. Right. For many people go to the military is it really makes them incredible human beings. Some of the best people in this world, I know our soldiers. So it's, I'm not, I don't mean like it's somehow bad to go to the military. I think it's a great choice,

but there is something, the honest truth is I just don't like marketing people. Well. And so this is essentially a marketing effort. Yeah, it is a marketing effort. And so which one do you like as a marketing effort better? Russia. Okay.

Oof, yeah, I do it. There you go. I do, because Canada doesn't, you know what, our recruiting videos are. It's like, I love it. They're the best. Sorry, A. Yeah. Oh, fuck, here we go.

It's starting. It started. Awesome. So, Canada does these ones where it's like, it'll have a bunch of like soldiers doing movements and then they'll like, snip it together really quick. It'll be like a Navy one and a guy jumping of a plane and then it'll be like an artillery and then like an armored. Then it'll be like join the Canadian forces today and like that's like their their videos. So it's like very marketable, very palatable to Canadians who don't really want war

and who don't really acknowledge their military in the first place and do everything they can to make sure that vets don't get any support when they come home. So I can see why that one is acceptable. What Russia did was meant to be more of an intimidation tactic, in my opinion. I like that style better though. I think we need harder, I think we need people to be harder. I think it's acceptable and okay to say that our soldiers need to have a harder mindset, a stronger mindset, a better mentality, and mental health support going into the service and a harder body because I know when you go to the US, I've also encountered plenty of soldiers that are 600 pounds.

What are you gonna do? So we should say that when you join the military, you're an incredible shape, or maybe incredible, but very good shape. I was an incredible shape. I was an incredible shape. It was the best shape of my life. Yeah. So.

Okay, with that. It's okay. You know what? I used to do setups. Like no, I would do setups in the morning when I was little, until I could see my sick. Like I always had a six pack because all I did was train.

But like if I couldn't like see it, I would just sit there morning cartoons and just do sit-ups. And my mom and dad thought that was like normal except of a behavior. So if you had like Instagram back then, you'd be a David Goggins, you would be just like screaming.

Without the cursing, that cursing started once the military started. Okay, got it. So I mean, the people should know, is it probably already know that you also competed in Taekwondo, like you were an athlete of all kinds, even saw a rugby in there? Yeah, I was good at rugby.

I played that for seven, six years, I guess you could say, total, I think the worst injury I ever end up having was I tore up my right eyelid off. We were doing an exhibition game. I don't do total. I think the worst injury I ever ended up having was I tore up my right eyelid off. We were doing an exhibition game. I don't do exhibition games well. I don't do like for fun well. I don't do like. See, very competitive.

No, not me. So you being funny. Ah, there it is. He gets a, he sees, he's not a robot. What I was saying though to you was that we did an exhibition game and the team ahead was winning. The team we were playing was winning, which was annoying. And so there was an opportunity to take out a girl that was going one end of the field

to the other and she just kept hitting tries left, right in the center. She was fast. So I figured if I just aimed her up, like she's a target, and I just run full force at her, because she was really, she was a tall individual. But I just, if I do that,

I'll take her out of the knees. So I did that, but that resulted in it was, she put her tooth through her mouth guard and knocked out and didn't, just she just stayed there. But when I stood up, I tore the right eyelid off,

and it was hanging from the inner corner. Yeah. My mom was there because mom was my mom's my biggest fan. Mm-hmm. She was supportive of this. She was supportive of everything. I shouldn't miss a game. She didn't miss anything.

And I stood up and I kind of turned around and we already had a girl break her nose that day. So she was on the sideline with her nose sideways and just bloody. My mom was like, I'll take her to the emergency after once the game's over. And so I turned around and looked at her and she just, she almost vomited on the spot. And I was like, what's wrong? She's like, don't move your eyelids off. I'm like, but I can see like I was trying to blink. But like it was just down so I could just constantly see. She's like, we're just, we're just gonna go to the emergency.

We're just gonna go there now. Was there blood? Yeah, there's lots of it, but I couldn't really tell. Okay, were you okay with blood at that point? Yeah, I guess I always did check on dough and all that. Yeah, I didn't get knocked out very often. I didn't really, when I was younger and type when I was really good, I only lost a handful of times.

So when I did lose that was bad. But I never had like a broken nose or a lot of blood on my feet. Like nothing like that, really. So nothing freaked me out too much. Was there aggression there or just purely competition over skill? I mixed up both. I was, this was right after, not too long after, my coach went to prison for statutory rape. And that was like how you talk about Park talking about how she knew love because of that

person. That person was like a god to me. And so when that happened, I was just an angry individual from that point on. So there was competition and aggression mixed in there. Oh, like it was betrayal that there's a somebody that was a simple love for you was could also be a very bad person. I used to eat, sleep, and breathe, whatever that man said from four years old on.

I lived with my coaches at a point, so I could train that much. I helped look after their daughter. I was at the club 24-7. It's just the idea that somebody could do something like that. Yeah, that really messed me up. Where were you on 9-11? I was 11 and I was in my parents' basement.

In Ontario. Ontario. In Ontario, Canada. Canada. What did you think of 9-11 at that age from Canada? They have an impact on you in terms of changing the level of evil you thought is there in the world today. Not initially. I remember it really vividly. I have a decent memory for certain things.

It seems like stuff like that I'd stick with really well. I remember watching I was sitting in a couch and my mom, my mom called my dad because my parents are truck drivers. My dad was on the road, I'm not mistaken. And he would go in and out of cities all the time. And I think he was on the East Coast. My mom was like a little panicky. So she tried to get a hold of him on the,

I think she, the time it was like beepers. And yeah, so he would get a beep. He would go to a payphone and call us. And he was fine. And I remember my mom being like really upset. And I couldn't quite grasp why she was so upset. I knew something really bad had happened. It's when I then saw the second plane

go into the tower. And I remember her just like the stereotypical like handover and mouth and she just felt sick and she just was so confused. And I knew it was bad, but I didn't fully grasp it. We went to school that day and they had talked about it briefly. You could hear the teachers kind of reminiscing about it. There was a point that that week that all of a sudden, all of the children who were from a Middle Eastern family were not the school. I just remember them saying like there a lot of people aren't coming to school, but it was it was in particular. I think parents were afraid once it got out that it was a certain group. They were afraid for their own kids and fair enough. I mean, you never know. You don't know. And I knew it impacted me enough that I did write. I remember the school was doing a memorial for it.

And I remember they asked, I wrote a poem. And Report it was there and I read it on air. That's like I remember like It was like it was a very short one But I remember I like wanted to do something but I didn't know why or for for what reason I just I knew I wanted to do Something to honor it, but I didn't I couldn't grasp why you eventually went to Afghanistan. Yeah Did that begin to plant a seed of thinking about conflict in the world? It's a good question. I've never thought about it that in depth.

I mean, I've done 12 years of therapy. You think that would have come up, Dr. Passe, but apparently not. We'll work on it, though. I mean, when did the idea of war start entering your mind? Late high school? I think it was for me. I was, I finished high school at 17. I moved away and went to college.

I went to Algonquin College, because I wasn't smart enough to get into Ottawa, you. So I was like, well, Algonquin, she is. I just wanted to play sports. And frankly, I wanted away from my small town that I was living in. I went through like a bad high school breakup as a kid and you know that where you think that's like the love of your life and you just can't bear to be anywhere near anybody. And so

I moved away as fast as I possibly could. And I didn't grasp it still at that point. Love and heartbreak. Okay. Why did you become a soldier? Why did you want to become a soldier? My parents told me from an early age, they always figured out either be a cop. I would do, they didn't think military, but they thought it would be like a type A personality, possibly carry a gun situation. And I had never hunted before, we never had guns in our house. I was never

exposed to weapons of any kind. If anything, it was, it was the opposite. We just, all the hunters on the property, like all the deer would come to our property and all the hunters would be, no, I'm not, my mom would put salt looks out so that they would get killed. Your property was the safe space for the deer. Yeah, it was 17 acres of forest, and they just, we had two turkeys that used to walk up and down the driveway every day. We had bears in there, and nobody bothered them. And so, there was no aspect of like, I want to go kill shit.

That was not like a thing. I had no idea I wanted to take anybody off the face of the earth or anything. I went to school, and because I'm a history person, my parents has always, always made it really important that remembrance stays the thing in our life. So that's Veterans Day for you. So it's November 11th.

And you go, you honor, I don't care if you don't want to go and don't care if it's raining, you go. And so I went to the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa that year, which was, it's our capital, which is, yeah, it's our capital, and it's really small. And so I went, but I took the bus, and I was on the bus back to Elgonquin. And I met a lady who was like a World War II vet, really old lady. She had an Air Force uniform on and just like this row of medals. And really old lady. She had an Air Force uniform on and just like this row of medals. And I mean, I think you can tell by our limited to extreme interactions we had over the short

period of time, I'm curious and I'll just ask you. And so I just got up and talked to her and just started talking to her. And she didn't say like, I don't remember exactly her words, but she'd served. She was one of the first females to fly and all of these kind of things that stuck in my head. And we just kind of kept talking and I missed my stop. And then I finished talking to her and I got back on the bus and went back to the college and walked into my small apartment

where I had two roommates, these two guys I went to high school with, one of them went to high school with, one was from out of town, and I just didn't like what I was, I wasn't happy, I wasn't doing what I wanted to do, and I didn't know what I wanted to do truthfully. Something just said, why don't you join the army? Like in myself, my self-talk was like,

let's just join the military, let's do it. How you in general, somebody self-talk was like, let's just join the military, let's do it. Are you in general, somebody just falls the gut? Like when your heart tells you something, you go with it. For the most part, because I figured out, at least now I figured out what parts, like what feeling I can trust and which one I can't,

which ones I anxiety versus which ones my actual intuition talking. So why did you sign up to be an artillery gunner? Because they wouldn't let me be infantry. I mean, why would you want to be infantry? I mean, you're naming a lot of dangerous activities. Yeah, but that wasn't a thought in my mind at the time. My idea was if I was going to do this and I was going to put myself through the bullshit and the training and all of the hell and the pushups and the like, my mom screamed at, I wanted to do something that I know was actually going to be affecting

something. And what I knew was making change or affecting or on the front lines was infantry artillery or armored. So I was like, one of those. Can you explain the difference infantry artillery and armored? Do you want like the layman's term or do you want me to actually explain it? Well, listen to your conversation with Jaco, especially I love how you get into details. Okay, so let's detail this one. Okay. So infantry is your frontline door kicking, you know, blasting the door open, running and get the fuck on the ground. Just tata tata tata. They're the guys that, you know, the double top you in the face and they show

up in the middle of the night and put a barrel in your head. Like those are the guys that are sleeping in the trenches that are eating MREs who are being shot at, who are being blown up, who are doing the dirty work and not sleeping and carrying the hundred pound pack and are side by side with your buddies in the trenches. I wanted that, that. They said it was too small for that.

So they were decided to drop your, or what, too small under 100 pounds? At the time, I was about 103, and I'm five foot, like, on a, if you roll my back out, like, I really try. I'm five foot. At the time, though, I think my license said 411. So. At the time though, I think my license said 411. So. So you were too small, too small for infantry. Yeah, they just as like, there was no mandate at which they said, you can't be, but they said, you know, we don't want to put you through training that you're going to fail out of. And then I have to recourse you and then find a new job for you.

And they want to try to, this is what you're going in for. They want to have you follow through that path. So then there was armored, which are your tanks. They want to try to, this is what you're going in for, they want to have you follow through that path. So then there was Armored, which are your tanks. So that's your movie like Fury, where your tank battles in, which we don't really do anymore, but you're rolling around in tanks,

you got guys in the back, you're a driver, you're a turret gunner, which I would have enjoyed, but the idea of being in a closed metal box, something about it made me panic. So I was like, maybe not for me. Oh, there's of course power to that kind of big gun. Well, that's why I went for the bigger one. Okay, by the way, I think Russia leads the world a number of tanks.

There's still, it's very like, what is it? Alpha demonstration of like, four sick, look, we have largest number of tanks? You know what takes tanks out though? What some gasoline some old batteries and a wire Yeah, but tanks still look badass. They look great But they don't last but so much of the military like we said with the recruiting videos It's a display of power versus the actual implementation of power there Okay, artillery so I'm doing my best here. Yeah, I don't even know what double tap means what you said earlier actual implementation of power. There. Okay. Artillery. So I'm doing my best here.

Yeah, I don't even know what double tap means what you said earlier. So it's double pop is like two shots to the face. Why two? To be sure. Okay. All right. You guys, the taxpayers pay for the animal.

That's fine. But you don't do three because it's wasting. Well, that's not that's a waste. Okay. Double tap to the face. There's so much awesome terminology here or gruesome terminology depending on your perspective. Okay. So artillery. Yeah. So that's the hand of God. Sorry. No. I that's that's intensely romanticized version. But

okay. Artillery. The hand of God. So because it will reach out and touch you from wherever we want. It's like it's like F18 pilots are bombers. They'll you won't know they're there until they're there and so for artillery I I really honestly didn't think artillery would be a fit for me. I didn't know much about it They were just like these are what you couldn't pick from and I was was like, I'll go here. So in World War II, they used much closer artillery. So it's the, we were called the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery because the Queen made us Royal. So Canadian artillery. And we, we shoot these rounds when you're in training, you shoot smaller, smaller ammunition, they're about 40 pounds. They go, I'm going to get this wrong, 20 K, 20 kilometers,

so whatever that is in your mile things. And they have a casing on them and they're much easier, they're easier to handle. The guns are smaller, you need less people for them. They're basically what you train on nowadays. It's not what we use overseas. What we use overseas, now those things are beautiful. Those are just a sheer work of the engineering behind them just makes my heart skip a beat. Yeah, the engineering on modern guns is amazing. So are we talking about machine guns here? No, talking about fully automatic. No, you're talking about artillery guns. So what it is, it's a 155 millimeter howitzer that shoots up to up to 40 kilometers accurately 45 Unrecorded and it shoots a hundred pound round. Oh

Okay So that but there is still precision accurate as hell accurate. Okay, accurate if the people behind it that are shooting it and aiming in or accurate Okay, so So how at which stage of the warfare do they come in? Are they saving you, like say a bunch of people get rated, a bunch of the soul infantry get rated and then the artillery saves them or are they the first line of attack or what are they, what is their artillery called? Like the hand of God presumes their helping. Yeah, yeah, that's, well, that's it. So depending on the operation or whomever is running it or how they want it done, sometimes

if they just know there's targets, they'll use us, you know, high value targets. So we have this round. It's called the X-calibre round. It costs about half a million dollars per round. It comes in a special tube that is like sealed and locked and you have to get permission from Ottawa to shoot it. And it's only used for VIP targets. So like we have VIP for everyone. And it will, it's GPS guided, it's rocker propelled.

And when you fire it, it will, if this is a wall and somebody's standing on this side of it, we'll hit you right there. We won't touch that wall. It will hit you pinpoint. It'll go right through whatever concrete, whatever, and it will destroy. So it's basically the same thing as being a sniper, but with a much more damaging. We don't use that round often.

I think it's only been used a handful of times, Max in Afghanistan that I'm aware of. Again, I haven't, I wasn't there from 2009 until 21, but I know people that still deployed in those units and I don't know that it was used very often. But the regular rounds, so there's HE, there's loom, so HE is high explosive, there's loom. You shoot that, it explodes in the sky, lights up the sky for the infantry below.

And then there's shrapnel rounds that will explode in the sky, and the shrapnel just rains down hell on you. HE is what you use normally. In my, I'm trying to say this right, because I know people squawked at me about some of the stuff on Jocco, so I'm trying to be very accurate. In my experience, we used HE rounds to wipe people off the face of the Earth when the infantry needed us.

So we would get a call at any time and there's always two guns together. So you never you never go solo gun ever. If you are that's there's it's sketchy and there's a Badch it's happening. Can you explain that so there's two gun two people two guns? No two guns with each gun troop So each gun troop has five to seven people running a gun at all times. Oh wow. Okay. It takes a lot of people to run one of those. How much electronics is there? The GPS, like the computer system that's on it itself, I never ran that much, but it is completely technologically. It's GPS guided. All you have to do is literally type in the coordinates. Then you've got the two big there's a there's a technical word word for it, but basically wheels. And one does

the trajectory, you know, you do your, and you're just kind of doing this, and you're watching the watch in it. And once you hit your target, that's, you know, it'll tell you that's where you need to hit. Do you know if there's any like AI stuff like computer vision, like where there's cameras and they help you target using like all different kinds of cameras to see through like where there's cameras and they help you target using like all different kinds of cameras to see through like the fog, all those kinds of things. No, we use the food which are forward observation officers, which are an artillery individual

that is embedded with an infantry unit. Oh, okay. They call from the front, give us their grid coordinates, and basically say, like, don't drop this on us. Got it. Well, you know what not to shoot, which parts not to shoot. Correct. And then there was no one moves. Don't move. Stay still.

But you can hear it coming. Yeah. But you can't hear it until it's too close. So like, when I went, sorry, go ahead, you're going to say something. I was going to say, what's the experience on the other? Like, what does it feel like to be maybe infantry or... Underneath the artillery?

Underneath the artillery. Well, I had the rare opportunity to do that, and I have a video I'll show you after. It's terrifying. Because I know that people that were shooting it, and I know them personally, and I know what they're like as humans. And for the most part, they're dialed. Well, you get the odd duck where you're like, I've seen people have an ND, which is a necklip and discharge.

You basically get charged for it. You get a lot of trouble because you can blow people up. And I, like accidents happen. And so I know accidents can happen in stressful situations. And when I was with the Brits, we had to call Danger Close Artillery. And when it goes over top of you, it sounds like thunder and lightning. So you fire it. And it's not the stereotype that you hear in World War II where it kind of like that.

It's more of like a crackle. And then you just hear like a whizz and it shit just goes everywhere. It's loud. It shakes the ground, it shakes you, you feel it. Okay. Is there some more words you can put to like the experience of what it's like to be in the heat of battle there? So what is, is there literally, is it hot? Is it, uh, are you talking about being under it or shooting it? Under it.

Oh, yeah. It 55 degree heat. You know that you're waiting for it to be called. You feel an overwhelming excitement to start because for me, I'd never been under it. So I was like, okay, I had my camera ready. Like I was a kid at a candy store and I'm like, I want to watch this happen. And once you hear the crackle, I got really fearful, my anxiety kicked up significantly.

I got to the point where I got numb. Like I was, my nerves were on overdrive so much that like my body would go like numb. Like I could move, but like my nerves were numb, if that makes sense. What were the nerves like? Were talking about fear or is it just anxious excitement? Anxious excitement,

hopeful that they wouldn't blow it up on us. And there was this excitement that's hard to describe because you don't wanna be excited that you're dropping bombs on people, but when you just saw their faces and they're shooting at you, there's this overwhelming feeling of, got you, motherfucker. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that because that's such a difficult thing about wars. You forget that it's other human beings. Yeah. Because those other human beings are doing really bad things to you. And so the very basic anger takes over, hate can take over. And then also just the excitement of almost like video game like, you know, aspect of war, like sport, it's, it's a sport that all of those elements are all baked in. It's, it's hard to

be philosophical in that situation that seems like. I've never played video games, so I can't compare it to that, but from a sports perspective, yeah, I could argue that. I felt like we won there for a second. It's not just a heat from outside. It's this radiation within you that is something I've never felt since. That is something I've never felt since. You just to take a small step back to the weapons training. What kind of guns did you train on? Because you also mentioned a rocket launcher. I love Carl Christophe.

What are those? What are those Carl Gs? What's that? What's the, uh, what's the, like, my only experience with the rocket launches is from the movie commando with Arla Schwarzenegger. Oh yeah, and we've all discussed that. I haven't seen that yet, and I've heard about it and people have made me tell. Yeah, I know. I feel like you haven't seen a single movie that's relevant to war military because every time anyone brings it up, you say you haven't seen it. I don't have time to watch movies, Lex. Platoon. You haven't seen Platoon, which is, um um you're the scientist. How do you have the time?

I'm not a scientist. I just playing one on TV. Okay. Sure. So what can you talk about the rock launcher and maybe any other ancient for both engineering actually to me those guns are very interesting from an engineering perspective to well they should be either fascinating when you take them apart and you see how small the parts get down to and how how necessary every single little piece is to make that thing run and even without the tiniest little BB smaller than a piece on there and our tailer gun might not run. So we were trained on Carl G's and called M72s, which are disposable rocket launchers. I'll back up. Carl Gs are around, I don't know the exact millimeter of the round, it's been a while since I shot them. We only did those in training. But essentially it takes most people,

one person can fire it effectively, hold it and fire it. It takes another person to load it. So you put it onto your shoulder and in ways I would, I don't know, 30 pounds, 40 pounds. I can't remember. It's been a minute. It's been a minute. One person can carry it. Oh, yeah. Okay. I don't know.

It just seems like a rocket launcher is pretty intense kind of device. It's for sure is. I mean, it's the diameter. I can't even tell you the diameter. What about that big? I mean, and it goes on your shoulder. It goes on you the diameter, I'm about that big, I mean. And it goes on your shoulder. It goes on your shoulder, and then it has a little sight that pops out. That's almost like plastic, which is kind of funny,

it sort of reminds me of like the little green army man. It just felt so flimsy to me. It was like, this is hilarious. And then another person stands behind you and opens the hatch. And so there's this, there's these two levers, and you just kind of open it. And then the back end, which is flared. So it's just a tube and then it's flared.

That will open it and drop down, and you load around into that, and then you load it back up. Got it. And you're never supposed to stand behind it, because the blast behind it will kill you. It's, yeah. But in my case, when I fired it, it was me and another individual.

I want to say it wasn't Sarah Pellagrand, but it was another girl that was smaller. And the person is supposed to wrap around your waist and tuk-low and hold your stability. And we were just aiming at tanks that day. And they were just concrete heads. So they would just either, they would hit and bounce off or whatever. And so when my sergeant saw that, he just kind of looked at both of us and was like, no, I'm just gonna and he got real low and just like wrapped both of us. And then we'd fire it and it feels like you're getting punched in the side of the head on repeat by Jaco. Yeah.

It you lose all your hearing, you just like just, it's not comes out of your nose and you're just kind of discombobulated for a minute. It's a real mind fuck. Is there other, any other kind of guns that in at that time, because you were new to this,

you have in shotguns when you were younger that were really impressive to you in the training process. All of them because I've never fired a weapon. So we had the C7s, which are like your M16s, I believe, the long barrel. The cute thing about those is when I have that slung, my barrel drags on the ground. So that's fun. And they shoot, you know, your 7-6, 2, or your 5, 5, 6 round. I loved that.

I preferred the C8, which was a short barrel, which is what the SF guys use, not because it's cooler looking, which it obviously is, but because it was functional for my body height, and it didn't drag on the ground when I ran. I loved those, they're your personal weapon. Being in artillery gunner, if you're not an officer, at least in our unit, you didn't drag on the ground when I ran. I loved those, they're your personal weapon, being in artillery gunner, if you're not an officer at least in our unit, you didn't get a side piece. I didn't have a side piece, Lex. So I never had a handgun of any type.

I fired those in training. You can't get over that side piece, come, it look at you. I was going to say, I know what a side piece is. You don't have to explain to me. But you're single. So how do you even have a side piece if you don't have a main piece? The joke would be the fact that we have a total misunderstanding what side piece is. Okay, great. So you don't have a side piece as a non-officeer.

Right. So I never fired those much. We did grenades and training. Oh cool. Yeah, grenades are fun. I love grenades. I have a massive one tattooed on me. I have them all over my office. How does a grenade work? There's the spoon and the pin. So the pin holds the spoon in place. When you pull that pin, the firing mechanism inside, as long as the spoon is up against it, it won't fire. As soon as that spoon goes, I believe it causes a reaction

on the inside and you've got about five seconds to check it. You'd be better to ask that question too. I don't want me to get philosophical on this. No, you're not. You don't. But there's something about a grenade because you're essentially committing suicide. Unless you get rid of the thing. There's something like...

Or if you're unlucky and it just goes off when you pull the pen, which has happened to tons of people. So it just feels like a very kind of leap, it's a dangerous leap into the abyss every time you use the thing. Because when you shoot a gun, like the gun is much less likely to malfunction in terms of like all the possible ways to go wrong. It just seems like grenade is like. Primitive almost.

Yeah, it's primitive. It's also real, like in a way that like a bar fight is like being punched into faces real. It's like you're here with the weapon of destruction. It's just you and the thing. Yeah. And you have to get rid of it. I don't know.

Is that terrifying to you? Like, do people still use grenades in warfare? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, those are fantastic. The Taliban were throwing them over the wall at the airport in Kabul.

People use them all the time because when you're in Afghanistan, if you're in a rural area, you're going from village to village and they're, you know, they're mud hot walls, like they're tall, but you're walking through corridors and stuff. Oh, I get it.

Lob one of those is gonna take the whole unit out. That just walk by. Like it's, they're accurate if you're close enough and they're effective if you're close enough. I love them though. I think they're fascinating to me because there's such a tiny little thing with such devastation. They just can cause such devastation. But for me, when I had them, some of the Canadians would make fun of me because when I did go outside the wire with the British, I had two right here.

And I remember I put a piece of tape over the spoons. Because in my mind, I could picture myself searching someone and grabbing me and pulling that. And that would be me. That would have been like, yep, that if anyone that was going to happen to, it was her for sure. So you were deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. Okay. And like we said, you were in deploy to Afghanistan in 2009, okay? And like we said, you were in a great, no, perfect physical shape. Fucking epic shape. Epic shape, six back, or I mean,

yeah, okay. So you could pull a lot of pull ups and push ups and okay, and well trained, would you say? Were you already what? No. Okay. And well trained, would you say were you already what like? No. No. No. I'll argue that point till I'm blue in the face.

I spoke to recently, I actually spoke to my sergeant. He's not a sergeant anymore, but Sergeant Mark LeBlanc, he's an Africa right now on a deployment. He gave me a call the other day, and I remember talking to him about this. And it's frustrating because we were out in active war. We were involved in an active war where the units that I were in were dead red, which meant they needed people. So when you need people, things go quick, whether or not that's right.

I mean, you could argue that's the similar thing to what's happening in the world right now. We needed a vaccine. We got a vaccine. Is it the best it could be? Could it be better? Could it do more things? Sure, probably, but with the time that we had, we did the best that we could. That's my logic on that. For me, I joined the military in November of 2007. I was in basic training in January of 2008. I was graduated basic SQ, which is all your weapons training, your DP1, which is your trade specific training. So whatever trade you're going to go into, whether it's infantry armored, artillery, medic, whatever, that's your DP1.

It's called different things in different units. And then I got posted to my unit in September. So January to September, I had done all my training and I'm an English speaking individual. I got posted to a French unit that only speaks French and had to learn the all of the weapon systems, everything again that I just learned in that short time frame in French. This part of your story that you're telling the to Jaco is one way to say it is very impressive

that you had to learn all of this in French. So there's also the camaraderie, the social aspect of it, which is difficult probably. They didn't have any. That's... Yeah, I didn't have any. But it also makes you a more effective soldier to be socially for that cohesion to be there, right? But also just understanding the basic terminology.

Correct. In the right way to say something on the radio, the right way to run a gun, the right way to, because you got to move with those guns, you got seven people, it's really magical. I'll send you a video when we did some live fire in workup training in Texas before we left. We did a competition between the other gun to see who could fire 10 rounds fast like faster um It is Truly beautiful to watch in artillery unit fire gun because it's like a symphony

Everyone has their parts and everyone knows and everyone's yelling But they know why they're yelling and everyone everyone, this guy's gotta do this in order for this guy to load the route. It's just, it's beautiful. It really is. It is gorgeous to watch. I miss it deeply. Is there, by the way, for a gun,

is there like one person responsible for the aim and the, or like the specification of the location and somebody else that pulls the presses? The Lanard. Is that the Lanard button? Is there a button? It's better than a button. You'llanyard. Is that the lanyard? Is there a button? It's better than a button. You'll like it.

I'll tell you in a second. Okay. There's your sergeant in charge, and then they have their two ICs. And so the comms come in to the sergeant, and the sergeant is the, or your master bombardier, Bombade Chef. Yeah. Sorry, what? Bombade Chef. What? Bombade Chef. Bombade Chef. Oh, Bombadeh chef. Yeah. But, Bombadeh chef, what?

Bombadeh chef. Bombadeh chef. Oh, that's a French chef. Master bombardier. So it goes like private in the North, like in an infantry or in a regular units, like private, corporal, master corporal, Sergeant. In artillery, it goes gunner,

bombardier, master bombardier, master balmedier, sergeant weren't enough like that. So you have two people, but the serge is like, you don't move till he says move, you don't fire till he says fire, like he's your guy. He'll give you the coordinates, he'll feed him to the guy that's doing the GPS, that portion, I really never did it much.

I wasn't tall enough to see it. Like legitimately, the way how high it is up on the gun, like it was, I couldn't see clearly enough. It was not good. So obviously you have a big personality, you're a strong person. You don't say. And you have a big hat currently. I always wear a hat like. It seems like your height and your size was a factor. Oh, for sure. How were you able to step up in all those moments and how difficult was it? I don't know that I'd realize it was difficult while I was doing it, because that's just the way it's been.

I've always been the short person. That's life. I would, nothing I can do to fix that. So there was no point, when am I going to whine about it? I'm going to break my femurs and insert things to make me grow a little bit. Maybe, maybe since you're in robotics, you can figure that out. Okay. That's your task now. Make me be five

foot three. That'd be great. For artillery, really what it came down to was the unit when I got there, there was only a couple people who spoke any sort of English and my sergeant was not one of them. But once he kind of started to get to know me a little bit the best that he could, he started to put effort into making sure I could lift the rounds, make sure my capacity to do my job was there. And so he took me under his wing in that aspect.

So he would take me to the gym with him, and he would show me exercises that would specifically help me load The round so pick the round up from the ground pick it up like a trick to put your knee under it Use your legs instead of just pick it up use your back pull your back out He would work on that and then depending on the position. I was running the gun in if I was running The side that had the charge bags I'll explain that in a second, but if I was running the side that had the charge bags, I'll explain that in a second. But if I was running the side that had the charge bags, I could step up onto the gun. And if I leaned inward enough with my right hand with the charge

and I kind of kicked off, I could kind of jump and shove it up the tube. Got it. Almost enough. Yeah. If I was running the lanyard, which is the thing that makes it go boom, it's really easy. It's a long rope. You hook it on, and you put it your right hand on your hip and on your left, and you hold it there, and you just stare at your sergeant like this, and you just wait for him to yell fire.

And he points at you when he does it. And when you do it, you turn your whole body with it. And when you do that, it alleviates the, a misfire essentially because if you just pull it sometimes that's not enough, you ought to really give it your whole body into it. And so he would train me on how to do things differently so that I could do them effectively. And I wasn't a ship pump. A what? So ship pump is a term that we use in Canada to call somebody useless.

A ship pump is a useless soldier who is just, you're there and that's the ship pump and so we all just deal with it. But somehow they're still there. Yeah. What were we talking about? The linear, okay. Yeah. We were talking talking about? The linear, okay. Yeah. We were talking about the artillery guns.

So those things, though, you would find fascinating is just how they break down when you have to take one of those apart. I think your mind would really find it fascinating. How a breach comes apart all the way down to like ball bearing size. And there's a way to just make that gun complete ineffective and all you have to do, when you're on the charge side, there's a magazine that's a long linear magazine and it holds like 15 little rounds.

If you just take that thing out, I think it's not firing. How many people does it take to move that? Like how easy it is to move that thing? To move a triple seven? A triple seven. I like it. That's what they're move a triple seven? A triple seven. I like it. That's what they're called, M-triple seven.

Is a lot of the terminology cross over the same in English and French? No. Okay. I mean, M-triple seven does, because it's an obvious, how it's certain, I'm sure, has a separate word, but like if you're running it, you're running it in French. So like when I'd be running the,

when I'm doing the charge bags and I'm doing, I'm doing, you know, I'm loading everything and I'm getting that ready and that's my position that day, I'm also controlling the breach. So how it opens, how it closes when it locks. And so, but you have to yell that as you do it. So you're yelling like, may lib, koulasse, ove, like you have to yell all these things, you have to learn them though.

And so for a long time, it's, it was a little frustrating. I won't lie. It's really exciting. I took a lot of French, but I forgot all of it, but I think it's a beautiful romantic language. It's a good language. It's from Quebec. It's a yeah, that's true.

It's a good language you fall in love with. Not as good as Russian, but I mean, English is eh. All right. I mean, Russian, is that like a good language you fall in love with. Not as good as Russian, but I can English is eh. All right. I mean, Russian, is that like a love language? It is to me. I mean, because you're Russian, but like if somebody walked up to me, it was like, hey, Kelsey, I like you.

I'm like, ah, God, he's gonna put me in a camp. That's because you don't understand love and Kelsey. We'll talk about that, okay. How many people does a day to move them? Triple seven, maybe we- It depends. If you're moving it by ground, you're moving it on a truck. And when you're moving it on a truck, you're hooking the back of it onto your hook in the front of the barrel onto one of those big transport looking trucks that has those cargo tents that's got soldiers in it. You don't want to ever move an M triple seven by that way if you don't have to the barrels

worth a million dollars. Wow. Okay. So this is like a serious piece that way if you don't have to. The barrels worth a million dollars. Wow. Okay, so this is like a serious piece of equipment. You don't want to move them. Okay. When we got to Kanda Harp, we were there for a couple days. We got flown out to the fall we were going to be at for an observation base. Kanda Harp is the safe space or was the major base

in Afghanistan that we were at. There's things like Tim Hortons there. There's Canada House. There's a British Tim Hortons there. There's Canada House. There's a British side, an American side, a Canadian side, and you know, that's where you see all the different countries in the world kind of come together. You would see Italians, you would see Germans, you would see French, you would see all these different uniforms, and you never know who to salute because you don't know what each thing means. It doesn't feel like a war zone. No. Oh God, no. There's a boardwalk. There's hockey

there, like, floor hockey because Canada had to have that There's a Tim Hortons a subway a pizza hut a px I think there's a restaurant there somewhere, but I never I didn't get to go You know stuff like that. There's gyms. You can run around it. You feel fairly safe You always have a weapon on you, but you can you know live your life When you get out to the fog, the guns are already there. So those M triple summons get lifted by a Chinook normally. They're going by air. They go by Chinook because they're heavy as hell. And Chinooks can hook them under the bottom and they fly them and then they'll

drop them down. They have wheels on them, but you don't need them if you're going to leave it in place. You got to. And you're getting information about IDs. You're getting a land, a lay of the land as to what's been going on in the country for the past six months. And this, you know, nothing. You're just like, this is your first time you're getting deployed. So what was your deployment? Like, can you tell the story of your deployment?

To Afghanistan. Like the whole deployment. Getting like actual deploying, not the deployment itself. What's the difference between the two? Well, actually getting ready to deploy is a little different. So I mean, the emotional build up to it and some of the some of the memorable things that kind of you remember from that experience, both on the excitement, I get to see battle, I get to be part of this and the fear and also like being surprised like with the Tim Hortons and all those kinds of things.

So like the lead up before everything. Lead up. Let's hit the fan. Okay, cool. So you're such a fascinating person, but yes, something like that. I've been called many things that start with the letter F. Yeah. No, I don't know. I don't know many words with F. Okay that start with the letter F. Yeah. No, I don't know. I don't know many words with F.

Okay. So with the build up to the deployment. So for the build up for the deployment, I was in Quebec. And my unit was deploying from Quebec. And at that time, you kind of get your marching orders. You know you're deploying. I knew I was deploying before I even graduated. That's how much they needed people.

So once I did all that training on graduation parade day, a couple of men from Quebec in uniforms came over and said, you, you, you, you, and you are all being posted to vacancy and you're going to deploy with us in April. So that's how I found it I was deploying. Why was there such a need for troops in a gas tank? That was a well-known thing that there's a scaling up of troops. 2007 on, Canada really started taking a combat role. Before it was very much more a UN type deal

where doing what we normally do in most wars where we just we wear blue and we don't shoot anyone. And so we're there to help. And so they were really they were scaling up. And there wasn't a lot of people in those trades. Initially I think when the war kind of started, so Canada really started to scale. And so when I got to Quebec, we've kind of found out, yeah, we're deploying. And it was a weird situation because I have never actually been at a unit on a non-deployable unit. So I don't know what they do day-to-day. That's different from what I did. I just know what I did. So we would do things like in the morning, we would get up and we would meet for PT at 5 a.m. and that would include going for a 10 K run or playing ball hockey for a few hours in the gym

or lifting weights together or just going on a rock march along rock march. It just stuff like that. You would have a shower, you would meet and then you would just sit around the regiment. You would just sit around the regiment, and you would, if there was busy work, you'd melt the floors, you would clean weapons. There wasn't a whole lot until there was a whole lot to do.

We did a lot for a while, and then we went away on work-up training to Texas for a week. We came down here, and we did live fire with our other troop that was going to be with us. So Alpha had two guns and two guns has two groups of people. And so we all would go down to Texas and we did live fire here for a week. And I ended up getting gastro which was awesome. So thanks for that. Oh, apparently there was there were having water problems and sanitary problems. I ended up getting gastro, which was awesome. So thanks for that. From. Oh, apparently there was, there were having water problems and sanitary problems, so everyone was getting it on the base.

Okay. So it just makes your life way harder. I didn't get it towards the end till it's towards the end, so that was fortunate. So we would fire, live fire, we would go out to the middle of nowhere, the guns would be there, and we would get offload a truck of rounds, and we would do live fire, and we would practice. Just constant practice. What's that saying? Perfect practice makes perfect.

Yeah, so this is a sensory, like a shooting range for artillery. For artillery. For long range. So what does practice look like? So you roll up in your trucks, and you've got each group of people, you've got two trucks, and then you've got a medic vehicle, and then you've got an officer vehicle and a comms vehicle,

and you go to your prospective guns, and then you offload your ammo, and then you basically wait for them to send you like a fire mission. Wow, get that together. They would call, they would say, and Missy on set, so it would be a fire mission. So we'd wait for that.

And once we got that, then you all run like a bunch of scattered rats to the gun. Like it's like the greatest thing you've ever seen. And then you just wait, you wait for the call for the sergeants to say, and then you'll hear it. Because it's not headphones. You can hear it on a speaker. And it'd be like, I'm not going to do in French.

Don't ask. It'd be like, I'm not going to do it in French, don't ask. It'd be like, so and so, 10 rounds, fire when ready, and then you would get your rounds ready and everyone would have them ready and would be in their perspective, respective positions and then you would wait and then they would say, fire when ready. And as soon as they say fire when ready, that means just start going, just start. And then that's when the magic starts. You go like the loop, like you shoot one and whatever, there's a reloading process.

So what you would do, you get the fire mission, you would find out the rounds. The two IC would be standing by the rounds and it was his job to make sure the amount of rounds that was told would be the only rounds that would go down range. And so he'd stand there. And on each round, depending on the type around

is a fuse, which gets screwed onto the top of the round. So they're never that big and it's just a point. And then you would have to put it on, give it a spin, and depending if it was a time release, you had a little, what do you call it? You get those that Ikea when you have to build everything. Alan Key, Alan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about. Yeah. And then you have a big one or something. No, just a little one because there's a tiny little hole and you just got to click it to where it's supposed to go. And it depended on what the call was for. And it was

a timer. When you said like, we'll you mean like a little thing then, is that is that what we're talking about? No, no, I'm talking about the round itself. So you would put a fuse on top of the round. So you would unload the ammo, and then you would put fuses on them. And the fuses are on the top, and they're like a little like a ice cream top or kind of thing. And you would spin those on.

Oh, okay. And then once they're on, depending if it's a timer lease or not, you would take this little thing and you would move it the top. And that would, it's almost like a little timer. Cool. Yeah, it depended.

So you're assembling a bullet? Essentially, a very big one that goes up to my waist. Cool. Yeah. This is very cool. And you're a fascinating person. OK, so that you're still even years later have all this in your memory and some of that.

It's not all perfectly accurate. And that's what irritates me, though, is because it bothers me when I can't remember things accurately, but I have a lot of memory issues and problems after having too many hits to the head. And- This is from earlier in childhood or later. Up both. Okay.

Both the military did not help it. Where was the hits in the head in the military? Well, when you have a car, it'll go stuff beside your face like this and it shoots around. It gives you a concussive blast. Also, there's new research being done. I'll find out exactly what it is, but there's new research that's being done that shows that if you're an artillery gunner and you stand within a certain range of that gun,

you get the same amount of concussive blast and there's a range. I had no idea, but you feel it when it goes off. Like your whole body feels it. Your mind is fascinating because it's like literally the opposite of my one, you're able to speak very quickly, very clearly, very sharply. No, what? I talk too fast and I'm laughing.

No, that's perfect. Because my hearing, I admire that room. I can't do any of that. And you listen extremely well. And you're extremely attentive. And you have a good memory. So anyways, just fun to watch you at, I can tell you we're a great soldier

and just all different aspects of it. Okay. But what the heck were we talking about? Oh, build up to the deployment. How did we get to Texas? Because that was part of the build up to my deployment. And life I, you got to, would did I feel good? Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. You are. It's so good. What's the favorite, what's the best part about like shooting artillery? Like what's the thing that feels good, which part, the full, the feeling of power? One is the best moment of the highest full, the feeling of power. One is the best moment of the highest moment of the feeling of power. Is it the whole process that you love?

Or is there like, when you actually shoot it? It's symbiotic. It's a beautiful thing to watch. To know that a gun can fire and it takes kind of a dance to make it work. There's something about that to me that just got my heart racing. When you actually shoot the round and you see it go

and you hear it, it's on like, you can't describe. There's no, I've never felt another feeling. I've also never been in like an F18 or an F16 or like any, I've never been in anything like that. And I've never, I've never tried to think of something else that would be comparable. I've never been in like a formula one car. Those are the only things I can picture being that much for me because to shoot one of those and to know that you've done your job right means that you've helped. And that to me was really what it did it for me. When you hear your sergeant say,

mission accomplished, target hit, tired acquired, then you're like, it's a good feeling. That's the stuff. Quick boss. Take a break, Lex. Okay, so live fire and text, where in Texas, by the way? Fort Worth or Fort Hood, one of them.

Okay, so like it's, is that close to a big major city? Do you remember visiting a city or do you? Oh God, no, we fly right into the tarmac and they're like, don't touch the snakes and then they send you out to the field. We got it. Let's see the only instructions. No, really, we went into a classroom

and they're like, these are the animals that are in the wildlife in Texas. If you see any of them, do not approach, do not go pee outside, do not squat down. It is snake season people. And I was like, have to pee and squat down. Why Texas in Canada, is it a simulation of Afghanistan?

Yes. Okay, so that's okay. So you're getting, and that's the way the life fire was seen in our telleries, like you're trying to simulate certain aspects of what you might actually see in Afghanistan. I would think so. I mean, we, it looks like it's hot like it,

you're out in the middle of nowhere. Very similar terrain. That's the first time we started to get to where are tan boots and are tan, like our combat tan stuff before you couldn't wear that. So it gave us an opportunity to kind of break in, break in how we were going to be doing this, what it was going to look like, how the guns were going to work, and all of those lovely things.

How do you go from there to being deployed? What was the next part of the journey? So then we go to Wainwright, Alberta, often called or referenced as Waincock, because it sucks so bad. It is a massive open space in Alberta, which most of Alberta is. And it's outside of a small town called Waynerite. And it is a field x training area for all of the Canadian military. And it's where you do live fire, but you also do work-up training. So you go out there for a month or two, I think it is.

I don't remember the exact time we were there because it was just you sleep in a tent, you're in your cot, you're in like full mission mode, and you go outside and we did this operation called Operation Maple Leaf, I think it was. And you put on these little suits, these, they have haptic, you can feel when you're shot, and then there's a little camera in the screen in the front of it, and it's got button options. And so it's to mimic, if you get shot, it'll say gunshot wound, and then you have to choose, okay, do I do this or do I do this? And depending on your response, person dies or lives.

And they have other people who aren't on a rotation for deployment come and act as the Taliban and attack you in the middle of the night. Is there a good understanding of the tactics that the Taliban used to attack? I mean, this may be fast-forward to our conversation a little bit, but is there predictable strategies on the other side that are being used in a gas then by the Taliban? By the Taliban? Oh 100%. IEDs, suicide bombers, vehicle-borne IEDs, they're standard way to hit people really was

IEDs and vehicle-borne IEDs, suicide bombers. They put and vehicle born IED, suicide bombers, they put like backpacks full of an ID and then put like toys around it and then just be like, so they would conceal it in certain ways and probably use civilians. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

And women were a great way to get close to the soldiers because women seem non-threatening. When you see a Berkha walk up to you, you're not expecting an AK-47 to roll out of that and then, or you know, but they're great ways to get close. that and then or you know, but they're great ways to get close. Okay, so what is Wayne something? Waynecock? No, that's not how the Waynewright is. Okay, so let's go to Alberta. Okay. Okay,

so we don't have to go to Alberta, no one wants to. Now let's, let's, in our minds, in our imagination, it's okay. So that's getting you closer to, I'll guess. Right. What was that like? I mean, are you getting anxious at this point? Is there a build up? What are you thinking? Or is this just all part of the training?

For me, it was more part of the training. I was excited to go because I did know that we were gonna do some life fire. I did know that we were going to be doing more of the military type job. I thought we were going to be doing because up until that point, I had just done training. So I was learning how to march and salute and who to salute and not salute. That was the focus of that was my experience of the military.

And then the next experience was sitting in a regiment, just working out a lot and going for breakfast a lot and drinking. Like that was so I was like, this is the army. So when I actually got to go to Wain Rate, I got my first full taste of, okay, well, you're just fire pick at duty. So one person gets picked every night to do sentry. There's a little less sleep.

You're eating out of a canteen now. You're drinking a canteen. You're when you're a kid more, you're in your deployable kid. Now you're in your, you're wearing your tag wearing your tack vest, you're, you're getting ready to practice having plates on, you're having ammunition on you. You've got your weapon with you all the time. When you're on base in that kit, saying,

Quebec, you're, you're just like at every day job. Maybe you can paint a clear picture to me. When was there an understanding that you're actually getting deployed? Was it just a sense that you're getting deployed? Or was this officially told to you? I was officially told on graduation day, you're deploying getting deployed. Was it just a sense that you're getting deployed or was this officially told to you? I was officially told on graduation day you're deploying in April with vacuets. Oh, okay, there's a date. Like they they knew. So what had happened is the reason that

vacuets a unit needed more people. So they came to that and they picked five people. There was five English speaking people that went to vacuets. It wasn't just myself. There was a couple other people I knew that were English-speaking, that got put on other guns within the regiment. I wasn't with any of them. We all kind of got split up. And so there was an understanding that we were going to always be deploying.

That next year, it was like 2009, you're deploying. Whether you left in May or April, we were deploying, because that was the rotation time. So each Canadian unit did between six and nine months. And then you knew right around that point, another base of individuals would then deploy. So you would go on these rotations. And so even when I was on my deployment then, I was slated to go again the following year,

but towards the end of the year. So there was always a rotation. If you were in a combat arms unit and you were in one that was a deployable unit. So if you were from Edmonton, a PPCLI, which were, you know, the Princess Patricia's, which were their infantry unit, if you were RCR out of Pettihuahua, Ontario, you knew you were deploying. If you were at Vacuetsay, you knew you were deploying. There's combat arms bases and then there's like naval bases. I didn't know their deployment structure. I didn't know how they worked. I'm on the ground. I don't worry about the boats. So I didn't know how the Air Force deployed. I knew vacancy was deploying in April. You were going,

get ready. That was that. So you showed up to Afghanistan. What is a combat arms unit looks like? What's the situation look like? How much chaos is there? How much clarity about mission is there? What are your feelings about the whole thing? So when you leave, the day you leave, we left Quebec, we got driven to the airport,

and then we walked onto the tarmac, and we load our own bags, and we got on a plane, and it's just empty, it's just our plane, right? And you don't go right to Afghanistan, you go to a stopover point, which I don't know if I'm allowed to say where that is, frankly, so I just say, it's somewhere overseas. And you go there, and you go there for a couple of days,

I think it's like a day or two, and that's where you get your kit, that's where you get your bullets, plates for the first time and realize how heavy those fucking things are. It's where you get your your weapon and your ammunition, your first few megs. It's where you get your helmet and your vest and you get everything that you need. While you're there, it's pretty nonchalant. It's it's hot as hell.

It's your first time being in that kind of heat. So you just never stop sweating. The place where you were in, it's just the second you got out of the shower, you were still wet after you got out. What the hell is happening? It's so humid. And I'm like, is this going to be like this in Afghanistan? They're like, no, it's not humid there at all. Like, why is it so bad here? Like, it'll be fine. Don't worry about it. So, and where we were there, it was kind of cute. We were like in a base, within a base. And they had like turf, and we had like ice cream and fruit.

And you could go get on a computer, you could go make calls, you had showers, you had real bed. It was very kind of okay for that point. And then you got all your stuff and then a cable rolling out, which is about a five hour flight. Again, my experience with helicopters is mostly from another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, the predator. I'm not.

Do you want me to say I've never seen it? I've never seen it. Alex, you know, you want to tell the audience the, all the excellence shows that you mentioned me offline that you watch instead instead of platoon listen Yeah, that's Nine is sex in the city. It was that more important than oh no, I've never seen that don't don't put me in that category Did you just put me in a box? I did I watched like homeland? I watched no, I watched like I Watch a lot of documentaries. I watch I like to watch real things more than just film.

I did a little bit of film stuff when I got back into Canada. And I was like, once you've seen how it's made, I'm like, I don't wanna do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm the same with superhero movies. I want something closer to reality, but then movies like Platoon reveal some deep aspect of reality without it. I did Superman, Man of Steel.

Wait, sorry, you were, what do you mean you did? I was not a military expert, but I was a stunt expert, even though I didn't actually have to do any stunts, it's just because I had previous military experience and they were gonna have me as an extra as a military person. But if you have previous experience, they have to make it as like a stunt role,

like, do you get paid more? You got it. So I got to sit at a desk and I was in that, I was in that like, you see me like, for like two seconds. So what you're saying is you were the mastermind behind that movie. For the entire thing.

You're so accurate. Okay, great. Your representation of me is just fantastic. The combat arms unit, right. And I've got to ask say, the ice cream machine, what, like when you actually get closer and closer to the mission, what, what does that happen?

When I, you know, got to where we were before we were leaving to get on the plane, I don't really, I don't think I realized what the hell I was doing. Truthfully, like you're asking me all these, like, what did you feel? I was like, when I really think about it, if I sit there and really think about it, I was deploying. I was aware. I knew what I was going to do. I knew my job. But once we actually

stepped onto that hurt to leave, to get into the Afghan airspace, I think that's when it hit me. I think it smacked me in the face so hard. And that's when the overwhelming, just reality was that, oh fuck. Oh, oh, oh, when they said, make weapons ready, put the barrels of the ground, put your helmets on. That's when they start flying tactically, which means they're going between the mountains.

That means we're gonna land soon, which means if you're flying like this, it's because RPGs can hit you. So that was my first moment of, oh, I could like just be shot down right now. Like I couldn't, I didn't grasp it. I was, how old was I? It was 19.

19, yeah. Wow, okay. So that's why I feel bad when I'm trying to explain you because it's hard because I don't know that I actually did grasp it until I was in the air getting ready to land again to her. Well, it was the first time you heard bullets enemy enemy bullets or enemy explosions. Well, when you're in can when you're in can to her when you're at calf, there calf, you're fairly insulated away from the main walls. You would hear stuff go off, or you would hear the rocket sirens would go off. So you would hear the, and everyone just kind of just got down on the ground

and just waited for the all clear and then got back up. I didn't hear any actual live fire until I got to the fog. It was more just a lot of noise. You would hear a lot of helicopters, a lot of planes going in and out of the base. So there was that sense, you could feel the ground shake when they took off,

but there was that sense, you know, things were going around, things were happening. You just weren't far enough. You were not close enough to the edges of calf to see it. What's the fob? Fob is a forward observation base, which is a small little base out in the middle of wherever. And that's that's specific to our artillery. No. That's in general just an observation base from which. Grim ventry to go in and out of

for armored to go in and out of special ops going in out of them. They fly, they'll stop there, they'll pick people up or do whatever then they'll go out. So it's a forward observation basis is used essentially to have eyes in that area without having to be doing patrols every five seconds. But there's not, is it like, is there like medics, there's like stuff? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was actual base. Yeah, I was, it's a, I don't call it an actual base. See, sleep intense and caught, and it is the walls are this mesh material that are filled with gravel and that's the walls.

And then you have towers, you had five towers, because the Americans ran for and we ran one. And so it was an American fall, it's called Fabram Rod. And there was a, whether I'm a Marines, no, I think they were the 100 and first. They read of there, this is where I get dicey because I was moved a lot.

So when people are like, who are you with? I'm like, I know what their patches looked like. I don't know the full ins and outs. So I'm working on getting that back so that I can tell it accurately. Because I believe it deserves that type of respect, but that being said, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around all of this.

Yeah, you almost have to go back and do research to understand the full details of all the things you were experiencing. And so I reached out to actually a bunch of people, even before I wrote the book, and I didn't get a lot of answers. Well, once I did Jocco, all the people have reached out to me, and we're like, hey, and I'm like, call you.

So now that's why I'm doing the rewrite is I'm working on making sure that things are exact. And so there was infantry units going in at that fob. And it was a really tiny fob. It was run by the Americans. And then there was a tiny little corner that was the Canadian artillery unit. And the Americans, normally it's Americans shooting

for Americans, Canadian shooting for Canadians. The rest of the regiment that deployed, so Bravo and Charlie, they were at Canadian fobs, Massimgard and another one, and these were huge fobs. ours was this tiny like three kilometer around place, and we had this tiny little subsection of it, and the rest was like this this and then all American here. And when we got there, we landed, the guns were already there. So you ripped out the unit before you. So those guys were just leaving and we were just replacing them. So we knew the guns,

they were Canadian guns, we understood, you know, how to run those. That was fine. When we got there, though, we had come in on Chinook and Chinooks are super loud. And they're like, we're hearing protection. They don't, you're not, no, this is not reality. Like this is why I'm partially deaf. Now like this is not reality. Sorry to take attention,

but do you usually wear ear protection and any aspects of warfare of this whole process? You wear calms, like you have a calm on, like an eradio, if you're outside the wire. So calms is that like a Bluetooth headset? Yes, it's a Bluetooth headset. Okay, no. Like from Nike or like I bought a pair of pod.

Okay. Maybe Apple was involved at some point. I don't know, this equipment looked like it was from World War II. So it's calms, but is that having the air protection? Like, no. And I didn't wear them. That's just what some people wore. like it was from World War II. So it's comms, but is that having the ear protection? No. No. And I didn't wear them.

That's just what some people wore. People when you were as low as me, like we weren't privy to conversate. Like we were just told what to do and you do it. So when you're doing like on the OP tower, you have a radio you pick up and you call in and then you put the radio down. But for hearing protection, I mean, I would put in ear plugs, but those things are so violently loud that ear plugs, they don't do it just to see. I feel like when you go shooting,

there's certain kinds of ear plugs that you, it blocks out the gut, like certain kinds of sounds associated with guns and you can still hear other types of stuff. So the ones they issued us were these big things that had like a headpiece like here, but you have to wear your helmet when you're firing. Right, so you can't have both on.

Okay, so how much are you aware of the logistics of the whole thing? That's always fascinating with warfare. Like in terms of setting up, you mentioned gravel and the fobs, like setting all those bases up, were you seeing any of this or again it's a 19-year-old kind of just... Well, it's not that I was oblivious, that's the one thing I would say I wasn't. I was I'm very aware of my surroundings, that's something that's always been taught to me from a very

early age because I travel a lot with my dad in the truck and so my dad would be like you're going to go into that bathroom and I'm going to watch you come out and you're going to watch everyone around you because people get kidnapped. Like, this is just the reality. I was always very paranoid. So you were paying attention to surroundings and- But the Bob was already built up when we got there. This is already like well established bases already. There's established enough.

All right. And that is one of the first times you've heard actual fire. Yeah, that was like the, I mean, I'd heard it on the, when we shoot and when we, you know, zero in weapons and we do all that stuff, but I had never heard it, heard it like that before. And then you would see the, the, the guys, the Americans would roll out every day

and go on patrol and come back, well, come back, and so you would see them, you would hear them, they would tell the stories, those types of things. But I never experienced it because we never, we never got attacked. Like our base never got hit. We were really lucky that way. There were other ones around us that were getting hit, but we weren't, we weren't getting hit. So that we were very fortunate. At least we didn't get hit when I was there. I believe the entry got, there was an attempt. There wasn't attempt at some point in a past,

but I wasn't privy to that. But we were in the OP towers, so we had to do our own security. But because we were such a small subset of Canadians, and we always had to have people running the guns and ready to run the guns at all times, we only had to man one tower. So you would do four-hour shifts with a fire team partner

in the tower depending on whatever, but you would do it every day. So I would look out into the rest of Afghanistan. I'd that opportunity. Otherwise, it was just like your walls. What do you look like? Is it beautiful? Just a full landscape? Or is it... Where I was, there was mountains in the distance. It was just very sandy, very flat. And there was a couple small compounds on the outside. It wasn't a lot to look. There was a long road that you knew that got hit all the time. There wasn't a lot to look at. Such a strange place to be the center of superpowers over the decades.

It really is. So like, and the fact that the populists, the civilians are almost completely clueless to the full history of things. In terms of globally, the geopolitics of it all. Yeah, well, if you look at the location of it, right? On a map, it makes more sense. Right. You can wrap your brain around it.

But I met plenty of people who had never ever seen a picture of themselves when I was in that country. So I mean, how much more they can understand if they don't know what even exists outside. But I met plenty of people who had never even seen a picture of themselves when I was in that country. So I mean, how much more are they going to understand if they don't know what even exists outside? You tell a small story of taking a picture of a girl and showing it to her and I've got any girl.

Yeah. We were, I was with the British at that time and we were on that operation that gets highlighted quite a bit. And we had stopped and the I-com radios were pinging. And I-com radios are a radio that we have an interpreter on that the Taliban, basically, we can hear what they're saying. It's their comms, it's us tapped in. When it's really clear, they're close.

When it's scatty and it they're far enough away, normally you know you're not planning an attack, although you never know, really. And we we were going door to door, kind of like what they're doing now, and we were pulling people out of their houses, and we knew there were there was people in there that were active Taliban, and we knew the icons were pinging. When we got in there, they had hidden all the women and kids and locked them inside the house. Because often nowadays, the women, the women, they would hide things on them that they shouldn't have because no one would be ever there to search them because there isn't a lot of women on the front lines. But I got borrowed to go specifically

search women and children. So they had me. And one of the little girls kind of snuck out and was kind of sitting near me and I was eating something and I had like these little candies that I call little sweeties. The British have them in the ration packs. I don't know. They're good though. And she saw me eating them and so I gave them to her and then her brother came over and slapped her upside the head and took him from her.

So then I just went over and slapped him upside the head and pointed my gun at her while she ate them all. Yeah. Because I was like, no. Like, you can have these. I mean, I'm going to stand here and make sure you do. And I remember asking, can I take a picture with her? I asked the trip, can you ask her?

Can I take a picture with her? And she was very confused. And when you look at the photo, you see her face. She's very stunned. Very stunned. And it was a, wasn't my camera. It was my officer's camera. It was a hot pink, like fluorescent pink camera.

So I pulled this like a huge pink thing and I'm like, let's take a picture. Like, and so she stood there and took a picture, but then she grabbed the camera because I flipped it and showed it to her. And her eyes got huge and she grabbed it. She ran inside. And they're like, oh, that's gone forever.

Like that's over for you. And then she came out and she kind of snuck out and I went in and grabbed it and the mom lifted up her burger and was showing me that she like shaped her legs to be more western. And I was just, at that moment, I don't know that I could have realized how much that moment affected me, how much of how much that moment would affect me later on in my life until it's been later on

in my life. Yeah, there's little like glimmers like that in parts of the world that are basically you're taking away everything from the populace, like freedoms and so on. And when you see that glimmer of humanity, like, yeah, shaved legs or like using technology for the first time, it's magic or like food. Being presented with certain kinds of foods that you've never tried. I mean, you want to see true joy of discovery

is you bring basically the American supermarket, anything from it, to most parts of the world. And I just, I mean, I remember even, I mean, we weren't like in poverty in Russia, just poor, but just the supermarket was full of joy. I thought I could just die happy in an American supermarket when I first saw it. And how old were you when you came here? 13. Did you speak English? Yeah, not well.

I thought I never was good at languages. So it was very much like why would I need to learn other language? OK. It was that attitude. It was very like, doesn't, I don't know. Well, no, I think culturally, not in America, but everywhere else in the world, it's constantly kind of seen, it's a good thing to do to learn all the languages, because especially English,

because it's like, that's the language of the world. And I just thought, I don't need English to discover the beauty of the world. Like, what, this doesn't, like, I enjoy life. I enjoy soccer. I enjoy, I mean, I don't remember what else I enjoyed in life. But math, like, why don't I need English for this? To that kind of attitude got me a lot of trouble when I came here because I couldn't. You were elected?

Yeah, but it also just couldn't speak well. And when you move 13 years old as middle school, you get made fun of a lot, you get bullied, and all those kinds of things, which in retrospect is a very positive thing because it makes you harder. I thought being Russian would be like hard enough. No, well, me, everyone is different.

I mean, the part of the Russian thing is, it's kind of, you know, I'm joking because if you know me, I admire being hard. I admire fighting and these kinds of things, right? These, what would you call them? Struggle in all of its forms. Martial arts, wrestling, all those kinds of things. But I'm ultimately like, I'm so much about love. I come clearly sensitive to the world and it's a weird genetic way that it was important for me to

harden up when I came here and I was in love with people and it's like, and everybody's being mean to me. And it's like, what? That it's like, it's a little like slap like, okay, like it's not like life is not often fair and then that's one for me personally everybody has has different journeys of hardship that are much much more difficult like your stories much more difficult is you know I started to read a lot it's like something happens some kind of challenge where you start to think about the world, start to think about yourself. That can ultimately create really interesting minds. It can break some people, it can create interesting minds in this ultimately year church.

But those people are weak and then they just need to be weeded out. I thought we talked about this. Yeah. The strong will survive. The week will die off. Yeah. Now, now you're talking Russian to me. I'm not speaking Russian. I'm just giving

solid life advice. Just be harder and then everyone will be fine. Yeah, that's your inner David Goggins coming out real quick here. Okay, the fog. Yeah, and then I was just explaining to you that the way it is run, you're going to love this. When we walked up to those tents for the first time, the people that were there before us left us a noose. I have a photo of it. Like is it, is it? Like hanging from the tent, like at the front of the tent.

Like welcome. So you were also mentioning like the dark humor of it. It was basically a funny joke. Correct, yeah, it was funny. I'd say it was pretty. That's pretty funny. It was funny during the time. Now when I look back at it, I was like, come on. I was a boof.

I mean, I get it because they had already been there. And like, so afterwards I can see how it's funny. Now with like the suicide epidemic and the veteran community now I'm like, oh, I don't post that photo. Really? So, doesn't that dark humor still somehow help even when you're considering suicide? Doesn't that some of it somehow? Yeah, it's like you're not hiding it. It's like humor is one of the way to reveal the reality of abuse of suffering. If you look at, there's this photo

that generates around right around suicide prevention month, which is September. And it's always like a photo of like Robin Williams and Bourdain and all of these other individuals who are comedians who all took their lives. And they're all smiling. And they're like, this is the face of depression. There's a way our brains work where a humor is a necessary part of survival, whether it's used for joyous things or it's used for ways to cope through life.

For me, the military humor was one of the things that helped get me through. And it still does to this day, frankly, because humor makes some of the horrific things I say not seem so horrific. And people can digest it, rather than beingberates all the millions of people who died. And it seems like the only way to make sense of it is to joke about it. I still love it. Because if you don't, it'll break you. Yeah, something like that. Also, humor just seems to be the highest form of us humans and the human experience.

It just seems to somehow accumulate the full thing, the absurdity of it, the unfairness of it, because ultimately all of the suffering is like, it's all just apes fighting for power and love and somehow torturing each other in the process. Hello podcast listener, Lex here. Quick intermission to say that some of the names in the following story have been sound instout to protect their privacy. The story of, and witnessing, I think, your first somebody you met, somebody you saw, somebody you began to be close with

has life him dying. Can you tell the story of my life? Sure, that's no problem. I will tell you that I am gonna leave some of the names out of the people because they have reached out and asked that I have going to leave some of the names out of the people because they have reached out and asked that I do such. I've also been informed about other things. I forgot that happened during the thing that were way worse than I thought.

So I'll try to add those in because that's new information to me because my brain is blocked it out, but I've been told, which is good because it's better detail. So we were, we were doing a movement that morning and we were going from compound to compound. I was never told what we were doing. I knew what my job was. I didn't know the operational overview. I didn't know who we were looking for. I wasn't there for that. My job was specifically to look after the women and children and to provide support if need be. And when you have certain people, so the IE, the bomb dog handler and the bomb dog, and then you have the medics and then you have like a female researcher, that there's only one of those in each unit or if there's even one in each unit.

I got passed between units so that they could have access to me for both. We were waiting for the all clear to move, and at that time, the compound wall I was leaning up against, I had my backup against. I wasn't facing the direction where I actually blew up. I had my back to it and I had happened to turn and look to the left. And on the right hand side, across the road of where we were leaned up against, was another compound two stories high, people inside a sniper on the roof and a spotter. There was a handful of us on this wall and in front

of me there was a road. The road went straight. That compounds here. There's another road here on the right hand side in front of it. And then this road went along here and this was a wide open space. Just a huge, we hate those. You hate those because it's too much space. It's too easy. It's like fish and a barrel. You don't want to be in that field. Because there's too much line of sight. Line of sight could be IEDs. It could be anything. And so when I was leaning up against the wall, we had sent a couple people ahead to go and clear the road so that we could all go along it and then clear the gray pup off to the left hand side. We were doing that because they used those locations

to put IEDs so that when you're going to search it, it's just, it's a better chance of you blowing into a million pieces, essentially why they love that. Put bombs in small places, send people into small places, small places, go boom, they paid the walls. So we were just kind of sitting and waiting and then I turned, I happened to turn and I was looking in that direction and I heard the ground shake before I even realized what I was seeing with my own eyes, the ground shook and I saw a big piece of a body. I think it was the torso just kind of fly through the air and land into the field. And as soon as that happened, all hell broke loose. It was like the, they were sitting and watching and waiting and they do that. And

I say they I mean the tell me they do that. They they love that because then they can record it for propaganda and they can use it against us and they just love being able to take take our people out. And we had the interpreter sitting beside me and he had the icon radio on. And as soon as the blast went off, and he had the icon radio on. And as soon as the blast went off, I heard just the scream of, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like it just, I heard it.

And I knew what that meant, but I couldn't, I didn't understand what was about to happen. I couldn't, I couldn't wrap my brain around what was about to happen because I had never been outside the wire. And people are like, people say to me now, they're like, there's no way that she's true,

there's no way that she was involved in that, and then that, and then in that, and then in that. Well, let me explain. I was one person. I was being passed around to units. I was with a ton of different people. I had no comms and I was just being told where to go. And I just happened to be like a shit hit the fan magnet. It felt like. And then I found out later it was not just me, it was all of us were getting it.

So that made me feel better. Because then I was like, well, I have a lot of survivors guilt, that's like a thing that's still stuck with me. I've worked through a lot of shit, but survivors guilt, that's a big one for me. Certain food is a big one for me. It might, yeah, skin on food.

So like chicken with skin on it. Oh, just because of the biology of death, just what, well, when you hold people's bodies in your hands with no gloves on, you know what that feels like when you touch raw meat again. It's the same thing. That's what that feels like when, when it's a dying or dead body. Well, my friend was born into a million pieces, so I just had pieces in him. So there was no there was no differentiator of like, this was his thigh or this was his torso or there was like

there was none of that. There was only one instance with the boot. But what I, at that point we had been in some firefights, we had been taking some rounds, but it was more like take a route, we would, you know, get hit, and then we duck into a compound and we would set up, and then we'd be firing. I wasn't, I wasn't really involved in a lot of the fire fights until after this. After that, the rest of the week, I was like, I was angry and I wanted them all to go and I wanted to be in every position to take them out myself. So I put myself in every position. So I made sure I was on the roof. I made sure I was there. I made sure, hey, you need something. I'll fucking run it. I don't care if I die anymore

because as soon as that happened, my light switched went on. It didn't matter anymore to me. Can you go through what happens? Yeah, so far you were hearing these screams. Yeah, so the ID went off and what had happened was they put an ID inside of a gray putt and the gray putt has rectangular wall, rectangular holes in wall. And there's just like one door and it's this tall mud hut with just all these holes in it. And they had put an ID underneath a pile of sticks. And it had a metal detector. The Brits carry them.

I've never seen, I think other countries have them, but I've only ever seen them use it. And that's how we were kind of detecting if there was an ID. We must have hit it. The sticks or something and it set it off and it just it was over. There's no way he felt anything and then there was another guy at the door bent down on one knee and he was facing and kind of watching for and then the blast hit him on this side and so it took him out and pulled his

kid off, pulled his helmet up, pulled everything off, fucked him all up. Big time. This is one IED. Yeah. But it was in a contained area. And he was in the doorway. Can you explain what an IED is and how does it work? I can do my best. They're improvised explosive devices. They can be used pretty much out of anything to make anything. So garbage. When we got to Afghanistan, they did the ID meeting with us. They're like, these are what we're finding that they would show us diffused IDs. So they would see those big blue drums filled with gasoline buried in the ground. You would see a wire. It would go to a pressure plate. You hit the pressure plate. that would hit that, and it would go.

You would see IDs, some of them were ridiculous. The engineering that went into some of these was hilarious because they were thinking. They were thinking to use everything they could. There was a cigarette pack they had used. They lined the inside with tin foil, and when you stepped on the tin foil, it had a piece of wire, and it was enough of a spark to set off a line of batteries that we had thrown out that were all dead. When you fuse them all together, there was enough juice

to make it go. Then they would attach that to like phosphorus or gasoline or whatever they could that would make a big boom. They would use, yeah, that's why you never kick garbage on the ground. You'll never see me kick something on the ground. You'll see me walk around it always. If I ever see a pile of rocks or something

that looks like it shouldn't be there, I won't walk near it even now. Because they use that pile of rocks to remind people there's something there. We don't know what that means, but we know that something's there. And very often they would use anything, garbage, wires, we had to burn everything for a reason.

It's so terrifying to not. For the source of death to be like little parts of the environment and then people that don't look like they're not dressed as soldiers. No, they're civilians and like regular, because then when you have to come back or even there, you're just surrounded by danger and then you distrust everything essentially. That's the problem and that's why you have such PTSD issues with the soldiers we have now. Because you're in the environment in which it's very similar. So there's this one

IED. So this one IED, I still don't know what it was, went off, bought it flew, the guy at the door, he kicked out, he was all broken and bleeding and a mess. At that point, the radio started going crazy. Like, I could hear the guys yelling and screaming, trying to figure it out, and then you could hear the numbers being called. K-I-A, number, number, number, number. I don't know anybody's service number. I don't know what's going on. Next, you know, mortar rounds start, like, coming down. And, like, live fire starts happening. And happening and I'm like holy fuck things are popping off and I remember just looking at giving like we need to go we need to go now and I just got this like like I was I was like we're we're going and they're like hold on Burns and I'm like we're

fucking going like I wasn't dealing with it well and they're like like, all right, all right, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, so we went and we, you know, I helped out with that to other individual kind of helped him down, started doing medic work on him and he just kept saying, where's, where's, where's, he's using such a state of shock, I've never seen somebody's eyeball so big in my life, where's, where's, where's, where's, where's, where's, where's, we got high as good buddy, he's good, he's good. Picture like a super thick Scottish accent though because these guys were just, oh, and when they talk fast, it's even worse. And then so I ran over and we jumped down into the ditch along the side of the road because the road hadn't been cleared. And we're running through these tall, they look like cannabis plants, but they're not.

But it's just very thick bush, and I felt like I was running in slow motion. So if you picture one of your video games where the tunnel vision, and you can hear your breathing, it's like that, and you're running, and you can't move fast enough, and you're trying to get there. And we hit the road

and the rounds are coming down and mortars are coming down and they're like, okay, on three run. So we run on three and we run into the compound. I mean into the great put. And I remember looking around and very seriously going, where is he? Just genuinely asking. I think it was going, where is he? Just genuinely asking. I think it was been messaging me. He's been incredible. He's one of the best soldiers I've ever served with. He was a higher up. So he was running part of this. He's message me and he was giving me some information and he's like, I was in there with you. And he goes, I remember because you handed me me the boot. And because I walked over and all the rounds were, like, we were being shot at, mortars were coming down, but it was this slow motion. And I remember walking over to the hole in the ground and seeing his boot in the ground.

But it was, his leg was still hanging, like, but just below his knee was still in it. But the boot was perfectly laced up. Like the boot was fine. And I just, I held it and I turned and I looked at the guys and I was like, we could reuse the boot. Now that wasn't even, what is, what is that? Was that, Was that actually an intelligent attempt at humor? Or was it some kind of deeply lost, like you were completely just lost? I think my brain broke.

I think that's the moment I call my life switch one off. Did you understand that you was dead at that point? Like intellectually, you were just something that just broke No motion like it just broke. It is a shatter It shattered I felt it happened felt I didn't feel I didn't feel anything. They just broke. And at that moment, because later there's some anger almost at that moment, not a lot.

I couldn't comprehend what happened. I knew he wasn't there anymore because they looked at me and said, what's here is here. Start grabbing pieces we need to fucking move. So I handed the boot over, they took it, and then I started just grabbing anything out of the walls because those little rectangles had flesh hanging from it. I had a hemoglobs on, I've certainly used them to search. And

do you want to bring everything back? Like you don't leave this is what even if they're dead, do you want to save? Save those you serve? Yeah, because they deserve that. They don't deserve to have a piece of them drug behind a truck for propaganda. It's not fair. What are the others? I mean, was there just a focus on mission?

Was there a panic? What did- No, panic with these guys. These guys were the most switched on motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life. They, we started grabbing and remind me, he said, you know, you, uh, that's not he goes, when people say that's the worst part of your day, that wasn't even the worst part of your day. Do you remember when you handed me the bag of intestines? No.

Now I do though. Thank you for that. So there's parts you don't even, they're just not. They don't even they're just not they don't register because I had some people contact me and be like you didn't tell it right and war is subjective and war is from your perspective and war is messy and horrific and war is graphic and violent and painful.

graphic and violence and painful. Your brain remembers what it wants to remember and your brain allows you to remember what it allows you to remember and there's reasons that you don't remember everything. And so we were getting, we were really getting hit. We were getting, it was bad. And some of the guys, the machine gunners that come up to the cover fire, and I know we were calling in for air support to come pick up the guys because they had to go.

And we just collected everything we could, but I did remember screaming, like we didn't get them all we didn't get them all There's no way we got them all we did not fucking get them all and I remember one of the guys looking me be like we got them We got them. I'm like we didn't fucking get them. We didn't get them. I'm like no we got them. I'm like we And I couldn't say it enough and So I grabbed as much as I could I I I slung one of their weapons and it was just a twisted heap and I had His helmet helmet someone else's helmet in my arm and then I had my weapon in front of me

and I was carrying it and then we piled everything we had onto a stretcher. Those things are super fucking flimsy anyway. And there was a couple guys in front of us and there was a couple behind me and I was kind of in the middle. And we said, okay, we're just gonna have to run. We're gonna have to fucking run the road. We're gonna just have to run it. There's a chance it. So we ran it. And that was the close. Well, that was, I guess, not the closest, but it felt like it was the closest. I could

hear the, the whizz of the rounds going by me. It's a weird noise when they're coming at you and then when you're leaving you. And so that slowed everything down for me and then one of the guys accidentally dropped the edge of the stretcher and everything fell off into the ditch and then we had to go back down and get it back up and so we kept running and we finally got back into the compound that

that sniper was sitting off on the right hand side. And we got all in there. And I know the, I think said there was two flights. I only thought there was one, but apparently there was two flights. So one on one is body went on one. And then I think I think he said went on the other. And, um, and then they took off and then when they leave though they rain hell down on anything they can see on the ground and that is a beautiful sight because they had mortarounds coming down and it was just getting really really bad and then as soon as the black ox took up all of a sudden it just stopped and went quiet As soon as the black ox took off all of a sudden, it just stopped and went quiet. Like, deafening quiet.

And we were sitting inside the compound and I, one of the medics looked at me and you could see and I still do it now and I'm working on not doing it, but I do it when I get really overwhelmed because I didn't have any gloves on. I had blood over my hands and just like body and stuff So he came over and he just gave me like sanitizer and I started rubbing And so I rub I do this when I'm stressed. I'll rub my hands and I still can't I Still can't do

I still can't eat food with skin on it, and I can't like salmon and stuff, like I can't, I can't touch it. And like if I'm making meat at home, like for my husband and my son, like I have like meat gloves, and then I have like a fork and a knife, and I'm like cutting it, like I never touch it. I can't touch it.

So there's something almost like the texture of the biology of a human flesh that just that's at the level of that's the level of your trauma. Yeah, and it's been I mean, it's 2021. This was an online. And I've worked on this like, and I mean, I've been in like treatment religiously just to be able to keep me alive for this decade. And so it's not like it's like, oh, you never even tried to get better. It's like, I never used to leave my house.

I used to call people that look like that, horrific names in public. I used to want to kill people on a regular basis. I'm a fairly happy individual now. What about, you're talking about sort of skin and parts and but there's also just the fact that we're mortal and there's somebody close to you who dies. So you watch walk up and then never come back out again? Yeah, it's like you're facing mortality in a very real way. In a way that's not the same as somebody dying from cancer in a hospital, although it has echoes of that

because that's also absurd and like, it doesn't feel like there's justice to it in any kind of way, but it's so sudden, like have you been able to make sense of that of your feelings about it? How do you feel about it? Or is everything just shrouded in this trauma that you're not able to just feel for the loss of a human being, like more than the loss of a human being. I think I had when he when I realized he wasn't there, when I realized that he,

that was the, that was what was left of him. I found out afterwards there was other parts that were outside and, and went back. I think it's, I think he said, went back and they got, they ended up getting the rest of him. So that made me happy because I just found this out this week. So. Dad, that means you have a feeling like, you still feel like parts of them were left behind.

Yeah. On the ramp ceremony, when I lost my mind, literally, I lost my mind. And I was screaming that he wasn't all in there. I'm happy now knowing that he was, but I held on to that for 10 years. Yeah, the sandbags, the sandbags like it's the bulk of the weight is not from human flesh. Yeah. He was a young kid too. It was, I think it was his first deployment as well. Like he was, he was a young kid. kid and he was just just going to clear the road for the rest of us, right? Like not, like, you know you're in war and you know that you're outside the wire and you know things could happen, you understand that to the extent you can understand that.

When it's happening, it's something very different. not. When it's happening, it's something very different. Also, maybe you can correct me, but there's something much more like brutal about an IED. It's ambitious. Versus like a bullet. Because a bullet, you still, watching somebody close to you die from a bullet, you still get the basic humanity. So, IED basically converted a human being into sort of parts by biological parts.

A cheeseburger. Yeah, verse, yeah, I mean, I don't... That's tough. That's tough because it's like... Because it's hard for you to remember them as a human. You remember them as parts. For me, that's how I remember him. I would like to, I have a picture that I post every year about him.

I see that, but I don't put two and two to get to it. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does. So even I listening to your story and you know, thank you for sharing it first of all. But it's not my, it's, it's, it's, well, I'm just the one to tell it. I was just involved. One set of eyes. I'm this particular human being.

But even I get angry. I can't tell if it's exhaustion or anger. Oh, I'm sorry. I look always exhausted. Oh, that's okay. You're you're into robotics, isn't that like your guy's this thing? You guys are just always working on. I think because I feel so much for the world, I just don't do it. We were talking about resting bitch face earlier earlier. I just don't feel the need to maintain all the effort of the musculature for presenting myself to you visually. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. So I just focus on the feeling. No, hey, I can

let the face show whatever the hell it shows. There enough. Okay. Was there anger? Was there hate? Was there anger? Was there hate? Yeah, oh? Can you just talk to your feelings of what you remember? Yeah, so After that operation with the British, I went back to the Canadians and I didn't go back as even remotely close to who I was when I left and That was really troublesome for a lot of people around me because the level of anger and hate that came out of me was palpable when I just walked by. I got shockingly quiet and you understand how you're learning how. That'd be terrified if you were quiet. And I don't know if hate and anger do that justice. I don't know another word,

but I don't think those two words do it justice to the extent that I was feeling like I got to a point when I got attacked by a woman with some scissors like the idea across my mind like I could boot stomp her to death and not feel anything about it in front of her all of her family and her kids. Was it more like just not recognizing the basic community or was it legit hatred? No, it was legit hatred, but also I no longer saw those people as humans. Yeah. It took one event. And when that happened, the rest of the operation that was echoed in my in the way I was to those people. But to what level can you see those people as human? So this is where, what like this is where he's jaco shut down. I still think I'm right. There's a dire straight song called Brothers in Arms. And, um, actually, anyway, we're fools to make war on our brothers in arms.

And I brought that up to Jaco because it's humans on both sides. Correct. But he said not in Iraq. Like to him, he's like, no, that's the enemy. These are people who use the civilians. They rape, they torture, they'll do anything and they put evil onto the world. And then it's like, so they're stood at that moment, like these two were humans and its politicians waging war and its kids on both sides. But then Jacques was like, no.

He's not wrong. So which, can you carry both things with you as a soldier? I think when I was a soldier, I could only carry one thing with me. I think my perspective has changed drastically, but not because I've lost the reality that they are the enemy, but I've gained my humanity back again, and that's what I lost when I was there. I lost all humanity. I lost all hope for humanity. He's not wrong. When he says the Taliban, or like, when he was in Iraq, but for me, the Taliban are evil. I still hold a spot of hatred for them

that could set this building on fire. You don't, I don't know that anybody can fully understand that. When you watch What they do to women and do kids and they do it in the name of God They are the enemy. They are less than they don't exist. They're barely worth the bullets. We put it in them But then because they use civilians, it makes dicey. So like then everybody becomes the enemy and how are you supposed to make sense of it?

Like what? You can't, but here it lacks you can't make sense of it. This is why they've done a really good job of blending into this civilian population. They've done it intentionally. They've done it on purpose. So they're brilliant. This is why you guys couldn't

beat them. This is why we couldn't fucking beat them. They used their people so effectively. They have no shame in that. They have no issue with that. They take no qualms with wiping a kid off the face of the earth. If it means they can get close enough to a soldier to throw a fucking bomb into their tank, this is why they're affected. How do you beat them then? Is this there's no winning that you just basically do policemen type work or you do your best? I mean, that's one way. So the other is you come from artillery background. A fucking hellfire missile at the whole place off the face there. You can't beat radicalism like that right now. The problem is, is we've, we've let it go unchecked.

We had it kind of unchecked for 20 years. We just shot ourselves in the foot, the chest in the face. So the problem with force is it creates long-term hate because young kids in propaganda and like propaganda works. So you see your father, your brother, die because of a bomb. It's very easy to convince that person that they died because of evil Americans until whatever story you want about America or Canada, Russia.

That's the biggest problem. So it seems like there got to be better solutions because I talk about love, but it's honestly basically figuring out sneaky ways of empowering women, of educating people of like, and not in a, not a cheesy way, but in a realistic, like in the same level of like mass warfare, but with love. So you're talking about DARPA budgets, DOD budgets, but like do that where you educate and empower women by force.

And it, you know And they wanna learn. Right, I mean, you're not like forcing anybody. You're setting them free. That's exactly it. Like combat flip-flops does this. They do this. They give literacy. They teach girls to read, nothing else to read.

Because as soon as you can read, you know what that happens then. What's combat flip-flops? That's the scarf right there that's made in Afghanistan. So when you buy something from them, the proceeds go to literacy in Afghanistan for girls. They've given literacy to 800 girls over there. Yeah, they're really cool.

Griff owns the one who's an army ranger and in his buddy, but Lee I think is his name. They were on Shark Tank a long time ago, but they do shoes and I think they're called shmongs, shmongs. I don't know how to say it properly. Built and I've got us. Yes. And then the proceeds go back there. They do great work for literacy. And you know, as well as anyone, if you can teach someone to read, good color, dark like your soul like On the inside just on the inside all right the outside is just the

It's just the suit. I feel like you think that's your suit of armor, but I feel like it's it's there It's that what were you saying? Oh, it's sort of what were you saying? I was saying go on. I will allow this all right I think there is room if you teach I will allow this. All right. I think there is room if you teach education, the problem is we've taken a massive step backwards. I know that the Taliban have just instituted this week. Honor killings will be back, stonings are back, and dismemberments as well.

Holly McKay is the reporter that's been reporting that from the ground. She's still there. The way to pull people, in my opinion, out of something like that, is through education. Well, we just took all of that away, which is pretty horrific, in my opinion, because you've taught over 20 years, you're perfectly right, Lex. When you say that Hayden violence won't work, it won't, because you see dad get killed on the battlefield, well, that 14-year-old little boy is going to pick up an AK-47 and go avenge dad's death. That's just the way it's going to be.

Well, we think about it. You're there for 20 years. There's a couple of generations in there. There's another generation that's either grown up in this or is seen enough of this. So there are always going to be a subset that think that we're the enemy. And fair, we haven't done always the greatest things. But the one thing that we have done that I did participate in was giving literacy, giving girls an opportunity, letting them know that you aren't second-class citizens. You can do things too. And that's why we have to look at war differently. There's times for violence.

Oh, oh, oh, there's time for violence. And there's time for missiles. And there's time for detainees. And there's times for bagging tags and double tops of the fucking face. There's times where all of that. But there needs to be more time to educate. The problem is you can't educate if you're in a country where the culture doesn't believe in that. You're fighting so many different things that you eat. It's an almost an impossible situation. When you look at the 20 years in Afghanistan, then we just pulled out. There's a sudden pull out of troops. What do you think about those 20 years?

Let me ask hard question, which is, was it worth it going into Afghanistan? In your sort of, your one person, my limited capacity, you've experienced You've experienced a specific set of extremely difficult things. You've met a lot of humans. You understand certain aspects of the way this war is carried out. But if you zoomed out at the big story, like you like history too. When you think of the history, a hundred years from now, we look at the invasion of gas then. I don't even think you need to go far that back to know that it was we went in on false pretenses. We did. That's not a good start.

What's that saying future behavior is a good, was it past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior? Right. So I struggle with that because when I first found out that the pull-up was going to happen, I got really angry because my government skated the whole situation because he's having a snap. Canada's having a snap election. It's happening on the 20th. So that was beautifully planned by my government to hold no accountability, zero accountability.

And the media won't talk about it. They reached out to me to do an interview about Afghanistan and then I told them what was going on after I talked to my people that were on the ground and then they canceled the interview. When you say my government is America any better? Like it feels like there's no accountability. No, no, the government, no, the American government

is a dumpster fire. I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is, at least they sent people to pull people or pull some people. We sent no one to pull people or pull some people. We sent no one to pull anyone. And I know for a fact because I helped move a family, I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to help move a high value, nine-person family out of that country that worked in the government, that worked in prosecuting the Taliban, that were on the top of a list.

I learned really quickly the ins and outs of things and I'm really disgusted by it. I learned that Canada had the one email address that all Canadian, Afghani, or visa holders were supposed to email, Ottawa put two people on that email address. That's confirmed. Canada put no more than 70 people on the ground for that pull out and they were not allowed to leave the airport and they left well before the pull out date. They left on the Thursday before the Tuesday that was the 31st. There were high value Canadian visa holders that are still in that country that are on the top of the kill list.

Canada is not doing anything about it. I'm disgusted in the way my government is acted because number one, there's an active lawsuit with veterans against the Supreme Court of Canada right now. We are leaving our vets and our Canadians stranded over there and we are leaving the vets that have been maimed by this war in Canada. They're turned down for everything. I've been turned down for hearing loss. They're saying it's not military related.

They have PI's follow me. It's, this is normal behavior. There's a veteran named Brock who was told by Trudeau in a meeting that after he lost his leg, he was just trying to get a new prosthetic because it was just killing him. Trudeau stood up in a meeting and said, you're just asking for too much. Less than six months later, he gave $10.4 million to an Afghan terrorist that was in the Canadian prison system. He won and got $10.4 million tax-spare dollars. So I don't know that American government's any better, but what I do know is that the absolute fucking machines of human beings that stepped outside of the chain of command

to pull my family out for me. I know they were there. The British that stayed on the ground that I could contact to literally confirm my biometric data and passports to get that family move. They weren't there, that family would still be there. That three-year-old that got the shit kicked out of them by the Taliban that I was trying to ex-fill,

Canada left him. What is it about politicians and governments not willing to do their job? Well, not willing to do that with a big part of the job, which is like, you send people to war. These are heroes, and then you should spend most of the time repaying the debts to those, right? What is it about? Why can't we... Because we're disposable numbers, and we hire them out of high school when they're stupid enough to not understand what they're going to get themselves into.

And then we blame it on themselves for making that decision by volunteering. Yeah, but I mean, this doesn't make sense to me. So it's a cop out. I mean, Trudeau, I feel like he is a good human being that wants to do good for, I mean, I tend to, I want to believe that leaders want to do good by the heroes of this world. And it doesn't, like, I don't understand the system of delusion you have to live in to not understand who the heroes are. Like I refuse to believe Trudeau is some all a bad person.

You have a met him though, huh? I don't, actually. I'm speaking believe Trudeau is a model of bad person. You have a metham though. I don't actually I'm speaking about Trudeau without knowing. But I'm in general think that way about leaders. I just think they surround themselves by people who dilute them who like they're yes people who yes people that lead them into a kind of reality that becomes detached from actual reality. And so they they misunderstand the priorities of this world. They think maybe some kind of special interest,

they focus on that versus like the humans. If you look back, was there a way we could have done something better in Afghanistan assuming we do the invasion? So is it ultimately about taking care of the veterans? Like investing more money in the education of women and liberating people who are

Suffering injustice in those parts of the world like what's the better way to do it and one other aspect is on the US side like what's the better way to do it? And one other aspect is on the US side, paid over $6 trillion for the wars in the Middle East since 9-11. So the financial side as well, is there something you can comment on things we could have done better? That's a loaded question because you're talking to someone

who had no hand in what happened other than do this and do that. So I can go from my perspective, which is there was probably plenty of things that we could have been doing better. I think there was a lack of leadership from the get-go. I think the preparation that the Canadian military gave me was nowhere sufficient for a deployment of that level. Mind you, things happen.

They didn't realize things would happen, but yet they happen. With little to absolutely no cultural idea was that I was walking into. Like when the man, one male and the family grabbed the back of my vest because my hair was tucked and he thought I was a man going into a room with a bunch of women. I couldn't understand why he was attacking me. There was no real breakdown of this is what you're going into. This is the culture. This is why they do what they do. This is how they do it.

This is how you should handle a situation like that. There was none of that. And something I speak about frequently, and I think it's important to acknowledge is when you're doing any of that training, we are giving none of our soldiers proper mental health training tools in that fucking toolbox or ways or things to look for on their buddy because the we've created a system in a problem where if you say that you're ill or that you're struggling with PTSD, you're done, no one is going to say that, they're going to keep struggling with it. And that's when you get loose canons, when you get problems happen. So you get fractures

start to happen in leadership. And that's being seen and has been seen now for a while. So in terms of what we could have done, say for a better way to go into the country, a better way to help the country. I can't speak to that as much as I wish I could because I don't know that I would have all the answers. What about withdrawal? Oh my God. That's a cult. You think, you think it's better to maintain presence there for indefinitely?

I don't know about that, but I do know we have bases, I say weeks, I serve with them. Americans have bases in Japan, Americans have bases in Korea, Americans have bases in Germany. There's reasons there's bases everywhere. There's a smart, there's an intellectual way to look at this. You want to be able to have eyes and ears. Can't have eyes and ears when you do things like you just did. The way that we pulled out of that country, that's right, the way that I'm, I hate saying American British because it puts like a blame on them. I say we,

because I'm a soldier. I'm a NATO soldier. The way we pulled out of that country, my five-year-old could have done it better. He could have said, Mommy, why are we not keeping that background base? Mommy, why are we not keeping that base just until we get everyone out that we need? Why are we going to a civilian airport that we don't control, that we don't understand? Mommy, why are we doing this when there's only one road to it? My five-year-old would have that conversation with me. It was so poorly done. It was so poorly executed and no fault of the soldiers on the ground on their own.

My God, I can tell you, there's operators, I just call them A. I don't say who he is because he's told me not to. There's a guy named A and there's another guy named R and there's a few other named D and these guys. Pake gave everything to try to pull my family when no one else would pull my family for me. They just got me on the phone so I don't know who the fuck you're talking to. I don't know how many people you're trying to get a hold of here, but you've got everyone looking for your family. Sixth, I've gone to everyone I know.

I've done stuff on Instagram. I've got a contact, the contact called me. I called them. I got, I was handling this family. And when they call you and say, we can't go back to the gate. My three-year-old just got beat up by the Taliban. And they say, what do we do now? I'm in Vancouver.

Why am I being left to do with this? Why is the civilian and ex-military population being left to do with this? Why was this not thought out? We knew this was coming. We knew the time frame. Yeah, I ultimately blame, it almost starts at the top always at the leadership. Sorry, sorry, this is the civilian leadership. Oh, I think probably the generals know the right thing to do here. Even if there are sometimes overzealous in terms of being wanting to increase, I think the great generals understand what's needed. And then it takes great leadership on the civilian side to listen to the generals and understand that war is not just about like

binary. Yeah, and it's not about the invasion and saying mission accomplished, you know, all like it's it's not about the PR it's about like the full complexity of geopolitics can ask you this can ask me whatever you want. I'm looking at a book that you gave me do the fucking work it's very motivating. Good fucking design advice. It's very motivating. Good fucking design advice. That's their company called Good Fucking Designed Vice. That's great. I know they're great.

But the website because good GFDA. Okay. So the F is for friendship. Something like that. They are a design company. They've worked with Apple and Nike and this is their book. It's been published by Harper Collins. And it is really just

It's an incredible they're an incredible company. They They're they're artistically like they're a design company. So you can see that You can see it's a design company. Oh, yeah, they signed it for you and The pages are beautiful, but it's they have a saying and then a paragraph about each saying get fucking started obstacles are fucking opportunities Fail fail and fucking fail again ask for fucking help show some fucking passion Finish the fucking job. That's right. So we should send that to Biden. So I am she said that I didn't say it like said it I Didn't say it like said it. It's what I'll say I should't say it. Lex said it. I didn't say it. Lex said it.

It's why I'll say I should also send it to Trudeau as well. So, but I mean, he probably want to have to read it. He just taught drama instead. So I'll send it to the previous four presidents. How about that? That's fine. We can also send it to them too, because they're all just as much at fault. So, and they, most of them have all the same last names, but okay.

Let me type it them quickly, because we did a mug with them. And I was really excited about it, not because it was a mug. I'm a mug person, but you are. That's your. I'm obsessive about my mugs. What's your favorite mug? Currently, it's mine right now, the one that I have with them. Okay.

What's what is it saying? Is it? Do you want me to read what it says on? Yeah, please. Okay, because I'm really happy about it. Because we created this with them, with GFDA, I found out about them because my husband's office, Atlas Neck Race, he had his very first office,

he had one of their prints done. And it was their original like, do the fucking work. And I was really excited about them once I found out because I'm like, well, I fuck is my middle name. And I want to make sure that I am going to whoever I work with, I want to make sure that I'm working with people that I believe in, that I believe what they stand for. And I just think they're brilliant. So I got on the phone with them. And I said, hi, I would like you to

sponsor my podcast. And they said, cool, what's your podcast? And I was like, it's called Brass and Unity podcast. And I want to work with you guys somewhere. And they're like, okay. So like, what are you thinking? And I said, you know, I'm, I'm looking to do, I would love one day to do something with you. I don't know what it would be, but I would like it to be something. And they said, we do like, we have this book, but we also have shirts and mugs with our sayings on them and prints. And so I was thinking to myself, I was like,

well, if I just did a mug with them, well then I could, that could work for what my company does, which is, it's a jewelry company and sunglasses company, but it could be like an add-on kind of deal. Mm-hmm. It's guess a really good design, is that going to reach out? Yeah, I knew you would like this. Why I brought it? Some like certain people would appreciate this. And so my whole thing, my hashtag is Work Hard Help harder, and that's the whole concept of what I do now. And so we did a mug and it's called fucking help somebody. That's their like first tag. And then the rest is kindness is a wealth that increases

added as given as it is given away. What you get in return isn't passed between hands but felt between hearts. It's precisely because you've been at the bottom that you can raise others up. It's because you, sorry, I'm reading a photo here, you've been lost in the dark, you can lead others to the light. It's because you've fought with yourself that you can bring peace to someone else. You now have the strength because you've once struggled. The best you have to come from the fucking worst you've had to take. So it's this is the mug there. And we're sold out of them. We just got it. What does it say, fucking help?

Fucking help somebody. Fucking help somebody. And so we did, they were so gracious enough to sit with me and be like, what do you want the copy to be like? And I said, what do you think I want it to be? What would you, if you could write one for me, what would it be? And they're like, it's going to be around lifting people up.

And I was like, okay, cool. And they're like, do you want a fucking the title? And I was like, every other word, if we can have it. And they said, well, just do once. And I was like, okay, I compromise. And so we came up with that copy and we put it on a mug. And we're going to be doing a shirt with them. But the whole thing to me was that that embodied what I stand for now. And the healing I've gotten to now and the point I've gotten to now in my life because that fucking sand pit almost broke me. Like, off the face of the earth broke me.

First of all, can we go through the full journey of that in terms of your psychological development? Who were you before? Who were you after? Can you think about that? Like, what was your... Yeah. If you had to put a brain on the table before and after and try to analyze it. Well, they both have CTE. So, we know that they're both bruised and gray matters a little dicey on them. Yeah. And it may sound the same and it's not. So I'll try to explain it to you. Before that, don't you laugh, because I know it's coming.

I was even louder, even more obnoxious, even more outgoing. I know it's hard to believe. This is you humble and quiet right now. This is like, this is you like, this is normal me now. This is who I am now and quiet right now. This is like, this is you like. This is normal me now. This is who I am now and I love that.

But who I was before was, you know, motor cross, Taiko and a tomboy, I didn't know how to dress. I thought that if you just wore like the same jeans and t-shirt all the time that was like acceptable behavior as a woman. Yeah. I wore skate shoes. I went to a Catholic school that I refused to wear skirt at I wore pants. I played hacky sack. I Was so into sports. I cut in split wood with my dad on weekends. We heated our house that way I would go in the transport. I I Stayed at a trouble for the most part. I I would go in the transport. I stayed at a trouble for the most part.

I think I was a fairly good kid. I was pretty angry, though, for most of my teenage life after my coach. I lost my way a little bit there. I was just crazier. But happy. I don't know if I was happy. I'm realizing that now. I think I was, I think, anger overtook who I was. And I think that's why I was such an angry individual towards my know if I was happy. I'm realizing that now. I think I was, I think anger overtook who I was.

And I think that's why I was such an angry individual towards my parents when I was in high school. So parents was a little rough relationship with parents. I mean, yeah, I mean, my dad was gone a couple weeks at a time. So my mom, say to her mom, had to handle me and my brother. We're both competitive athletes at the time, by herself. And when you come home and you have a daughter that just calls you like a bitch to your face because she can't, she's being bullied so bad that she

can't understand why, but also doesn't know how to fix it, but it has no other outlet anymore to kind of get rid of it. I was not nice. I was a really mean person. I broke my mom. I remember the day she stopped yelling. That's the day I know I broke her. I broke her. Did you have a source of discipline in your life? Like what like maybe like we are dad somebody who says you're being a bitch? Like who would call me like that? Oh, no, no, no, no, my parents were incredible. My dad came from like a family of like a bajillion kids who lived in a farm with no running water, with super, my dad was brash and abrupt.

So I've caught myself doing that once in a while. So if I did one thing wrong, if he was just in a mood, I would know it. So you weren't, okay. So that anger just took different forms. It took different forms, but mostly would be directed at my mom. Got it. Because I know she would take it. And that was who I had mostly would be directed at my mom. Got it.

Because I know she would take it. Right. And that was who I had. And I feel bad about it to the day. Like I still, she listened to the Jocco podcast and so did my dad. And my mom promised me she would never read my book because there's certain parts.

I just, my dad on my deployment, when I called him and told him some of the stuff, he started crying. My dad doesn't cry. And he just said, please never tell your mother this. Don't do that to your mom. My mom, my grandfather came from Hungary. He escaped when the Nazis left, when the Soviets came in. He wasn't great as a dad.

My mom went through a lot as a kid. And that was because her dad was in the war. That was because her dad didn't know any better. And she knew she couldn't be like that. So her way would yet be yelling. And then I hit about 16 and I wore it down. I broke her shattered her ability to think that she could have any sort of relationship with me. You wouldn't want to have had a relationship with me. The funny thing is you've rediscovered that now. Are you guys close now?

Yeah, she's so funny. She's coming out to help out again. She comes out to help out with Jack all the time. My dad, they're still truck drivers, they're still in the road. They team drive, they have their little dogs and they go and they do their thing. And I've had that relationship now. It's still strenuous. Like I still, when I'm having a hard time,

she'll be the person I'll take it out on. Because I know she can take it. Even though I know I shouldn't, it's like she's my safe space to be like, blah, about everything. And she'll just be like, well, that's not nice space to be like, blah, about everything. And she'll just be like, well, that's not nice. I'm like, well, you're not fucking like, and I'll take it out on, she knows.

I don't mean it and I try. But for whatever reason, she just, she takes it and- And it brings it out of you. Yeah. Can you describe sort of the various characteristics, the shape of your PTSD, the trauma, how the anger and hate took shape in you in the seconds, minutes, hours, months, years after the

full trauma of all the things you've experienced. And of course that. So it's funny because Jocco asked me something and it made me, it's made me, I've really been thinking a lot about it. And he's like, do you think if somebody of a leadership would have just sat you down and said, Hey, burns, what you're feeling is okay. What you're feeling is normal. What you're feeling is what happens when you're in something like this.

Do you think you would be where you are? And they said, well, I thought about it. And I'm like, you know, I don't think I would be because I wouldn't have been medicated out of my mind I wasn't able to process anything because I was just given medication right from the get so for me what happened was once that light switch was off I was sent back to Canterhart to what I once the operation was over we flew back to Candahar like with the Brits. And then because there was deaths and we lost people on that operation, I had to go to the British side for the next I think three or four days and recant word for word why what happened to a British MP who hand wrote statements.

But we had to do that on repeat to make sure we all had the same story. There's nobody shot anybody in the back. It's, and so that, I don't think is a great way to do that after an after-action. After-action reports happen, but I don't think beating a dead horse and having somebody repeat, repeat, repeat, and then just imprint more and more and more.

I don't know that that is a great way of doing that. And especially from a perspective of what are they liability almost like legal? That kind of perspective is supposed to the full perspective. I mean, so for people who don't know, one is the over medication that you had to undergo. And then the other is the social isolation in terms of yeah, I mean more than what Jaco what you just mentioned You also kind of mentioned that just being with With other soldiers you're close with just sitting there in silence and Just sitting in that shared understanding. Even that in itself communicates like,

these feelings are normal. Like, you don't have to talk. You don't have to talk with them. And you were robbed of that as well, essentially. Yeah, because I was borrowed, I think Jocco had a name for us when we get borrowed. It was like, there was like a, I don't know what they call us,

but it's like when you take a person and you put them in another unit, there's a name for it. I don't remember what it was. You never see those people again, but because I was in canter heart, the doctors gave me the medication because I, I think I was the one who said, I know this isn't right. I don't feel right.

This is wrong. Because when I got back that night, there was supposed to be somebody there to pick me up to take me to the other side of the base and no one showed. So I hummed on my kit back to the Canada house and I remember getting in the shower. And the rule was quick fucking showers. No water. I must have sat on that floor without shower for half an hour, 45 minutes. I just held myself and cried. I didn't even know I was crying. I just knew I needed to cry.

And I still as day, I... And when they sent me back to the fall, they sent me back with all this medication after spending that time with the Brits. And they put me back on the guns medicated out of my fucking tree. I almost shot someone, but they didn't tell my staff that I was on meds.

So when the artillery gun was going off and I didn't run to the gun and I was still asleep inside the tent with the gun beside my head, they didn't know I was just drugged. They just thought I was fucking off somewhere hanging out with some Americans. They just thought I was fucking off somewhere, hanging out with some Americans. They just thought I wasn't doing any of what I should be doing.

And then I remember the moment my sergeant, we did a night shoot, and he's so funny because he called me, and he goes, ah, fuck, burns, that. Go, at least I remember this, yes. You were standing there with me, and I look at you, and go, hey, burns, are you okay? Because your eyes are all fucked.

And I looked at the sergeant LeBlanc, I just never going, yeah, I'm good. Like just, huh? Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I still remember that. And I'm like, I know. And he goes, they never tell me anything, fuck Burns. I did not know the drugs you were on.

And as I was on all of them, he goes, I know I walk in, you show me the bottles, that fuck burns, you shouldn't have been there. I guarantee he sounds just like that. You'll find out. Yeah, it's great. He's brilliant. He's brilliant. Yeah, so what, I mean, I suppose this is a lazy way

of dealing with trauma. Yeah. And it's for the military in some sense, if you don't have a good program in place, this makes sense. But you should have a good program in place, just as you said on the prepp, on the mental prepside. Just any prepp. Like training people, training people on the,

I suppose to, I guess, train the fact that you're going to have somebody close to you blow up. You have to probably visualize that, you have to think through that, you have to have a process of how to deal with something like that, with that kind of trauma. And then that's it. And that's it. And that's not weakness, it's actually strength. you have to be mentally strong enough to process that. That probably takes a lot of training, but it's a great training, right?

It's a well worth it to to protect your investment training. Right. That's a very cold, but correct way to put it. I mean, it's cold. I thought you would appreciate the coldness of the way I articulated that. Well yeah I mean I'm of two minds on this. I don't... I sometimes wonder like what I would be like as a soldier actually. I don't know because I love country and I love all the things you're mentioning. Like I could see myself probably dying from my country and also enjoying the skill of it, the very like OCD, like.

It's very proficient. Yeah, but then also the human side, I fall in love with people, I fall in love with everything, so I don't know. I don't, I suppose you have to shout off the party, your brain when you're executing a mission that cares about other humans outside your close knit group. I like, there's no time for philosophical thinking. I don't know.

I suppose that's why it's better to be young. Young and dumb. If you're not necessarily dumb, it's just like you were over that energy of excitement of proficiency and excellence is just higher than it is later in life. It's but I was naive, uneducated, not well trained, and had an arrogance, because we were told we were the fucking shit. Yeah.

You're amazing. Okay, I'm amazing. So I wonder, do they think if we do mental training? That makes you weak. Do you think the military thinks that makes you weak? Well, yes, and the reason I can say that is because it's obvious in the way that they handle it now. So like if a soldier says, hey, I'm really struggling with that last op you were on, man,

it's just really it's getting to me. I'm just having a hard time sleeping. They're going to go, okay, well, how hard of a time sleeping are you having? And then you get that reap and you go, oh no, it's not that bad. I'm not, I don't need anything for it. Like I'm just like once in a while I'm losing some sleep.

They're like, okay, because you know that pen moves. It's all getting written down and then you're dead red, which means you're not deploying again. Yeah. And then you're not able to do the thing you love the most with the people you love the most. Right. But also, this is really difficult.

And I would love to talk to you about PTSD. But like, sorry, yes, I keep going on. No, please. So I'm hoping to, like launch a company, you know, in the engineering space. And I currently leave a few people. And it's always this kind of, like how much you're supposed to push people, because people are, everyone is weak and lazy.

You're quoting our text messages from early? Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm quoting all I have is just quotes from you. What's OK? How's how much we've spoken in the past week, your soul? I just, I don't know what to do because sometimes people are really struggling. Like really struggling in a way, they're

being, they're like, it's the dig. That's the Goggins thing is like, where's the line to where you're actually breaking the human being versus where you're breaking them at the places where they will grow back stronger? Like, so in that line is tricky to truly understand. I think the military airs on the side of like, they, you know, like push them beyond all limits.

Physical limits. Physical, but mental, they don't, they need to respect the mental more. Ah, they fuck with the brain a little bit. I mean, in basic training, they like scream in your face and to see who's gonna crack. And they put you on sleep deprivation, to see who's weak enough that they can't handle sleep depth.

They'll, they do stuff to you. Like, I know if you're a downed pilot, you have to go, you have to do this training and like it's you get captured It's like this whole thing and they fuck with your brain, but there's a line. There's a line. My issue is Go to the line cross the line Give them the tools to come back from the line. Right. Yeah. We don't do that. We don't.

We know there's PTSD. We know there's such a thing. We understand there's anxiety and depression. We understand there's major depressive disorder. We understand that there are precursors. There are signs and symptoms. We understand that. So why are we not building enough of a toolkit?

Whether that be, I'm not talking medication, I'm talking the sounds woo-woo, but fucking trust me, it works. I'm talking meditation, I'm talking yoga, I'm talking about peer group support, I'm talking about if you go to your doctor and report this, you're not automatically gonna be losing your job.

Why aren't we giving the proper tools and the education needed? These things are not difficult to teach. They don't take a lot of time, they don't take a lot of money. The only time it takes a lot of money is when you want to medicate. We don't need to medicate you yet. You only need to be medicated if you're a danger to someone else or yourself. And most of the time, because of the way the system is set, you'll lie about it through your fucking teeth

just so that no one touches you. So from the perspective of the military, do you think you can still be a bad motherfucker and do all the mental work? Yes. Some of the baddest dudes I've ever known are like, I gotta go to yoga. I gotta go meditate.

Yeah. I go to IA with those guys. Why? Because they know that that's not okay to be like that in your life. Can you answer the ridiculously big question of what is PTSD? Like do you understand the basic characteristics of it? Is there universal characteristics from your own unique experience? Like from what you've understood about it. Yeah, of course there are. So there's, you know, there's the basic things that a doctor

looks for when they're diagnosing PTSD. I'm not a doctor. Let me make that fucking clear. But there are things that you look for. You look for insomnia. You look for anger and aggression. You look for people to fly off the handle, you look for avoidance. You can tell in somebody's body, people who can't sleep, if you can't sleep, you know that after a certain amount of time, they're just going to deteriorate, you know, sleeplessness, triggers. We say avoidance, do you mean... Avoidance.

So like, when I first got back to Canada, I avoided everybody that was Middle Eastern. At all costs, no matter how much of a difference it made in my day, if I had to not go somewhere from one of the greatest events of my life, I wouldn't know when. But isn't there some aspect that are combined with the triggers? Like, maybe it's wise to avoid triggers even like for your own personal health, wellbeing.

Well, that's it. It's for me, that was one of my triggers. So that you have triggers. So, and then you also deal with things like sounds and smells. You can tell, you can tell when someone's triggered. A lot of that's don't like fireworks. It's like, well, Kate, we'll remove yourself from the situation. So, there's other things within PTSD that kind of rear its head that with PTSD kind of attach other things. So like when I was diagnosed with PTSD, it was like four years later I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. And that was kind of a compilation of things that was just like a shit show there.

What is major depressive disorder? Good question. Is there an answer? I don't have one. I was told I had it. Okay, so I mean, what is your mind go through? Where are the places? That my mind goes. Your mind goes. Like the dark places when I get triggered and when it was like really bad? Yeah, yeah. So you thought about suicide.

Every minute of every day. What are the pros of suicide in your mind at that time? At that time, the pros were no one has to deal with this anymore. I don't have to feel this way anymore. I'm a burden to my family. I'm a burden to the military system. I'm weak. I'm a bad soldier.

I didn't do my job. I don't deserve to be alive. I don't deserve veterans affair support. I don't deserve my my parents don't deserve to watch me go through this. The guy I was dating didn't deserve to put up with the bullshit I put him through. The people who drive with me and cars didn't deserve to almost hit mediums because I swore because of a piece of garbage. People didn't deserve my racist outburst. People didn't deserve. People didn't, I did not deserve to be breathing anymore. I should have died there and I wish I died there. So self-hate there too. So that's not even a big deal though, right? So that's at the core of it. That's like this.

And so how do you escape from that place? How do you overcome that those that depression essentially at the core of the desire to kill yourself? What basic principles? I mean, we could talk about IWASCA, but basic principles of like literally like, how do you escape that moment? Yeah, previous to any of that, I did from 2009. I got out, so I was medically, I was 3B medical honorable discharge in 2011, May 23, 2011. So I left left the military then and so it's been 10 years Just over 10 years. Oh my god. It's 10 and a half years. I just realized I know

Happy anniversary. Thanks, man. Awesome So I've been out for 10 years and I would say the reason I didn't kill myself for the longest time was the individual I was dating That that was that was straight across the board, that was it. For me, there was no relief for about six years of the thought of just kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself. It's easier if you just do it. That voice was so strong for that long, there was really no relief. What there was, though, was implementation of different medications, realizing they weren't working, trying different things, getting myself to a point where I could

leave my house comfortably, comfortably, ish again, and I wasn't triggered, which then allowed me to travel, which then allowed me to slowly try to go back to school, which by the way, it was a very bad idea. That was a bad idea. That was bad. I went too early. They started practicing active shooter drills in our school. It was bad. My professor's understood.

School of School of Triggers, it turns out. It is when you live in Vancouver. There's a theme to this conversation, but your love for Canada. I look at me. I love my fucking country. I am one of the most patriotic people you will meet in it. I think Canada is one of the greatest fucking places

on the earth. I think in the past two years or three years, I have seen what I loved so deeply, so proudly preached about so. I'm so proud of what I did there. And I'm so proud of the country I got to represent Because I was good at my job Being being great at your job for a country you love you just don't like some of the politicians some of the time It's not even the politicians anymore. It's the state of the country

I'm a second class citizen in my own country right now. I can't travel to see my parents within my own country. I'm not allowed to step foot in my son's school. I am not allowed to go to a restaurant with my family. I'm not allowed to leave Canada without, I told you all the stuff I have to do to get here. It's even get home. I have to do the same. I'm watched by the RCMP. I'm neighbors rat you out. So for somebody who fought for their country, I hated it makes me so sad. To go through this process of what many considered to be power overreach by government in the

face of this particular pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. I always knew I had a hard time with like, I loved Canada. The day I got spit on when I got home was not ideal, but yeah, spit on. Yeah. But the thing was, I knew long enough that if I just put one foot in front of the other and kept going to treatment and kept doing what my doctor told me to do, that I could pull out of this if I tried. I was told that I could do anything in my life. It didn't matter. As long as I tried.

It was trying really hard. Trying was, trying was harder than breathing. It was exhausting. It was, I would be awake for like half a day and every minute of that day, I'd just stare at the wall and just want to kill myself. Yeah, that's what I've, people close to me who suffer from depression and it was like It's unclear how to escape, but it's clear that you need to try somehow something

And they didn't want to even try because you have no try in you. Yeah, you have no no I'm watching a person who has no energy essentially to like do any of it and it's like so hopeless But you have to try and I think some of that has to do with all the different physical feats you have to do. Like when you have nothing left, you still keep going. That same like weird drive when you're empty, you still keep going. I wanted to give up. I tried. I did. I'm really lucky because it really was the one person that I'd wake up to next in the everyday and he'd be like, hey, so that new drug you're on, fun fact, if you don't go to sleep right away, you talk. And when you talk, you just don't fucking stop. And you go off about everything that's horrible. And I'm like, what are you talking about? No, last night. Yeah, you

took that pill. Guess what? You just, you just, you didn't stop. I mean, I have no recollection. I get up in the middle of the night. I would cook food like on a stove. And it would be hopefully we don't die because I would have no recollection because of the drugs. The idea that when people say, well, just put yourself out of depression, I'm a highly motivated individual. The idea of lifting my head up to turn over was daunting. It's terrifying. So like for somebody as driven as you to completely lose all of that for moments of time, for stretches of time,

fuck the mind isn't motherfuckin. This is uh, it is. I can't, for somebody like, I can't, I can't, I'm so, I'm so grateful for people like you to be able to pull out of that. I've, I've been always the opposite. I've been very fortunate to just always find joy, meaning, and everything, even the stupidest shit. Can I ask you something? Yeah. Do you think that's because you, how are you raised where you came from? I don't need to do with that. No, no, it was my own person. I honestly think it's the biology, the this, because I had my parents, I'm very cognizant

and I've had nothing to do with that. They never understood this little engine I had. I always like just sitting looking at people and just enjoying how amazing they are and just like looking at, like I think it's straight up just biology, whatever the neurochemistry is. Like I'm just getting like a good drug. You're just getting hit.

Yeah, I'm getting hit all the time from stupid shit. And it doesn't, and yeah. So that's why I can be sometimes I'll talk like self-critically about myself because that's almost makes me It makes life more fun and challenges stuff. He makes you more productive But ultimately it's because I'm getting that like good. I'm getting the good stuff all the time I wonder about that I was thinking about that when I listen to you for the first time on I think when you're on Rogan for the first time water shouldn't do that

I was not water you you shouldn't trust. See, this is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians.

This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians.

This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing with the Russians. This is a thing no, that's the, the, like the more famous way that Russians usually assassinate, they put poison in the tea. Cause a lot of Russians drink tea and, you know, all right. Well, I mean, there is a blade right there.

So I thought somebody, um, Andrew Huberman gave that to me. He's also good. You, I don't know if you know him, but he's a cool. I don't know all the people you know. I'm new. Okay. I'm new. Okay.

I'm new here, Lex. You're gonna have to be a new teacher. I'll send instructions. Yeah, you're gonna have to send, what is my friend say? He says the next operator and he'll message me once in a while and ask me something and I'll answer back. If I answer in the correct way, he'll go candidate meets expectations.

Fuck you, I'm not a candidate of anything. Yeah. But yeah, it's essentially an... Well, Andrew Cuban is kind of a celebrity. Andrew, you should check her out. You're an interesting person. You guys should connect. He's a Stanford neuroscientist.

It was a, I think the number one podcast in the world in health. He's a, Is he even like a beard thing going? Yeah, I'm not looking. I'm not looking him down to it. Like does he have a beard beard thing going? Yeah, I'm not looking. I'm not looking him down to it. Like does he have a beard? I don't look at people's visual appearance, man.

People are shit. No, I don't, does he have a beard? I think he has a beard. Yeah, he has a beard. I think I know he's talking about. He's a very handsome gentleman. I think I know he's talking about because I think I was looking at his stuff this morning.

Yeah, exactly. No, it's seriously on Instagram. No, no, no, no, no, no. You probably know him. Yeah, that's what I mean looking at his stuff this morning. Yeah, exactly. No, it's seriously on Instagram. No, no, no, no. You probably know him. Yeah, that's what I mean, I don't know him. It's very, very humble, very intelligent. Yeah.

Probably you would understand, like, I'm very kind of poetic and so on. He's probably the most like rigorous reference machine of science. Like he's a legit scientist. Like he knows every paper and everything has to do with the mind and your science, like, yeah. He would be fascinating. Performance, yeah, yeah. He's much more, he's much more, actually,

and the focus is always on how to help, how that helps people to like protocols. Like, here's what you need to do to get better sleep. Yes, I know who he is. He cares like a thousand papers. And he just goes like, here's what you need to do to get better sleep. Yes, I know who it is. There's like a thousand papers. And he just goes like, hammer's nonstop. I'm like, jeez, he spent a week in Austin, he's coming back and spending a couple of weeks

in Austin, we just hang out. And it's like, you think that was like a teleprompter or something, like the way he does his podcast? Yeah, but like in person he's the same. I'm like, all right. This is in town, I like it. Anyway. Anyway, why did we bring him up?

I don't know. We brought up knives we were talking about. He gave it to me, that's right. PTSD. Yeah. And then you said what poison and how you're poisoning me. And I said knives, we're talking about Russians. And then we were kind of talking about the brain and PTSD.

And I think for most people though, the biggest thing when they see somebody who's struggling with PTSD, their first reaction is, how do I help them? Well, often just saying, hey, I'm here when you're ready to talk and you're going through something, whether you wanna talk about it right now or not, I'm here, and then keeping a close eye on behaviors. When you start to see somebody having, you know, four, five, six beers at night,

hmm, ask why? When you see somebody you can tell they're not sleeping. Hey buddy, you sleeping, I just'm not sleeping. Instead of just going, oh, that sucks. Hey, why aren't you sleeping? You have a nightmare? So are you, you just having insomnia? Are you just eating sugar before bed? Like, care enough about your people to just ask one follow-up question. Cause often that's really all it takes.

Cause then somebody goes, somebody cares enough to ask. And then they'll just, yeah, just showing that you care. It honestly, grocery store lineup. I'll say, oh, I like your dress. Oh, thank you. And then I'll go, how's your day going? They're like, actually, it's going all right. It's not as great as I thought it would be today,

but I'm doing okay, but like they'll give you instead of good you, instead of just giving you this fake false reaction. If you just show Any effort in somebody that you care at all about someone's well-being you'd be amazed Amazed and some of it's just energy the reason honestly I moved to Austin is some lady at a Walmart said You honey you look handsome in that suit But it like put the care that she put in that, she just looked at me. Yes. It wasn't like hitting at me or something. She was like, the lugs like just love.

Yeah, it was like, Oh, okay, I'm moving here, I guess. There was that so funny. You said that because I told my, I told my husband this happened and it was through me off. There was an older lady at a store and this was right after we, we got a brief period of no masks in Canada. Like just like a brief. Like five minutes? Oh yeah, it was not even that. And I, I had come from like an interview or something. So I actually had makeup on that day and I had my hat and I was, you know, just out of the grocery store.

She walked up to me and she got real close and I didn't know what was happening. And she got closer and then she just grabbed my arm like this. She goes, I love that hat on you. And I looked at her and I was like, she touched me during a pandemic and she's, oh, my God, I love you too. Thank you so much. I said, you're so amazing. I just, and I just sparked a conversation. Yeah. That's amazing. Doesn't take much. Yeah. At that little moment of genuine care, maybe you can tell me actually the, the journey you took with Iowaska. That's such a fascinating journey.

So letting your mind go to different places in order to rediscover itself. What is it like a rocket ship to somewhere else, so you can land in a better place? Here, how about I show you something? That'll help your brain, okay? Yes. This is not for you to lift up either and show on the camera, because there's leaves in it.

Like there's leaves in some pages. So just don't dump it out, because it'll go all fucking everywhere. Got it, got it. So. Structions, I like this. Yeah, I feel like you need them. Iowaska is a beautiful psychedelic

that we have been so blessed to have on this earth that we have so underutilized and could be, I don't say saving humanity, but just, you ever hear that saying, if you could just give everyone mushrooms one time, the world would be a better place. Okay. So, psilocybin is, I use for microdosing for depression. I did Ayahuasca in January of this year, and I've, at that point, that was the last time I was on a pharmaceutical drug.

I've been off everything ever since, 10 different ones. So if you backtrack a little bit, just so you'll understand, my doctor gave me the opportunity, Dr. Greg Passey. He is a veteran himself, served in Bosnia and Rwanda, his ametic, he's currently, I think Colonel Lieutenant, he's gonna watch me read the face for that. He's high up officer. He is one of my

saviors, he's like my old, I call him my old man, he's my favorite and rides a Harley like that kind of guy. Yeah and he said you know, Kels, this is, I just don't, I was hitting a wall, I wasn't getting any better and he said, you know, Kels, this is I just don't I was hitting a wall. I wasn't getting any better. And he goes, what how do you feel about cannabis? And I was like, I don't feel good about it because family histories or my parents always told me if I smoked weed, you know, it's just this, this perception. Because I just want you to try it. Just what would you be willing to try? So I was like, okay, so I was willing to try it. Then I started going to these groups called Women Grow

and learning about it. And then I realized, oh, I'm starting to sleep a little bit. I don't feel groggy in the morning. I don't feel like a bag of shit. And I also want to have a baby one day. And I can't have all this stuff in my system. So I started using cannabis, and then I started using it as a main medication.

And I'd been using it now since 2000, and 14 got married, 15, 16, 15, 2015. I started using it. And then I've been using it ever since. And that was the way I got off of all the pharmaceutical drugs. Was keeping cannabis the constant, finding the right strains for me, and then slowly with the doctor's advice and under supervision, going off of those medications. Cut to January of 2021, I had hit a really bad spell last year. And the

year before was a really big struggle. I almost lost my company last year due to COVID, just like many, many millions of people did. And instead of me just laying down and taking it, I pivoted really quickly and called a factory and said, you guys make masks? They're like, yeah, we're making masks. I was like, I'm going to call the Canadian government. I'm going to get my medical license and I'm going to try to sell them masks and see if we can do that. And so we did that.

And so we did 200,000 masks for Ontario hospitals, which ironically went to my entire community. I was born and raised in. So it was really weird. And that kept us afloat long enough. We lost 200 retail locations that I all single-handedly spent five years going like door to door getting myself. And we should say this is breast and unity, jewelry.

The jewelry and sunglasses company. And I started. Speaking of which, like put on the. Looks like a serious family. A seniority. I mean. Yeah, the jewelry and sunglasses company and I started making a witch Lex looks like a serious Community I mean you do look good in them. I won't lie. Thank you. Well, okay. We'll call them the Lex That's those are now called the Lex fuck the gun or the Lex. I like it the Lex. I'm jumping around here But just bear with me I I started my doctor suggested art therapy Dr. Passy did and that's really how the company started I bought beads and a pipe cutter and a hammer and a drill, and I fucked up our kitchen table,

and I taught myself at a plagiullary. Because my husband was like, you can do it, go for it. So I was like, okay, he says I can leave some means, so I guess I can do it. No idea what I'm doing. And then got to this point, where COVID hit and people lost companies, and we pivoted and we did what we could. And then I really started to go downhill psychologically. I've found purpose

again with this company. I found a way to help again. I found myself again. And then that was in danger of being gone again. So the company is 2015. Is it we started I started building jewelry in 2015 under like a and just it was called her wearables and it was really small and it was just I was just trying to make stuff. It wasn't supposed to be a company. And you were on a telemedication throughout the process. And my mom being the tenacious truck driver she is, she was driving her Kevin Hart's, what now to her.

And so she got, she just harassed them. It was like, you need to meet my daughter. Yeah. I saw the picture of you in Camarilla School. But he just gave me a good piece of advice. Hey, if you're gonna make this something, you can't really, if you want it to be for everyone, you can't call it her wearables.

I was like, cool. And then we drove home that night and then he tweeted it out to people. To 24 million people. This was before he was like, who is now? And that was a giant deal. And then my husband kind of looked at me and being, he's so fucking brilliant. He looked at me and goes, all right, yeah, we got to come up with a rename. Let me start thinking, let me start brainstorming, like, let's make, you want to make this real?

Let's make this real. And so we did. And he was like, what do you think about like we were doing like brass collective co brass this, but I just knew I want to brass in the name. And then he's like, what about brass and unity? You're trying to like unify people like why wouldn't you do that? I'm like, oh, what can I, of course, I'm up with it like everything else. That's a great name. Well, he's a brilliant person. It's annoying. Yeah. So the idea of losing this thing that we had just built and just got me kind of functioning with was devastating. So I got this opportunity given to me by Griff, Combat Flip Flops. Again, Brady, my husband was

like, Hey, you should get sponsors for your podcast. Hey, have you heard of this company Combat Flip Flops? Remember, we watched him on Shark Tank. And then I reached out, he emailed me back. He's like, yeah, we go together, like peanut butter and jelly or companies, that sounds great. And then I was like, hey, also, like, do you think one of your owners would want to come on the podcast? Just like toss and did out there, kind of like I did with you? And he was like, yeah, I'd love to come on.

And I was like, oh, yeah, great. And he came on the podcast and it went great. And then at the end of it, we stopped recording and he just kind of did this thing. He does this. Just like leans in real close, just looks into your soul and goes, what are you doing? And they're like, great.

He's like, hey, really good. I don't know. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Everything. Just this whole, just like water works happen. And he he goes listen, have you ever heard of ayahuasca? I was like, yeah, like in movies and like psychedelics in the 70s, you know, and he's like, no, no,

no, let's like have a talk. And he goes, I've got an opportunity for a spot. I'm going with this charity called Heroic Hearts. They have, they have spaces in the UK, Canada, and the United States. They're owned by an army ranger named Jesse Gould. They're really trying to help vets. And this is worked. Would you want to come?

And before I even got an invite, I was like, can I come? When do we go? And he's like, oh, it's in like three weeks. You can't be on any SSRIs. If you're on any, you're gonna have to ween off and not the time I was on my last one. And so I was like, I called my doctor and I was like, listen.

And he was like, what? And I was like, guess what I'm about to do. And he's like, I'm like gonna go do Iowa, Alaska. And he goes, he does the same, he just goes, all right, because he knows he's not gonna win. He knows I'll just fight him on it. That's just called the, like the, the Jocco reset.

Yeah, because he does the, pretty much, yeah, exactly. And he goes, I said, but here's the kicker. I have to go off of this medication. And he goes, well, you know, we're supposed to do that in the summer months when the depression's not like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go off of a proper light. But again, like, drop that within a week that stuff was, I was done taking it. And I was going through like the world's worst just withdrawals. It was like you were at a rock concert and your head was banging up and down but you were sitting perfectly still. It was horrible.

But you had like a thing to look forward to with the sidewalks. I had a light at the end of the tunnel and I knew if I got to the light was the worst that's gonna happen. Just get to the light But at that point like I again I had a son I had a husband had a great company. I have a great house. I have a nice car. I have everything Why did I want to die every minute of the day? I Was at that point again, and I'm like has got it, something's got to give. And so I went and I got there and she is the most intense, beautiful, divine, deity or entity or visualization, whatever you want to

deem ayahuasca as. Mama Ayah is real and she takes no prisoners. She shows you exactly what you need to see to to help yourself, but she does not discriminate against whether you're ready or not. If you've ingested it, she's coming for you. And she's going to be either gentle or she's going to beat your ass and sometimes that's what you need, but she does it in a way that is profound.

So what were some memorable profound moments for you? What are the places it took you? Is people, had you meet? For the first time, I got to be in a group of people who didn't judge me or question my service, they just respect me. That was number one. So that group I lost, I just found again. Um, big shocker. I was

the only woman there again. Ooh, seems to be the, the thing for me. And so I was surrounded by all these special operators, like these aren't like normal soldiers. Like these guys that I'm with are like, bronze star, fucking purple heart, just the coolest people. People I've always wanted to be like, that's my buddy. Now I can be like, those are my buddies. Like those motherfuckers will go to bat for me. They will bend over backwards.

They will x fill me out of anywhere. They will go to back for me. They will bend over backwards. They will exfill me out of anywhere. They will take a bullet for me. And these guys welcomed me in in a way I didn't expect. So that hit me weird right off the get. I was nervous and now I was just felt that home for a minute. And then when I stepped into ceremony, the first night, because you do, you do three nights. So we're like over like Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

The first night, I was so nervous and so anxious, because you go up in ceremony and your, the shamans come in and they, they cleanse themselves and then you, you get served the, um, I individually, you go up, they give it to you, you can take your time and pray, can do whatever you want then you drink it I was so just like I got back to my mat and I sat there and I was like trying to keep it in but I could feel that like Heat come from my toes all the way up and you're like your mouth starts to water I'm not going to throw up I'm gonna throw up and I looked over to Griff and I looked at Bishop and then I

the water went up and I looked over to Griff and I looked at Bishop and I was like, okay, and you can't talk or anything. So I like, my buddy, we call him the Viking, a soul Viking. He looks like a Viking, his head's tattooed, he's been on the show. He's so cool. He's sitting directly across like you and I, and he can see him, and he's looking at me, and I'm throwing up and... And I do it about three times,

and then the last time he just saw me, and I couldn't do it, and I threw it up. And so, I like to think that was her way of easing me in, so I didn't get like a full punch to the face, but I gotta to let me take your hand and show you what I'm going to show you. We're going to make you better. We're going to take the pain away. Aren't you supposed to eventually throw up no matter what? It's not supposed to. Some people don't. You purge. Yeah. If something's happening,

you're going through something. Yeah, you purge, but it doesn't have to happen. But this, I mean, within like the first 20 minutes, no. Okay. This takes like, you got to sit and meditate for or sit still, basically, and meditate in the pitch black for about 45 minutes before the effects, even before you even feel her. So it's very. So here she figured out the right dose you need. Well, because I did the same doses, everyone else, I think it was 20 miles, which doesn't seem like a lot.

But when you've never done all it is. So I felt like such a bitch. God, I felt like such a bitch. Okay, that was the thought going through your mind. Oh, you just fucked it all up. You ruined it. You ruined this again. You couldn't do this right? Yeah. And so at that point, we went through the meditation part and the shamans were, they literally sing for like six hours straight. So you said that you take it and then there's just what you're quietly listening to that.

Meditate and you wait and you wait. And you're in pitch black. Like, can't see this part in front of your face. Cool. And you have a little puke bucket. And then you have a little light that has a red filter on it. If you have to get up to go to the bathroom

to get out of the yard and you use that, so you don't turn lights on. And me, I brought like what? No, it's just a cool visual of just a puke bucket and a little light for the, like I can imagine these like little lights go never once in a while, and the rest is just in darkness meditating with this, with this singing.

It's, it's so beautiful. That's cool. I'll take you some time because trust me, you would, I, I wouldn't offer if it wasn't the group I would trust. Yeah, that's, in, you had a very interesting group. So it's the, the, the hero cards people. Yeah, hero cards. So they, yeah, this is my Jesse gave us all these journals. They're like, you're yeah, this is my, Jesse gave us all these journals.

They're like, you're gonna want these. So he gave us all these journals and now this is like my Bible, like my work, my everything goes in this with me everywhere. It's just this like silent reminder for me. And so hero cards does fantastic work. I'll get into them after. The thing with this group is

There's such care It's not like go do IA and like you're done. There's like integration coaches and there's like doctors and there's like people to make sure that You're doing the work because IA is just this is just the gate now you have to take it and you have to implement it into your life People don't do that though. Did you do integration? Did you do conversations with somebody? Did you talk to, like, is there a process to, because I've, uh, similar to Silasai, me, you mentioned, I, I've, as I understand, it's exceptionally beneficial for when you also do, like, talk therapy, like, you couple that with the integration in some form

where you talk through your experience and talk to different things. Like that seems to be a really, you know, I need to do that more with basically every substance I take. Like if I get what you have been every once in a while known to do a bit of vodka or whiskey or whatever, like do integration the next day.

Well, what did you learn? What did you get from that? What did you get? Because you learn get from that? What did you get? Because you learn a lot, but you sometimes kind of just move on and you celebrate that that happened, but like really kind of think through it. Write it down.

Yeah. It's important because that's what this was. So the first night, I'll give like a very, because it trust me, we could spend a whole podcast on both of the all three of those nights. But the first night,

the biggest thing that happened for me is I got to see my daughter, which was my first baby. And so people say, wow, you know, blah, blah, blah, fuck you. I was my daughter. And I'm very aware it was. I'm very conscious that it was. And at that point, she just eased me in enough to let me know and showed me enough that this wasn't it. This wasn't the end all be all where you are right now on this plane on this dimension in this life. This is this is a blip and it is it is so miniscule to the big picture. And so she really did that by she showed me just a black and then like a crack.

And then these vibrant colors that I can't describe because there aren't words. Alex Gray does really great art. And that has like been the closest thing I've been able to find colors. He's a famous guy who does ayahuasca. And he's an artist. I think he's got stuff in New York as well. And he's an artist. I think he's got stuff in New York as well. But she just eased me in and gave me some relief and showed me enough that I could go, I could wake up the next day and not want to die the next day. And so what Herok Hart said, because it gave us all these journals, they're like, you know, the next day you kind of wake up and you do a meeting, you do like a circle, all of us sit in a room and talk about what just happened the night before.

People are crying and people are quiet and you just listen and that's what you do. And then you write on your free time. So after that, it's like up to you what you wanna do. If you wanna just go walk in the woods, well I chose to go find a fence post and lie on it for an hour. I'm not kidding. I lied there and stared up at these two eagles that were just in like the middle. I'll tell you where we were after and you'll be like, oh, okay, I get it. And then I found

a forest and I just walked up with my book and I just lied them for hours. And then she all of a sudden started giving me what you call your downloads. So the stuff you learn, the stuff that you were all of a sudden you're remembering and these messages that come through. And that's what this is. What kind of things are we talking about? So my biggest thing that she tried to reiterate to me

at the beginning of that first night was that I don't breathe. I just, I don't, I don't breathe. I don't fucking breathe at all. I just, one thing to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing just to survive. I don't take a minute and breathe. And so she made, when I say she and I say it

because it's hard for people to understand, but I showed this to my husband. I showed it to my doctors and they're like, bitch, that's not you, you know, right? Like that, you don't talk like that. So like you can flip through it, but it was like, I'll just let Lex read for a second and just, I'll just do, here, let me me do I'll do an ad for heroic hearts heroic hearts

Here I'll get my papers while you read connect to her listen to her open to her. Do you mind if I read some of these you can read some of it. Yep. Go right ahead. The dark has lifted judge my spelling and I'll punch you read. You're right. Well, there's like, um, very sporadiki, sporadically written. It's okay to be still. It's okay to be quiet. This is good. Like the what and these are over a stretch of that was the first, the first couple of pages were from the first night.

This was just that weekend. I'm not just there laying looking at the Eagles. Yeah, with the pen just frantic as well. Like it's not like writing where you're like, oh, I'm just writing. It's like, I had to get it down or I was going to lose it. You are warrior. You are power.

You can choose now. Breathe now. Be now. Be present. Be warrior. Be strength. Breathe. Be the strength. You are the strength. There's some soul searching going on here. This is incredible. Yeah, we wait till you get through get in there I see she gets deep real aggressive like Cracked the door for I am the light The giver the taker I Am warrior I am life. I am air. I am water, I am fire, I am light. This will, this can, this will, this can, for I am warrior, for I am light.

And as a leaf here, what's the story with the leaf? I don't know, I was walking in every single time over those three days. Anytime I went for a walk by myself, I would just hear, like, take this, like just almost like as if a voice was standing there, and be like, you need this, take it, take it with you and keep it in your book. Keep it. Ground you. And it just goes off.

So this is from there. Yeah. It's cool to have, it's almost like time travel. I have poppies from France too when I did a, I did a 75th anniversary D-Day ride in France where we rode 600 kilometers on a road bikes for charity and we landed on the beaches of Juno on the 75th and we got to go by the poppy fields. And I'm like covered in poppies. And I have some in a book. I don't know why I do that.

I just, I do that. That's cool because like these are your thoughts and those are the physical items. Is it really helps transport to that place somehow? Let the light in, let her in. And she would show me these visuals. So my drawings are just like, yeah. Yeah, there's drawings here.

And you're seeing this stuff. Oh, yeah. I can't draw either. So that's why there's so I wish I could draw because if only I could translate what I could see visually on the paper And you're talking to her. Yeah, it's time. I'm here to listen Is this mama aya? Yeah, we call her mama aya mama aya Mama aya. See what see what who you seeing? Is this a woman?

So for me at first, it was just eyes floating in the sky. These unbelievably gorgeous, beautiful eyes that I, and I was like literally looking up at the top of the year and I kept going to myself. Anyone else saying this? There's eyes in the sky. May. Yeah. And so there's these eyes floating and they're just kept looking at me and I remember when

I kept telling myself like, no, don't worry, it was nothing there. Should get angry. I'm right here. Pay attention to me and I'd be like, okay, like forceful, like very forceful. So at first it was just the eyes. The second night, is I'm green, then when I say this. So. Great, that's gonna be my clip,

handsy on green. That's what I do when I get uncomfortable. I do weird hand gestures and movements. I don't know which is, I like it. Yeah, I do. Yeah. You would hate to be in my office because most of the day it's just, this weird lunges and uncomfortable moments. She turned me into a wolf. I know I said it out loud. I hear it. I said it. Yeah. Head to toe. And her takeaway for me was, I'm trying to be this pack leader. I'm trying to be this leader in my life. I'm trying to do these things, but I'm going about them the whole wrong way. So like when the shamans call you up to do their special prayer over you,

you go up, you don't touch them. They flashed their little light. You see the little light spot, you walked the light, you sit down on the light. And then my shaman, he's so funny because he's got this great tone in his voice. He goes, eh, how you doing, Kelsey? And I'm like,

so hi, yeah, I have a problem. I'm a wolf and I need it to stop. And he'd be like, don't you worry, girl, I got you. You ready? And I was like, aha, aha. And so I was sitting there across, like I've got my palms out like this. And I had a really traumatic shoulder injury.

So I don't just sit, slanted like this. My shoulders actually permanently detached and no one in the world will touch it or fix it. My collarbone comes out my back here. And I don't have any collarbone here. So nobody will fix it. No one will touch it or fix it. My color room comes out my back here. Nice. And I don't have any color room here. Okay. So nobody will fix it. No one will touch it. Even I've had specialists, I've had surgeries. No one will do anything with it. So I'm permanently down and forward. So I I slouch. Um, it's horrible. So before I functionally too, there's's nothing I can't do a pull up anymore. Oh Oh, you should I'll show you how to push up after you'll fucking throw up an embarrassment

Yeah, it's bad. So before I though chronic pain like had to drink a bottle of CBD every day Just did the pain is so bad because the trauma and it was so bad the surgery went wrong The color won't dissipateated and no longer exists. Like, there's just, and they're not sure how I lift things with it and do stuff with it. It's like overcompensation everywhere, like my back, like my, my, my scapula, like flares out where it's, I'm all messed up from it. And so I was in chronic pain. So he's praying over me. And all of a sudden, all I feel is this arm just start, just fucking vibrating. And my hair is really long. And I feel somebody grabbed the back of my ponytail

and snapped my head back like this. And it felt like something was coming out of my throat, like being pulled out of me. And the takeaway that I end up in the whole the rest of neither of them, a million other things, but the takeaway was, you no longer need to bite. You may only show your teeth. You can be the leader that you want to be.

You do not always have to be the traditional type of leader. You can be in the back of the pack. You have to be the traditional type of leader. You can be in the back of the pack. You have to watch the rest around you. Be mindful of those around you instead of just being upfront. Be behind as well. Make sure that every thing that you're doing is all being looked after. Because my thing was, I will rip your fucking head off if you just say the wrong thing to

me before. The whole thing was you can just show fucking head off if you just say the wrong thing to me before. The whole thing was you can just show your teeth and that is more than enough. Stop trying to be, stop trying to overcompensate. You don't need to do that any longer. And then I had this weird astral projection thing happen, like where I was in my house,

and there were these flyers all over my husband and my son. And like I went ham on them. I like shredded them to pieces. Like I was this protector and it's crazy because the guys told me after like someone would be like, there were flyers all over you the whole night. They were just all over you. And I'm like, I was snarling when I was sitting there.

Like the shaman had to be like, I need you to try to calm your breathing after I could, but before I was like attacking things beside me. That people could see and I could see, but couldn't wrap my brain around that they were real. Like it was weird. It was a crazy man. That's day two.

That's day two. That's day two. So what's the big takeaway there? My takeaway was I needed to be, I needed to stop trying to push everything too hard, stop trying to force everything. It's all going to come. It's all going to happen, but you are too aggressive. You are too, you're trying so hard

that you're missing everything else. God, that's just, it'll probably be a better human kind of thing. Right. This is getting intense. Yeah, I get aggressive. Yeah, I get aggressive. I mean, there's love and light still. It gets that. Love and light. Love and light the warrior within his calm.

She will test you daily. Show her respect. So that's what I mean, you've read my book. You know, I don't write like that. Yeah, this is strange. See? God, you get it. Yeah, this is strange. See? God, you get it. Because people don't understand when I say, I didn't, I don't feel like I wrote that. I feel like she gave me, like I re-read this all of the time. So I wonder, I mean, I'm not obviously, but this is somehow part of you.

I think it's a part of me, obviously. Reconnecting you somehow to that part. It's kind of is incredible to think it's a part of me, obviously, reconnect, reconnecting you somehow to that part. It's kind of is incredible to think of what are the things that are part of us that we haven't really explored, you know. And there's so many. We just get to connect to her, feel her flow through them, use them for the strength for each day and new challenge will present itself. Love, light, breathe. Sorry, too much hair. Never enough. I still have long hair. What about day three? So day three is the stuff I talked about on Jocco when I got taken over to the other side.

I almost missed that night too. I almost missed that ceremony. I got a false positive on my COVID test, and I got a call from the medical clinic that night. Being like, you need to come in. You got a false positive on your COVID test, and if you're gonna travel, you have to, we got to figure this out, you got to come do blood work, you got to come do, you know, whatever it is, you need to do if you want to get home,

but you got to do blood work, you got to come do, whatever it is you need to do if you want to get home, but you got to come do something. And so I didn't think I was going to be in ceremony. I had to leave. So I left and they waited. They waited for me. And so I think the biggest takeaway from all of this for me was this isn't it. This isn't everything. This isn't the end all be all.

You can fight through this. This is possible. It's gonna take work. It's gonna be fucking hard. It's worth it though. And if you just keep going in the right direction, everything that I wrote down, everything, every goal, it'll happen. What about love? What about love? Tell me about your husband. Okay. He's the best. What role did he play in your life?

The most pivotal role. He kept me alive and made me feel worthy enough to until I knew that I was worthy enough to be alive. Can you dissect that a little bit like what I mean what role does love play in the human condition? I think love is the only reason that we haven't destroyed ourselves. I mean we humans in general. Yes, I think there is a subset of people where love will always be, you know, love conquers all, you know, but that's not always the reality. The reality is life is messy and humans are messy and the way we choose to deal with things are messy and complicated and difficult, but at the root of all, good is love, I think.

And for me, I was fortunate enough to meet my husband through a friend, which you listened to that podcast, so I don't know that we need to, unless you really want to go into that story again, how I met my husband. Well, the only part of that story, I like, and people should just go listen to the Jockel podcast, how you made them uncomfortable, I love it. I, well okay, so how it works,

let me explain, in the super cross-and-motor cross industry is really small. The people who are professional, it's a small subset of people. It's kind of like Formula One, 21 cars, that's what there is, that's the amount of riders. And we should say, your husband is a motor cross guy my husband was a professional supercross a motor cross racer for his whole life and

he Raced for Kawasaki and Suzuki he lived in California and raced all down there and when I met him I met him at the tail end of his career and so I Went to Montreal with a friend of mine to see somebody that I was currently sleeping with who with a friend of mine to see somebody that I was currently sleeping with, who was a friend of mine, and end up meeting Brady instead. Yeah, and the funny moment in Jocco's brought that. It was with saying that I was fucking him instead of just sleeping with him.

And then Jocco's face exploded. And Jocco was like, oh, sleeping. So like he was, he was trying to get details of the sleeping quarters that you're, he was trying to get you to define as a good interviewer. Would Oh, sleeping.

Okay. And then you were like, it's fucking Jocco. Or something like that. That was great. It was something along those. But that's true because in that industry,

it's like we, it's small. We all share. Trust me, is what it is. And it was why I met him there and he had broken his wrist really, really bad. And I was, this was before I deployed. So I met him and I, we stayed in touch and just became friends

and just texted. That was it, nothing weird. And I was deploying though. So we disagreed, you know, would be friends. We weren't actually talking about anything romantically at all. And then I deployed and we got talking and to know each other a little more, a little more. And then we decided that we liked each other and we wanted to try to give it at least the semi shot. And so when I got home from Afghanistan, shot. And so when I got home from Afghanistan, I went and watched him race. His last, one of his last two races that he did professionally before he retired. Excuse me. And it was a Montreal

one was in Vegas. And I hadn't seen him. And he didn't really know me. We didn't really know each other. We met. I slept in the bed beside him because my girlfriend didn't want to get in trouble from her boyfriend from sleeping beside a random dude. And then, yeah, we just, we started dating and he really slowly became my rock and he understands trauma. He had some stuff happen in his life and his family that he went through a lot of therapy, he went through a lot of shit.

He went, he saw what traumatic situations can do to a family and to people and those that are suffering with it. And so he was well equipped to handle me, thankfully. And it got to a point where we were doing the long distance back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth. And I finally got the call that I was going to be released from the military. And it got to a point where we were doing the long distance back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth. And I finally got the call that I was going to be released from the military. And I wanted to live near him, but I couldn't afford to live in British Columbia because I was from Ontario and BC's like, it means bring cash for a reason. I'm like, don't know why I can live there.

And then his family was like, come live with us. They had a big enough house. Trust me, it was fine. So I was like, okay. And so I went from like dating this guy long distance to over, you know, from 2009 to 2011, just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then finally his parents were like, shit or get off the pot here with her. Like, come on. You know, it's obvious she loves you. And I would never say it. That word just as a love, like it was just like,

I couldn't- You guys didn't say, for a long time. For a long time. I wish I'd think. Cause I was dead inside. I didn't know what that meant. Because I couldn't feel.

I didn't feel anything. He loved it. Because he like, we go do something. You would never complain about anything. You wouldn't say a fucking word. You would just sit there. And now you got all your feelings back and your emotions back and now you're too hot and you're too calm.

And anyway, so yeah, you loved it. I was numb and dead inside. Seriously, when I call them back. But you were still able to have fun together, that kind of thing. Like when you say there's no emotion, there's more emotion around the basics of like everyday life But you're still able to just like enjoy shit together or I was enjoying stuff, but I wasn't

Feeling yeah, I was like this is fun. Yeah Right that was it With surface level like Lex this is fun Nothing there. Yeah, no. It was nothing there. No, there's nothing there. Hey, yeah, nothing. And so we went through that for a long time. And then I lived with his parents.

And we lived there. And that was, you know, God, damn it, his family was so good to me because I was a nightmare. I was a nightmare. Couldn't cook certain food around me anymore. Couldn't go certain places with me anymore. Couldn't, you know, crowds were in hard-knows. We didn't do Canada today.

And like, I just changed, I moved in and was like, shit's got to change. If you guys don't want me to kill everyone, like, and they were willing and they were accepting and they were amazing about it. And then we finally said, okay, well, like, does this, was this, we're good? We're like, I used to say like, I, I, L you, like, I couldn't say love. It freaked me out for a long time. And then I finally said it, and then that shit had said it like a month later.

And I was like, that's not fair. You should have said it the same exact time. I wanted the response. And he goes to treatment with me. He, whatever I need, he knows that like, he has more for like him than like, how do I handle her? Yeah. And then we moved out, we bought a house,

and then he took a sweet ass time, we were dating for four years before we were engaged, because just to be sure the crazy was too crazy, he waited four years on that. Smart man. Right? Yeah, you can. Or you could say he's just a terrified of commitment, but both. A little bit of both.

Hey, when you were the guy on the posters that all the girls sign up to that send all the dirty pictures, fucking why are you giving that off? It's easy. Yeah. Commitment is a real commitment then. Yeah. Okay. This is the Jacobean set.

We talked about brass and unity a little bit. What's the long-term mission goal and dream of your company and the podcast of the same name? So for me, what I've been trying to do with this company is create a community that can really work together to not only help Vets first responders, but to really bridge the gap with this feeling population and letting them know what we kind of go through and why it is such an epidemic and why there is over 22 suicides a day and we are losing people like it's going out of style, like the amount of Vets that are questioning

the last 20 years of their life right now is terrifying. The, you know, I work with organizations that are doing this outreach and they're overloaded right now like they have never seen before because this whole thing is just it's hit head here. And so what brass in unity tries to do is it is really just a vehicle to get the money in the hands of the people that are doing the work with it. I couldn't start a nonprofit because I'm not good at fundraising. I'm not good at being like, give me your money, I'm going to do this with it. I couldn't start a nonprofit because I'm not good at fundraising. I'm not good at being like, give me your money. I'm going to do this with it. The least I could do was come up with a product that I know I could give to people or people could purchase. And if I gave pretty much all of the pro like the actual profit from it to those organizations

and I give them something to wear that is a touch piece or if they're out and somebody sees a bullet on the wrist and go, hey, what is that? It's a conversation starter. And that's exactly what it's been. And it's done its job as that. And so we, like I said, we are a way to get the vehicle, we're the vehicle, we're the money in the hands of the people. People don't always want to just get a tax receipt.

It's great to donate to something. great on you to do that. But most people have a selfish aspect, right? And that's okay. But if you can tap into that, you can then fund these charities properly and give them the tools to do their jobs effectively. Up until this point, they just count on people's goodness of their hearts. Hey, to break it to you. Humanity's rough right now. We need to look at something a little differently. So these to break it to humanity's rough right now. We need to look at something a little differently. So these things spark like a Julie's sparks conversations and then do you work with charities? Yes. Oh, God, yeah. That's what I do. So my whole mission

every day is I get up, I push jewelry and sunglasses on people and say, but now that you're going to wear that, now you're a part of the being you are me. Now you're a part of this community. Speaking of which, let me put it right back on. Branded. This is organic product placement. Yeah, this isn't like marketing at all. Nothing weird about this at all. And so we work with a lot of organizations and I'm very particular about where we send

our money because there are, it feels like thousands of vet organizations right now. And if we were able to consolidate, it would be more ideal. I spoke about that on another show, but that's not currently happening. So I try to work with the nonprofits. I know number one are not paying six figure salaries,

which trust me, there's lots, a lot. Number two, I look at the actual resources that they're providing. And if they're going to be something that are going to be useful in my opinion, whether or not they're actually useful and I just don't think they important because I get caught up in things and I think it's important to acknowledge. So number one, heroic, heroic hearts. We just started working to talk about them and really make them known, but we're going to be donating to them as well. Are they doing more stuff than the IWASC?

Yeah. So their points are I got Jesse to actually, I'm like, what are your talking points? Because I need people to know exactly what you do. Yeah. So their points are I got Jesse to actually, I'm like, what are your talking points? Because I need people to know exactly what you do. Right. So veterans have had to take their mental and general health into their own hands due to the failure of the government system. So that is why they were created. But heroic heart is a peer-supported mental health network involving full preparation, integration coaching and connection to vetted psychedelic treatments. So they don't just do I. They deal with with psilocybin, ketamine, IBegaine, but they've got protocols in place.

They've got locations you go to that are safely vetted, and they work. They've got over right now, and Jesse said they have 800 veterans on a waiting list for treatment. That's just before the spike of the end of this war. They have over a hundred, they've helped over a hundred veterans, including dozens of special operation vets,

find effective care. They've now got branches in the US, UK and Canada. And the biggest thing about them and why we talk about them is because the problem of psychedelics and the stigma around it is so significant, but because of great universities that are now stepping up and doing the research behind it,

it is being legitimized. So like they're doing that in Canada, there's a group called TheraSill. They are currently fighting the government to get the rights for Canadians under section 56 of our laws to get compassionate care for psilocybin use. I've done a panel with them on that really great piece of Victoria really smart people.

One of the other bigger charities that we work with and they're honestly, they were my first and foremost charity that I ever worked with and they're a big component in the veteran community in Canada. They're called Honor House and Honor House was started by honorary colonel Aldi Genova. It was started because of a guy named Trevor Green. He was a Canadian soldier who deployed and he was so a Captain Trevor Green, sorry Trevor, Captain Trevor Green.

He got an axe in the middle of his head. A Taliban member came up and put an axe directly into his head when his helmet was off and he survived. He's done work with Invictus Games in Prince Harry. He has an exoskeleton. He uses on the island. He's so cool. He hasn't changed one bit from like the infantry captain. You expect him to be. And it was all saw there was a need for vets and first responders to get treatment

because there's no real home away from home for people. Picture Ronald McDonald for cancer and families. This is Vets and First Responders. And so, they're a whole thing, and I'll read it so I say it exactly right, because I used to be on the board of their charity, but I ran out of time, so now I just consult. But they are a home away from home for members

of the Canadian Armed Forces, veterans and First Responders, and their families to stay completely free of charge while they're receiving medical care and treatment in the Vancouver area. But since then, they've expanded, since I've come on board, and they've opened on a ranch, which is up in Ashcroft BC, and it's 140 acres, 10 cabins, and a main cabin, they do equine therapy,

and they're more focused on operational stress injury clinics. So, it's a operational stress injury within the veteran community. And they have specialists that do that. They have their own bracelet with us. So every time you buy an on-er-house bracelet, all the proceeds go to them. Yeah, and it's actually the green one. So that one, so when you buy one of those on-er-house bracelets, they have those, they go directly to them,

which is really amazing. They've been near and dear to my heart for a long time. You've got the All Secure Foundation, which is these guys are super dope. I'm gonna read exactly, because Jen text me. So Jen and Tom satirely, I've had them both on the podcast. Tom was involved in black Hawk Down.

Tom is a Delta, Have you heard of them? Back with no of no. No, no. So okay, so Tom was involved in black Hawk Down. It was one of his first operations. He's a Delta operator. And I asked her, I said, listen, I'm going to be doing these shows. And I think it's great that we talk about you more. So I said, give me your three points of importance.

So the All Secure Foundation serves special operations combat families and healing from post-traumatic stress injury and secondary post-traumatic stress. So that's often with the wife or the other husband or the other spouse suffers from. And we're starting to see that be more and more of an issue now. So they also are devoted to rebuilding the couple's relationships on the home front after the separations of war, and 80% of their warriors went on, went, yeah, 80% of their warriors want their families to be more involved in the healing. The problem is, is very often, vets don't realize that they can have,

or just because the system doesn't pay for it, actually have their spouse as a part of things. And the biggest thing that we find with special operations families, I think the divorce rates like 95%. And so they worked so hard with these families, they take them on retreats, these husband and wives, and they get them to connect again after being separated over such a long period of time. There's other places like children's of fallen patriots at a DC where they fund education, um, university for people who have lost their parents, deployments, whether the kids even born yet. It's still in you to roll those still pay.

They do not care. Then you've got people like in Canada, you've got Vets Canada, you've got in the States, you've got true patriot love, you've got who else in the States is really great that we've worked with. I know there's a Greenbury Foundation, that's great. One more wave gives amputees, teaches them to surf

with amputees, like they're really great. There's so many organizations, but at the end of the day, I focus on a small subset because you cannot fix everyone's problems. The least you can do for people is focus. If you can provide focus, you can provide the proper amount of funding, proper amount of funding can get the proper amount of tools. Those tools can actually be implemented properly. And then those people can go on to hopefully have successful marriages and families.

And we don't have to watch our parents drink themselves the death and wonder why daddy's yelling at mommy all the time and daddy storms out leaves. Well, daddy had some shit happen in his life and mommy had some shit happen but that does not mean that's who they are. And yeah so trauma has completely destructive effects on family and relationships and like correcting that as like ripple effects.

Oh yeah. Astronomical ripple effects because the problem is we are so quick to tell people they're suffering from PTSD. We're so quick to give them drugs. We're so quick to kick them out of the military. We're so quick to let them be homeless on the street. We're so quick to let them fucking kill themselves. We're so quick. And then all of a sudden when a politician goes better and suicides an issue, that's when it's a problem. Well, if you prevent the problem from happening in the first place, or you give people the right funding and tools to do the job, you won't have this problem.

Do you have advice for young people? Think high school students, maybe undergrad, college students about career life? How do I live a life that can be proud of. You've had one heck of a life. And some of them are really cheesy, but they're true. Live a life you can be proud of. Number one, if you wake up every morning and you hate what you do, change the fucking station. Do not live and stay in that perpetual cycle of bullshit. It's not worth it. It's not, it's not what you're on this planet for. You're worth more than that.

Then the monotony of waking up, going to work, hating your life, drinking yourself to sleep, and functioning. Do yourself a favor. The thing I scream about on the show so much is move your fucking body, move your body, get your blood moving, allow your body to do what it's here for. Go for a run, go for a walk. If you can't run, walk to the fridge three times more than maybe you did before, but you're moving. Pay attention to the shit you look at. More now than ever we are seeing our younger generation just be force fed information from one side or the other and none of it makes sense. None of it's understandable.

It just causes chaos in the brain. Really pay attention to what you listen to. Something I've had to learn to do is make time for myself. All of this working 18 hours a day, not sleeping, just work, work, work, that doesn't work. That's not sustainable. It's not healthy and it's not, it's not anything anyone should be doing. Balance is important. But if you're going to take the time to do something for yourself, don't make it sitting in front of the TV for six hours eating a bag of chips, drinking a Coke. Make it, I'm going to go for a walk, maybe listen to a podcast where I can learn something.

Make it, I'm going to go volunteer somewhere, nobody does that anymore, but make it, I can go volunteer somewhere on our house. They have no paid employees, they have one. Everybody is a volunteer. They're fucking phenomenal. Just do whatever you're going to do. Do it with some fucking drive, put some goddamn effort into your life, and pick something in a career that's going to make you happy.

Not something that's just going to give you six figures because that's not going to make you happy. I can tell you right now, I have everything in the world. And the last thing I want is more things. I want less, I want the woods, and I want quiet, because that's what's important to me. I want my family to matter, the people around me to matter, and the small group I keep that tight knit I have.

I want them to wake up every minute knowing that they have a friend that they can call on the other line, that isn't just like, how's it going that can actually have a conversation, a meaningful, intelligent, caring conversation. We are just breeding these kids to be followers who digest bullshit, who reverberate things they don't fully understand and have opinions on stuff they have no business talking about Yeah, uh with an open mind humbly think deeply about the world How is your relationship with death? Changed this is a Russian program. I have to ask you so you've considered suicide throughout your life You have been in the line of fire,

you have witnessed death. You as a human being, immortal one, do you think about your death these days? Now that you have begun the journey with dealing with your trauma, do you think about your death? Are you afraid of your death? Well, you don't die, so that's why. What do you mean you don't die? You move on. Where do you go? To another plane and another vibration and another whatever you want to call it. This isn't it. This isn't all of it. This is a blip. This is a moment. This is a, and all of it. This is a blip. This is a moment. This is a, I used to be afraid of death

before the military. I was always afraid of dying. I don't know why. I had this irrational fear that I was gonna be kidnapped in my room, like seriously, like irrational fear, like afraid. And it's funny, because I talked to Michaela yesterday and she said the same thing and I was like,

oh my God, I know what you're talking about. Being afraid of being kidnapped. Yeah, she had this like fear that someone was gonna come in and take her out of her room. I had the same fear. By a human being or a master or some kind. No, I think like by a human being. And I had this irrational fear that I was,

that's like something was gonna happen to me. And like I said, I don't know if it's because like my parents were always made me aware of my surroundings. Like people take people. This is a real thing that happens. Yeah, I was really small So and I looked like a little boy my hair was like that when I was training I had short no hair. I know flat as a board. You would have thought I was a 12 year old boy And so my mom's like people take people sweetie. That's just the reality of life

You need to be aware. So I don't know if I had this ingrained in my mind I was always like training to protect myself or fight someone off. So I was like, a freed of like this irrational thing. And then I went overseas. And then I realized that I could just be literally there talking, you having a conversation, and I could just be taken off the face there. And there's nothing I can do about it. And then I adapted this idea that when it's my time, it'll be my time, but the difference is now,

at least I know that if I do go and I do cross and I am and I do move on, I know that I live my life the way that I I always hoped I would be proud to live Can I ask you a dark question because we you mentioned robbing Williams you mentioned Anthony Bardain and your own struggles suicide Why do you think they Ultimately lost the bad that battle Why do you think they did there a lot? Man, that's a lot of question because you could look at everything from bio markers in

the brain to know if there's serotonin and dopamine levels were crashed in the ground. There's biological reasonings for some people where they're born bipolar and they have or they're schizophrenic. There's so many things we don't fully grasp about the brain, but what we do know from my perspective, for me at least, there really is no rhyme or reason why I survived and others didn't.

Stuff and things don't make you happy. People don't always know why they're feeling the way they're feeling, but they also are not always willing to talk about it or be, they put on a good front. And if nobody knows any different, what do you expect? And it's especially clear with the two of them that on the surface, they're, you know, exceptionally successful and so many dimensions. Right. And still that means nothing.

Material possessions, anything really is not, doesn't guarantee you happiness. No, it doesn't. Well, that's terrifying. But when it's good, that's what makes it joyful. Like that's what happiness is. It's like holy shit somehow, I miss all the absurdity, all the things that you can't predict, you never the last feel really good.

That's why I feel really fortunate to be getting that this feed of happiness all the time. Well, to be or not to be, that's a good place to end it. Kelsey, you're an amazing human being. I'm really fortunate that you would spend your valuable time with me. I, as I said, you're so good at not just talking, but listening. So I definitely will listen to your podcast because I can tell you an incredible person as an interviewer and as a storyteller. So again, thank you for talking today.

Thank you so much, Beth. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kelsey Sharon. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Herbert Hoover. Older men declare war, but it is the youth that must fight and die. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you