A Warrior's Path to Overcoming PTSD | with Kelsi Sheren

Michael: Kelsi Sheren, welcome to the podcast. How are you, my friend?

Kelsi: I'm so wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Michael: It's an honor. I'm excited too. We met through David Meltzer, who's a mutual acquaintance of ours on the show that he and I host called office hours. I was. Blown away by how extraordinary both your journey is and your mission and I knew that having you on the show would be really a proclamation towards giving people permission to go down their own path And one of the biggest things for me in this is podcast years and years of doing this is always wanting to pick the minds of the greatest people in my opinion, who have really figured out this, not only self awareness, but mindset and mental health game. And so I would certainly throw you in that category.

Kelsi: Wow. That's an honor.

Michael: To start off, my first question for you is if you were to define your childhood in one word, what would that be?

Kelsi: Chaotic.

Michael: Tell me about that.

Kelsi: I had an awesome childhood. But it was a little bit chaotic. My parents are long haul truck drivers. And at the time, my mom was a stay at home mom, which was amazing. But my dad would go away, week, two, sometimes three at the max at a time. And so my mother raised my brother and I pretty much alone when my dad wasn't there. And, my mom had me at 21. I was that they got married and then surprise, immediately pregnant, that kind of vibe. And, I come from an interesting family. My dad's side, I think it's seven brothers and sisters. He's the baby of them all. No running water till he was 12, farm life, hard life. And then I came from my mom's side, which was the Hungarian side, which is my grandfather left when the Soviets invaded after World War II and fled to Canada with, I think, 11 people and only a few made it. And he barely spoke. great English and wouldn't teach us Hungarian, wouldn't go back and wouldn't talk to us about it. So he was definitely damaged from the war and from the experiences within that. And he was really aggressive towards my mom's brother and he took the brunt of the weight of that. But my mom grew up in that environment and she, like my parents did the best they could, but their communication style was a lot of yelling. And so for me, that's where the chaos became. Part, I didn't love it. I didn't understand why I didn't love it. It was just their form of communication. It wasn't intentionally harmful, but it was just chaotic in that sense that we were always going from sport to sport, and if it was for me, or if it was for my brother, but it was always my mom. Just, she was always there. She was always home after school. I had the best childhood in that sense, but it was just It felt a little chaotic at times, and then ultimately, when I was 12, I was training at a national and international level in Taekwondo, and I was a second-degree black belt. And my coach, who had coached me since I'd been four years old, decided that he was going to start a relationship with my 14-year-old training partner for two years. And then we found out what was going on, and he ended up going to prison for sexual assault. So I lost my support network. I lost the person I trusted in that sense and basically the career path I wanted to go down. So that's really where the chaos started to come in.

Michael: Yeah. Reasonable.

Kelsi: Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: And I think childhood for a lot of people is very chaotic. But. Having some support systems, there's interesting research that points to this idea that even if there's just one support mechanism in a space of chaos, most people will go on in their lives to do great things. Now, obviously you mentioned you lost that support system. You lost the things, but were there people in your life that were supporting you to move towards your dreams and support what you were trying to do in your life?

Kelsi: Oh yeah. My mom believed I could do whatever I wanted to do. And we cut the word can't out of the dictionary. It doesn't exist, it's not a real thing. And it wasn't that there wasn't support. There was 100 percent support. But the problem was the thing that became my identity from a very young age. And the man that I trusted. And the person I idolized. And the community that was within that was ripped away, very quickly, I lost a lot of trust. And I was able to, I've actually been able to trace back You know, where a lot of the anger and all of that when I went through the early adolescence really where it stemmed from and it was from that because ultimately I wanted to be a Olympic fighter, that's it, that's all I trained twice a day. I was training other people. That's all I cared about. Nothing else mattered. So, at that time when it became apparent that was not going to be able to be happening, especially with the coach that I had. Yeah. I tried to go to other clubs. I tried to get other to train with other people and I just couldn't, I was so angry. I just couldn't move past it. But I was at an age where I didn't understand. I couldn't understand. And when it happened, it was very sudden, incredibly sudden. And I just remember there's, I have this like really vivid memory. I, my elementary school was near my club and I would walk after school to Tim Hortons and I would grab a bagel with cream cheese and then I would walk over to the club and I walked in before everyone else was there. And my coach, the husband and wife, one was a world champion, and then he was also very high level. That had been literally my family since I'd been four. I just sat down in the waiting room, and I could see them through the glass. And I watched her grab all the skipping ropes and just throw them and start screaming at the top of her lungs. I had no idea what I was witnessing, but really what it was She found out. She found out that he was in his late 30s and sleeping with a 14 year old for two years. And people say to me all the time it didn't happen to you, so why does it affect you so much?

Michael: How could it not?

Kelsi: I feel that way now. I'm like, how could it not? And I lived with them for periods of time because my parents lived like 45 minutes away. So I would go and train. I'd stay there for the week. They would take me to school and they would pick me up from school and we would train and then we would train again. And so I remember that, for a while. But looking back now, I'm like, Oh my God. God, what a catalyst point in my life. I had no clue the damage that it did to me. I had no inclination at all that it affected who I was and the anger level that I had. It genuinely stunted my ability to continue training. I stopped fighting until I was 18.

Michael: Yeah, it's interesting how that indirect chaos can directly impact you.  And I saw that in my own journey growing up and there were things that would happen that had nothing really to do with me at all that shaped who I've become today. And what's so interesting about that is that We don't have that conversation openly enough about how it's that's the human experience, right? Even though it's third party, you're still bearing witness to the thing that is in front of you. And that thing could be a multitude of different things. You hear about the most tragic events happening to other people and then paralyzing the people who happen to be a part of that forever. And it's really hard to move through that. And I think anger is a, topic of conversation that comes up quite frequently on this show. And it's one of those emotions that will both propel you and also destroy everything around you simultaneously. Which I've come to learn a couple of times over now and probably heading towards my third midlife crisis, and I think that a big part of recognizing that is impossible as a kid, you're mad.

Kelsi: I was just so angry. I would just cry and scream and kick things. And I was resentful because my mom said I couldn't go anymore.

Michael: Which is reasonable.

Kelsi: But she didn't under, no one. My mom really wanted to protect me because look, there was this thing that happened. I was fighting in the nationals and it was actually in British Columbia where I live now, which is ironic. And we flew out with my coach. And at the time there was some talk about something was going on, but no one was addressing it. And I remember my mom and I stayed in our room, and my coach stayed in our room as well. And it was all good and well. And then he disappeared that night. And then my mom left the room and found them together.

Michael: Oh shit.

Kelsi: Yeah. And so after that my mom's you're never going ever going to be around that person again. And I couldn't understand, I didn't understand what she meant and why she just said he had done a bad thing. And she was genuinely trying to do her best to protect me from whatever that was. And when I look back now, and I think about I'm going to be 35 this year, and I had my son at 27. So, my mom had me at 21. And I get that's not, to that's not early, early for some people, but It felt like it, I understand now. I'm a mother now. I was a mother in my twenties. I understand now. So I give her a lot of grace. She was genuinely just trying to protect me. She just didn't know what to do with us. She didn't know what to do. She was betrayed. She was heartbroken. She was devastated. It's like when I see my son devastated now, I'm like, Oh my God, mom, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ironically, we actually had a conversation on my flight out to this trip. And I don't even know how we got into it, but she's you're, you didn't grow up that bad. And I said, no, I didn't, but it was really emotionally hard. And then it was the I'm sorry I, and so what I realized is that it, it wasn't a, it wasn't her job to, it was her job to protect me, but it's not her, she doesn't have to take the brunt of it. I can forgive her. I can understand now. If I didn't have children, I wouldn't understand, but I understand now so I can have empathy for that and compassion for that. Whereas before I just was so mad at her.

Michael: Yeah.

Kelsi: Just devastated.

Michael: Yeah. And like, how could you not be? I have a very similar experience. I, for one semester of school, I did really well in all of my semesters of school. And I got an offer to go to one of the Jesuit high schools in the city, which was like, the best football program, the best wrestling program. One of my best friends was there and my mom like refused to sign like the paperwork to let me go there. What I didn't know in the moment, but I come to find out later having conversation with my friend a couple of years down the road. That school was a private school that was like 6,500 a semester.

Kelsi: Oh my goodness.

Michael: And we were poor. We were homeless for most of my childhood. We didn't have 6,500. But instead of my mom just explaining that to me it was

Kelsi: Just was no. We didn't talk about it.

Michael: It was just no. And so I'm curious from a mom's perspective, and I am not one, so I don't know. That's all right. But do you, how do you explain hard things to your kids now?

Kelsi: Radically different.

Michael: What does that mean?

Kelsi: So, we don't yell in our home first and foremost, we don't yell we talk If we get frustrated and we raise our voice Jack will immediately say hey, it's too loud okay. I'm sorry, buddy. Mommy got a little too loud there it's never at him We my husband and I could just be in another room and we could just be we're both very passionate people We could just be talking about something positive but because the tone is too high He doesn't like it. I'm like, okay, cool. I hear you, I see you. All good, bud. The way that we talk and the way that we work through things as I always get down to his level, mainly he's getting taller, so it's getting much easier for me. And I always look him in the eye always to make sure he knows that I'm a hundred percent hearing him and I'm a hundred percent focused. And when we talk about hard things, we talk from an emotional space. So for example, he was getting bullied at school for a little bit in kindergarten, grade one. And now I'm not talking about kids pushing. I'm talking about there was, the police got involved. There was violence. A child, a five year old child tried to cut another one of the children's throat with a key he took out of a shoe. Okay. That was a hard one for me. And we ended up having to call child services because we found out that child was a latchkey baby and he was being dropped off at the school at 5 a. m. by himself. His mom didn't speak English. There was from China. So, we get down to his level and we have this conversation like, look buddy, there's going to be a hard things that happen in life, but how did it make you feel when all that was happening? Does it hurt in here? Does it hurt in here or does it hurt up here? He goes, it hurts here. Okay. All right. If it hurts here, let's talk about it. How does that affect you during the day? Does it make you feel sad? Do you miss mommy? Does it make you want to go crazy and run around? Or does it make you want to go sit down and be quiet? And he would go, too much, because we would always say, don't hit him back, be kind, tell the teacher. Then it got to a point where he would tell the teacher, but then the teacher wouldn't do anything about it. So then we changed the conversation. If somebody hurts you, what do you do? And he goes, I'll tell the teacher. And I said, and then what? hurts me again, I hurt them back. And we're very honest with him about that. You protect your body autonomy. That's all you. Yeah. You have every right to protect yourself, son. The school does not like that conversation. They actually told him to hold his hand out like this and scream.

Michael: Yeah. That doesn't work.

Kelsi: Obviously.

Michael: Yeah. That's first off. That's nonsensical. I grew up. I've been literally hundreds of fights in my life and I've traveled the world practicing Muay Thai for well over a decade. And my rule is I don't ever start fights, but I always finish.

Kelsi: Exactly.

Michael: And that's I, we're going to get emails. I already know. I don't care. So if you want to email me, just save your energy, please. Because here's the thing I'm going to say. If we continue to. usher in a society of weak humans, we're going to continue to have a weak society. And that's really a difficult conversation, because I sit here on this side of the microphone being the mental health guy. And I am, and I'm a huge proponent of leading with love, but I'm also a huge proponent of leading with courage. And I don't think that you can be courageous if you're cowering in a corner.

Kelsi: It's not gonna benefit you, it's gonna do long term damage, and it's gonna make you feel like that you have no body autonomy and that you have no right to protect yourself. I think every single human being on the face of the Earth has the right to protect themselves if they feel threatened. Now. I've always had the same conversation even with my parents, which was you never hit first and you don't start it. But like my father said, if they're going to start it, you finish it. You don't let them get back up and come back at you. You make sure that when you do it, it's done.

Michael: What's, I know that a lot of women with children listen to this show and a lot of fathers with children. And I'm just curious, like, how do you, That must be a very combative conversation to have with authorities in that capacity. And I would imagine a lot of people might look at your background and go you're just that violent fighter person. But I look at it and I think to myself, yes, that's true. And I want to make sure that people are protecting themselves. And I think that it's a moral imperative and responsibility because mom's not always going to be there.

Kelsi: And that's the other thing we teach him, right? He is a self starter. He's a leader. He's the leader among sheep in his school, and he says it to his teacher. Don't teach me like I'm a sheep. I'm not. Tell me why. When I ask a question, don't just say, sit down, tell me why.

Michael: Yeah, I was that kid, that, that kid, the teacher hates that kid.

Kelsi: By the way, my teacher, Jack's my son's teachers right now are obsessed with him.

Michael: That's amazing. My teachers hate me because they'd be like, this boy will not stop asking us why.

Kelsi: You know what? That right there. is should be cultivated and to be uplifted and to be seen as such an asset. And that's how he's being perceived in his school system right now. That's because he said two very, grade one was really good. Grade two has been really good. Kindergarten, not so much. That was because they just were refusing to act. But what I will say about what you just mentioned about mothers and fathers listening and all of this. Let me put an example to you. Right now, you're having a ton of children at school who are. literally being bullied to death. They're being beaten. They're not being just like words. They're being beaten to death.

Michael: It's just happened again, like a week ago.

Kelsi: Exactly. They're being murdered by other children who were told that it's their right because the whole world is about them. And what goes on around them doesn't matter. And how they make others feel doesn't matter. My son. Sure, he has his moments, but he will never lay a hand on a child unless he feels threatened or is being hit. And he warrants everyone. He gives everyone the right. And I will never stop him from doing that because my child, I'll be damned if my child gets murdered by another child because I told him, honey, no, it's okay, we don't hit anybody.

Michael: No, there's, I've never said this. And this is a, I'm willing to go here because I think it's important. As I'm in conversation, I started dating again, something I've shared on the show. It's the whole thing's just a fucking nightmare.

Kelsi: I love this.

Michael: But I was having a conversation cause I am a full believer in my amendments as a United States citizen, I carry guns with me. Anybody. I'm a big guy. I'm six foot three and a half.

Kelsi: You're not small.

Michael: I'm not a small guy. Nobody's messing with me. But my thought is always worst case scenario preparation. I come from a military family. That was going to be my path. I destroyed my knee in high school, didn't work out. It's always been a part of my psyche to protect myself. A big part of that was growing up in an environment in which I didn't have a choice, right? I've been, by the time that I was probably 12, I was at, in at least 30 or 40 fights. And I'm having this conversation with this woman and she's great. I have nothing against her, but I'm going to bring this context because I think it's important. And I was saying, one of the things I look for Foreign partner is her ability to protect our future Children.

Kelsi: Of course.

Michael: And what does that look like to me? Are you, do you know any type of self-protection martial arts? Do you know how to fire a firearm? Do you know how to protect yourself in a public setting? Do you know how to be situationally aware? And what she said to me left me so baffled. It made me realize the amount of indoctrination people are under in the world and society. And what she said, it was very simple and very plain as day, she goes, oh. That’s not gonna happen to me.

Kelsi: That's the scariest thing somebody could respond with, in my opinion.

Michael: It is, which leads me down the path to the question that I want to ask you because you've been, you wrote an amazing book called Brass and Unity, and the subtitle of it is One Woman's Journey Through the Hell of Afghanistan and back, you know as well as I do. Everyone, as anyone could possibly know that the worst-case scenario is always just a blink of the eye away and the lack of preparedness and leadership in your life is going to set you up for failure.

Kelsi: A thousand percent, yeah. It a hundred percent. Like you couldn't have nailed that more and you couldn't articulate it at any clearer. When you don't know how to protect yourself, you are a liability. You are not an asset. You are a liability to those around you, especially if you have children, and you are a liability to your spouse. I'll give you an example. So about a month ago, I think it was like a full month, it's been about a month now. Anyway, I was out for a walk on the beach with my husband. And we were just walking on the beach. I use cannabis, everyone knows, I use cannabis. And I had one or two puffs of it and then it was out. And this guy came up from behind me and started like just really obnoxiously trying to make a point. And he came around and started like verbally attacking me. And he's about six foot tall and he kept going and kept going. Even if we tried to deescalate and move and all of these things just kept going. And then we filmed some of it because I knew if I brought my phone out, maybe he would stop, that's a deterrent for a lot of people. And so I put it out and I just like, okay, cool. If you want to act this way, I'm walking this way. You walk that way and we'll be good to go. And he wouldn't stop. And he kept coming back and kept coming back. And then he lunged at me. And then he tried to take my phone and then he goes into my husband's face and he says women like that are the reason why you're gonna get your fucking head smashed, and I went, oh, threat, call the cops. And then I take my knife out and put it in my pocket like this. Because I am five foot tall and 110 pounds. And this is a six-foot-tall man now threatening my husband and now threatening me and would not deescalate, and he was rapidly escalating. And everyone started to watch around and started to film it and watch. And they were, ‘cause we were just trying to leave. And this man would not leave my point. And what I'm trying to say here is, look, I went for a walk on the beach and I got attacked. So if you sit there and think for a single second that it's never going to happen. There's nothing wrong with having size equalizers. There's nothing wrong with being heavily trained. There is nothing wrong with knowing how to protect yourself, your body, your mind, and your spirit. Anybody who says it'll never happen has never experienced life. And that's okay, and I'm so grateful.

Michael: Same. I agree.

Kelsi: So grateful that you don't live in that world, that's fantastic. But when it does knock on your door and punch you square in the face, you're going to wish that you didn't. So desperately, you knew what to do.

Michael: Yeah. I tell people all the time, you need to live in the world of reality, not the fantasy you wish that you lived in. And I'll say this, maybe I'm just hardened because I grew up in the streets and I witnessed violence and I was a part of a lot of that violence. To be frank I watched my three childhood best friends get murdered. I have family in prison for life. I stole food to survive. I know how hard the world is. And the reason why I think this type of conversation in a mental health podcast is important because I don't ever walk down the street in fear anymore. And there's two reasons why one, I learned how to regulate my nervous system, which we're going to talk about because I know a big part of what you do is like in breath work in nervous system regulation, things of that nature. And so that's part of it for me. The other part of it for me is knowing that I know how to protect myself and what's crazy for people who are trauma survivors who have gone through violence, whether it's at a young age and it's complex PTSD, or if it's adult and you were in the military, you went to fucking Afghanistan, or God knows the things that you bore witness to as a human being on this planet in the time we live in. And you're affected by PTSD. If you know how to effectively approach any situation that you could possibly be in within reason, because some things you just aren't going to be able to handle within reason, you can navigate the world with more peace. Would you agree with that?

Kelsi: A thousand percent. If people understood that the key to removing fear from your life, is taking action and control. No one would be afraid to do anything, but we teach helicopter parenting. We teach people that it's not safe. Yes. The world's dark when you're looking like this at a screen and yes, the world has heavy places for sure. But the majority of the world does not like that. And I'm not saying not to be cautious and aware and conscious of what's going on, but to be proportionate about where you live. For example, again I live in an area that's predominantly pretty safe up until kind of recently. And I'm consciously aware that I live on the border. I'm one of the two more trafficked parts of the border from Canada to the United States. So when my child went missing from school and the principal blamed my child, trust me, you have to learn how to handle that real quick, or you're going to hurt someone. And so you have to be conscious. And my response to her was, do you understand where you live? And she said, we live in one of the safest areas. I said, really, where do you get your facts? She goes look around you. And I said, for sure, everyone looks around nice, but let me tell you about the area you live in, honey. And then I spit a whole bunch of facts, but it's one of the largest gang populations about 10 minutes from us about all of the fentanyl flowing in about all of the human trafficking going across our borders, five minutes from that school about the people who actually legitimately attempted to take children of the park down the street. Don't tell me because we also can see where every child predator lives in our country in red dots. So don't tell me that it wasn't a big deal. You had a child go missing on your watch and then you did it again six months later and you still have your job. So when people say, Oh, and everything's safe. Sure. Depends on who, depends on who your Intel comes from. Notice I said, Intel, not news, radically different. Part of the problem with the career I had. Was I'm heavily tapped in. I know more now than I knew then. And that's an asset sometimes. And it's hard sometimes to, you have to balance that. So, I'm consciously aware of what goes on in the world, but I don't allow the fear of the world to creep into my home or to be put onto my son. He goes to jujitsu. He understands what to do. But the biggest fear for me is I've raised a leader in the truest sense. And if something happens at that school. My child's not going to run, my child's going to run at the thing.

Michael: Yeah. And you have to, and it's so hard for people to reconcile the reality of it. And I know, because I know the audience and the people who are listening to the show, they've been through hell. Like there, there are people who are listening to the show. Like even my story makes it look like a fucking, a trip to McDonald's play place, and I've been through a lot and I think about that and I can't help but wonder, like when we're faced with such dire circumstances in life, it's like, how do you keep going? You mentioned the career that you used to have, and I would love for you to talk a little bit more about that and your experiences and journey that have led you a little bit towards where you are right now.

Kelsi: Yeah. I'll give a brief overview. We don't want to strain too many people's brains.

Michael: Yeah, for sure

Kelsi: So I'm a Canadian combat veteran. I was an artillery gunner and a mortar man. And a RWS remote weapon system gunner for a tank. I worked with the French unit from Belcarche, Quebec on the east coast of Canada. I ultimately deployed in 2009 with that unit. And I ran the triple sevens there until I got borrowed by the British. And what that means is at the time in 2009, they didn't have people to go outside the wire with the men to search the women and children. Our rules of engagement are that we follow the Geneva Convention, which states that in the countries we were in. The women's that wear burqas and children and everything like that, we have to be able to search them, but the men can't touch them and they can't see them without them off, which means they needed someone to go. So I got a call and I got picked up and I went out with the British and did a job I wasn't properly trained for. And we went on an operation with them that went ultimately quite sideways and we lost a lot of humans. And really tragic and violent, the worst violence you could ever imagine in, in ways that I was 19 years old when I was there, so I couldn't wrap my brain around again what I was witnessing, let alone fully understood it because we don't get, we don't learn about the Quran and we don't learn about the caliphate and we don't learn about, we learned that the Taliban are bad people and they're the enemy, so we take them out. All right, roger that. Let's go. And when you start to see, I said this on Trigonometry a couple weeks ago, and it's resonated, and I'm going to say it again because I think it matters a lot. When you see your own people die, it flips a switch in you, and you're now willing to do a lot worse. That's it. That's just the hard truth. You can't witness violence and not be touched by it. Whether it affects you emotionally physically makes you sick, or whatever it does to you, it does something, and we know that. And at 19, I didn't know how to cope with what I was seeing. Or doing right. It's not just seeing. I'm also participating. I'm an active participant, willing, but active. And that means when you drop artillery rounds for the 1st time, it's not on targets anymore. Those targets are humans, and those are big bombs, and they flatten everything in its sight. And we drop white phosphorus, and we drop loom, which lights up the sky, and then we drop rounds. And when you miss. So you adjust, so when you start to realize that, yes, I was at a FOB for a little while, and I didn't see everything up close, what caught me off guard is when I finally went outside the wire to do something I just wasn't prepared for. And that's when I saw it up front, and then I enacted the same level of violence. And a lot of people came back and said you were in a fob the whole time. No, I wasn't, no, I wasn't. I was stacking on doors and I was running and I was gunning and I was putting women and kids in rooms and I was zap strapping them and watching them scream and searching them while they scream for their mothers. So, I understand what violence looks like and smells like and feels like. And what I realized from that was that it was a gift. It was a gift to be able to experience the full extremes of war. It was a gift in the sense that I would not be who I am now. It gave me something to overcome, it gave me something, it gave me something to beat, it gave me a purpose and a mission again, and that was to save myself, to walk away from the war, even though I had been diagnosed in the country and I was put on 11 different pharmaceutical drugs while I was in the country running the machine guns. When they told me I was useless and it would be easier if I died, and they sent me back alone, and no one called. Ever again, I realized that the world is a hard place, but I realized that young enough that I had enough time to work through it. And because I was raised properly, I didn't quit, even though I wanted to die every day.

Michael: Yeah, and you said that word, you took out your vocabulary at such a young age as can't, and that was very much A truth for me too, one day, my, this is obviously not relatively close to what you're getting into, but I want to create context for what I'm about to ask you. I'm at this bowling league, the weirdest part about my childhood is I'm like, half, I'm half white trash, half ghetto it's the weirdest thing.

Kelsi: And you're bowling.

Michael: And my grandma would sit in the back of Raceway Lanes in Indianapolis, which is now closed. And fucking smoke cigarettes and drink beer at 10 o'clock in the morning on Saturdays. And I am so stressed out and anxious as a kid because of the violence in the home, fighting at school, getting bullet, not all the, like all the chaos that comes with it. This time, whenever my grandmother would be around was a bit of a respite. Anyway, one day we're bowling. I'm having this really tremendously terrible game. And I'm only like nine or 10, mind you, but every ball's going in the gutter and we are past bumpers and my, I'm frustrated, throw down, the towel on the floor, my uncle comes over me, and this is arguably one of the most important moments of my entire life. I've said this before on here. He sits, he gets on a knee, he looks at me, eye level, the same way you talked about communicating with your child, which I think is incredibly underrated. And he goes, you have to take that word can't out of your vocabulary. And he looks at me, goes, you're never allowed to say that again. I don't condone violence against children. Obviously with everything that I do, but he looks at me and he goes, if you ever say that word, I'm going to beat your ass. And I was like, copy that. I got it. But that mentality has carried so much weight in my life because by the time I was 25, I had hit rock bottom, 350 pounds, two packs a day made a million bucks, lost it all cheating on my girlfriend, family. Won't talk to me. It's all a fucking disaster. I had diagnosable everything you could possibly imagine. And I just remember being like, fuck this, do something different. And the reason that I wanted to create that context is because I believe that everyone has the ability to tap into that resiliency, but often, in my experience now, having done this for a long time, not only a podcast, but coaching thousands of people around the world is you need a little bit of a rock bottom.

Kelsi: Absolutely.

Michael: And so, I'm curious if you could paint a picture of what were the consequences of that experience and coming back home before the transition began?

Kelsi: So, when I was in the country, because I was diagnosed in the country and put on medication, I was sent home three weeks before the rest of me unit and I was sent home to the hospital at that point. They decided they were going to try to retrain me, didn't work out. Retraining me and sending me to a range was not a good idea. And they decided they were going to med board me out. So, my career was over and what I thought would be my lifelong career and what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And I was good at was over at 21. And they said, you will never work again. You are broken and this is just what happens. You're just another number and you're another casualty of war. And so, because of that, and you are the stories you tell yourself. It's what I believe.

Michael: I believe that.

Kelsi: And I was told I had post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, treatment resistant depression. You name the label, they gave it, along with the medication. So the repercussions for that, for me, were, I was chronically suicidal for, from 2009 to 2015. I was in treatment weekly, nothing was working. I was not getting any better. I was so drugged out of my mind, I couldn't function. I would sleep and I would go to bed and not know. I would wake up and cook in the middle of the night and have no clue. And wake up on the floor, with just the stove on, and it was out of control. At that point, moving forward, it really took, it really just took having a support network and I had, I'd met my boyfriend right before I deployed. He's now been my husband for 14 years and we got to a point when I was going to treatment and I said to the doctor I don't want to live like I can't do this anymore. Like I'm not doing this and he looked at me and he said, look, and he's a Bosnia and Rwanda veteran. He was a medic in there for Canada. He was there during the genocide. And he was one of the first psychiatrists to do research on post-traumatic stress disorder on post Rwanda veterans. And he looks at me and he did the same thing, got down to my level when I was on the couch. And he looked at me, goes, listen, kid, I've been treating veterans for 40 years and I've never lost one. And I'm not starting now. And knowing that I could go as low as I, I was going, but there was someone there outside of my husband, but a doctor who I understood him like he's going into a 70s. He still treats me. And when he said that to me I've never lost someone. And I'm not losing you. It meant that somebody cared in a different way. Somebody I respected in the service, right? Somebody in the military that I could be look up to and be like, this guy cares because my staff didn't. So, the rock bottom for me really came when I got to that point with suicide. And then my doctor suggested our therapy and I was so low that I was willing to do anything and I thought it was ridiculous, absolutely obnoxious to ask that of me. He knew exactly who I was. I don't do our therapy. This is ridiculous, but I did it because he told me to, and I got a bunch of old casings from some friends and a bunch of beads because I heard crystals could heal you, and I started building jewelry on the kitchen table. And then I had my very first day where I didn't want to die. My husband left for work. I sat down at the kitchen table. He came back and I was in the same spot. I didn't brush my teeth. I didn't eat. I didn't do anything but work on the jewelry. And I realized in that moment that there was something here and that was the catalyst to the beginning of change. And so, we do these things, right? Especially mental health, where it's we keep telling people exposure therapy, try this. A lot of our stuff that we have is in here, it's right here, we just need a mirror. And we need to be willing to look into the mirror to see the truth. So many of us keep looking for answers externally. We all have the answers. We just need the guides. And so once I started the art therapy and actually turned into like this brand, and I found a purpose again because I said, I don't want to do a nonprofit, but I want to be the money that, the vehicle that puts the money in those hands. So what if I did this? What if I try this? Let's just try this. And my husband being an entrepreneur, never telling me anything, but yes, said, all right, let's go. Let's build you a website and let's go, and we did that. And then within less than two years of that, we were on Kevin Hart and Ellen and Whitney Cummings and Kat Dennings. And this jewelry was being worn by everyone, it was bananas. And then I started to be able to donate and actually help the people that I had served with. And I realized that there was purpose through this. I could find myself through this. Not in spite of, but because of. Because my life wasn't happening to me, it was happening for me. I just wasn't in a position to see it yet. And once I was able to see it, there was really no looking back at that point. The medication talk was a little bit harder. We wanted to get pregnant with, we wanted to have a baby. And I was on so many drugs, that just wasn't a good idea. And so, when we talked to the doctors, they said, you can't be on this, and this, I said, okay, I'm going off of it then, and I did. And then we got pregnant with our first baby and we lost our first baby. And then we got pregnant a year later to the day with our son. And I was still on two drugs at that time and he came out healthy. So, thank God for that, but then it got weird again, where I started to get worse. Of course I ran into postpartum issues, medication problems, sleep deprivation, everything that a new mother goes through, and I nursed exclusively. So you're just on, and that was fine. I can do sleep debt, but it was different because now I had this human that relied on me and I didn't know if I was capable of actually doing this or if I should have a child. Even though I wanted him so desperately, I just didn't think I was worthy of him. In 2019, the end of 2019, we had 200 retailers. We were crushing it. Amazing husband, great child. Everyone's healthy, doing amazing things. But mommy started to have a lot hard days again on the stairs. I would go up to the stairs and I would just cry and I said to my husband, it's just, I don't get it, I don't get it. I'm doing the steps. I'm working the program. I'm working out. I'm eating, right? I'm sleeping, right? I'm moving. I'm hydrated. What the hell? And he goes, honey, I don't know. So, I talked to my doctor and he was like, okay, you're on one SSRI still. And I was like, I don't want to be there on the Sunday morning. He goes, okay, I get it. But we got to wait till the summer, the transition, spring, summer. It's helps with seasonal effective, okay. But then it just wasn't good enough for me. And I started my podcast in 2020. And I had a guest on and he was a former army ranger. And we were talking and everything was going well. And then at the end of it, he leaned into the screen and he goes, Are you okay? I said, yeah, I'm great. At this point, I got really good with putting a mask on my face. And then he said it again, are you okay? And for some reason, I barely knew this guy. It was, he Just this army ranger who like, I idolize these people. He had this great company called Combat Flip Flops. He was on Shark Tank. I knew who this guy was. I was just so grateful to be there, but I knew in that moment I had to be honest. For whatever reason, something just came over me and I just broke down. And I said, dude, I'm not doing good and I don't know what to do because I'm not getting any better. And I've been doing this now for a decade and I don't know what to do. And he goes, hey, have you ever heard of Ayahuasca? And I went, nope. And he goes, there's a retreat in 30 days, it's some people like us do you want on it? And I normally have a conversation every day with my husband, but this, at this point, I just said, yes, I was like, yes, when, where, and he told me, and then I called my doctor and I said, I'm going to do this, but I can't be on an SSRI. And he goes you're on 150 milligrams and you've been on it for a decade. So, you can't just go off of that like that and I said I'm going to not asking permission. I'm doing it. I'm letting you know what's happening and he goes, look, kid I can't advise you to do that, but I'm not going to stop you. You have my cell phone number and you call me and Brady has it. If something goes wrong this month, you let me know. And so, we every week I checked in and it was bad. I went off cold turkey. It was the most dangerous thing I've ever done. It was the worst experience, one of the worst of my existence. The physical pain was so excruciating, I would go into the laundry room when everything was turned on. It would just like head bang because it was so painful. It felt like my head was flipping upside down when I was standing still. It was the unbelievable pain. But then I finally went and I sat with medicine and I experienced such a life changing moment and such, a soul healing opportunity that I just said, I was never going back on another drug again, and she showed me that I can do this. It wasn't going to be an easy road. It's going to be a longer, but I could do this and I did a lot of deep healing in that. And then after that, I never gone back on another pharmaceutical drug, and I dove head first into psychedelics and I've been a psychedelic integration coach now for a few years. And I believe that the medicine is not the thing that heals you. It is the tool and the opportunity and is what you choose to do with it. After that, that heals you.

Michael: First, thank you for, I just wanted to give you a space to go through that because it's powerful and it's very beautiful. And. Heartbreaking at the same time, and there's so much I resonate with, there's a tattoo on my arm of this sparrow from losing the only child I might've ever had to this point when I was very young and feeling that pain and then trying to go through and deal with pharmaceuticals and then making my life so much fucking worse. And then going on my own plant medicine journey. And so I just sit here and I just see that and I go, yeah, I get it. And it's, and what's so interesting about this life is you do have to be your own advocate for all of this. And when you look at,

There was a Newsweek article about 2 years ago where SSRIs had the same effectiveness and efficacy as placebos. And if that doesn't tell you everything that you need to know, I don't know what does. And I think a big part of it is getting this idea about this indoctrination. It's you have to be willing to break yourself free of the matrix, you have to be willing to go against the grain, against your doctor's advice, against whatever everyone tells you from, do you get the gold nose ring? Do you get that tattoo? Do you make the jewelry with a bullet on it? Whatever that thing is. And you have to trust yourself. What's so incredibly difficult about that and being the advocate for yourself is it requires you being willing to do it. And most people get trapped in the idea and they're like, Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll go and change the world. I'll make my life better. I'll go and heal. I'll go to therapy, but I have to go and make sure it's cool with everybody.

Kelsi: Yeah.

Michael: Let me check with everyone first. And you said something that I think is so important that I don't want to edge over. And that's the idea that you made this decision to go on this plant medicine journey without talking to your husband was a thing for you. And most people like as someone who's gone down the ayahuasca journey and it was so unbelievably life changing enough that I'll never even do it again because I was like.

Kelsi: Some people don't. Yeah, yeah.

Michael: I went out to this beautiful place where I spent eight days for ceremonies and it was just one of the most unbelievably healing things I've ever done in my life. I still have not yet talked about it publicly. I don't know that I'm going to, but what I took from it was this really unbelievably profound understanding that. The depths of the worst things that have ever happened to me, even though I had done the work, we're still not entirely resolved. But in that moment, there was more resolution that came, which further supports this hypothesis that I have that once you start the healing journey, you're always on the healing journey and. I'm curious for you as you stepped into that and as you continue to go further down this plant medicine path, let's talk about some of the misnomers because I think people will generally look at this and I'm one of those people, if you rewind a decade ago when I'm much younger if you even mentioned that you did mushrooms or, LSD or, and I would just take you out of my life. That's how cut and dry I was on it, right? Obviously, I've done all those many times now these days, but let's talk about some of the misnomers. What are some of the things that we need to correct the language on for people when it comes to plant medicine?

Kelsi: They're not drugs.

Michael: Meaning?

Kelsi: They're not drugs. Drugs are pharmaceutical designed medications. Plant medicine is exactly as it says, it's plant medicine. These things are not put on the earth to be bastards. Bastards for pharmaceutical companies, they're plants. They're plants that have a massive healing proponent to them. They are spirits, they're divine, they're God. When they're used in the right set and setting with proper integration programs and protocolsm, they are sitting with God. People can't wrap their brain around that. I come from my family was Catholic. I'm what I call, and I still use it. I'm recovering Catholic. When I used to hear the word God, my whole body would shudder, not because I was abused by the church or anything, but because I watched what the church did and I couldn't align. And I was told that I was strange and a witch because I was seeing things that other people weren't seeing or feeling things that other people weren't feeling. And I didn't want to Go up, down, up, down, up, down and take a communion. And it just doesn't resonate. It didn't hit with me. Plant medicine gives you the ability to sit with God. It opens up the world, it opens up your mind, you sit with the divine. That's what it is. You're sitting with your soul. And our souls, aren't we all birthed from God? So, by definition, aren't our souls pieces of God? Not our physical, but our souls. And so when I sat with plant medicine, the first time I realized in that moment that just because we can't see it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And that healed a huge wound for me, meaning I didn't need to read the Bible to connect to God. I didn't need to go to church to connect internally. I needed to sit and meditate and be with myself. And to look inward in the plant medicine allows you to look inward. Furthermore, it is that not everyone ketamine is a dissociative and there's different, nontraditional and entheogens and all of this, but the medicine that I mess with, the medicine that I honor, the medicine that I sit with, It's plant based psilocybin ayahuasca cannabis master plan as well, and tobacco, I don't use five of me. Oh, I don't use Ibogaine. I've seen it work, just change people's lives. I don't have any issue with any of them. I just don't, I don't sit with them and I don't coach on those. I only coach with what I'm comfortable with. And that's not to say there's anything wrong, but I think with plant medicine we get, we're really quick to say you're doing drugs, you're doing drugs. You're going to the jungle in Peru to do drugs. No, I'm going to the jungle in Peru to sit with a thousand-year-old tribe who understands things that we can't fathom. And I'm going to choose to trust in that energy. And who's to choose to trust in that space and to be held in that container and to go with a serious amount of preparation and intention, because it's about intention. If you are not intentional with anything you're doing, then you're just doing a trip. If you are not doing the integration, then you are just doing a trip. The biggest part of plant medicine is the integration portion. But we so much overlook that so many people overlook that they go, Oh, I went, I don't need to talk about it. You 100 percent absolutely need to talk about it and solidify it into reality, into your new tools and your new lessons of what you've learned. You may not have all of the downloads right away, but you'll get them over time. And then the medicine will challenge you and throw things in your way to see if you learned the lesson you said you wanted to learn. And so for me, I believe that plant medicine is getting this awakening, this opportunity, and we have to be conscious and careful, though, to respect that because there's always going to be people that want to use it for the wrong things, the backyard shaman, the people who say they understand it, the people who do, 60 to 100 people sittings. This is just not reality, this is dangerous. And the other thing we need to be conscious of, and this is hard for some people in the plant based community, but I'm happy to say it. They're not safe for everyone. And we know that, and not everyone is a candidate and that's okay. But the ones that are, if they are done with intention and they are done with integration, and diets, cutting things out before, going as clean as possible and going in with. Somebody who has worked with you prior going through the medicine and being willing to hand over control. People don't like to do that. But when you're able to open your hands and say, please tell me what I need to learn because I am struggling and I don't know what else to do. How do I move forward? Please show me what I need to see. The medicine will never give you more than you can handle. It'll give you exactly what you need. You might not like it, but there's no bad trips.

Michael: When I made the decision to do it, I was on the precipice of closing down this company. It was just eight years of doing this exhausted, hundreds of podcasts, ungodly amount of travel stages, writing books, the whole nine. And I was like, I need a break. And I'd been called to do ayahuasca many times. The opportunity had been in front of me no less than probably 25 times.

Kelsi: Oh, wow

Michael: Easily.

Kelsi: So, she was calling.

Michael: And it was never, it was never right. There was always something like I'm allergic to cats. For instance, I got invited to come and do it at this home and this small group of people, and there was a integration person there, blah, blah. And the night of, I was like. I need to find out if this guy has cats.

Kelsi: Just randomly.

Michael: No, it wasn't random. ‘Cause I was like, I'm allergic. And so I call him and he goes, dude, I got three cats. I was like, I'm not coming, dude. Sorry. I'm not going to do this. Fast forward I'm listening to Aubrey Marcus and I was one of his videos on Ayahuasca. And I had this really interesting realization where I was like, you know what? Maybe it's, I've been trying to do it in America and I just need to leave. Cause the first time I did mushrooms was in Vietnam, like in a place where if you get caught doing mushrooms, like goodbye to the rest of your life, you're in prison forever. There, whatever happens in Vietnamese prison, that's going to happen to you. But I was like, I'm trusting. Even though that sounds insane to people. I had friends who go, that is the craziest thing I've ever heard, I did mushrooms in Vietnam in an eight hour float tank session, that was the first time I'd ever done any psilocybin.

Kelsi: How much did you do?

Michael: I was like five grams.

Kelsi: Oh, you went, I went in.

Michael: I'm not, I don't have to ask anything in my life.

Kelsi: I appreciate this so much.

Michael: And so I went hard in it and I had a, Unbelievably healing experience. Top three transformative moments of my entire life. Fast forward a whole bunch of years. I've only ever done any psilocybin with intention. I've never gotten high. I don't think I don't like it. If you were like, Hey, let's just pop some mushrooms, do a podcast. I'd be like, I'm good. But that is what a lot of people move towards. And I remember meeting someone once and they said, I've done ayahuasca a hundred times. It's you're a drug addict, and you look at that and you go, that's not what it's there for because…

Kelsi: Unless you're training to be, which they were training to party.

Michael: And like I look at that and I go, okay, when I went and I sat with this medicine, it was one of the most profound and beautiful experiences of my life. Whereas many people may suffer in that moment. Like I'd came into it open. Cause I realized the same truth that applies to my daily life. This is the juxtaposition of life that is almost self-hypocritical. And what I mean by that is I believe that I control everything. Every single thing that I have the ability and power to control while simultaneously understanding I have no control and I am a surrender to everything.

Kelsi: I love that.

Michael: And that's ayahuasca to me. That is plant medicine to me. That is I'm going to control the location. I'm going to control when I do it, I'm going to control whether or not I walk into that Maloka, I'm going to control how much I take, but I am not going to control what I'm going to see. And that's the blind faith and it's, you go look at somebody, I interviewed Dr. Gabor Mata on the show.

Kelsi: He lives like so close to me.

Michael: Yeah. You should definitely.

Kelsi: I'll try to have him now for a while.

Michael: I know a guy who knows a guy or so he's on my show. He's on two years ago when he released the myth of normal. Which is an unbelievable book that everyone should absolutely read.

Kelsi: In mandatory in schools.

Michael: I agree with you a hundred percent and think about this. This guy is a world renowned Psychotherapist childhood trauma expert like the experiences of hell that man went through you cannot even begin to understand.

Kelsi: Remind of my grandfather so much.

Michael: And yet here's the thing He suffered with addiction, he suffered with pain, he suffered with torment, he suffered with everything and he is even a person who you look at and he says, I was, because one of the greatest things I've ever done and the reason why an expert like him and me and you can openly have this conversation, three tremendously different backgrounds, right? Like the one thing we have in common was the willingness to surrender that medicine and to take from it what it was willing to give. And in that taking what's so unbelievably incredible to me is that if you're willing to shed all of the things that you believe you are, your whole life is different.

Kelsi: And you know what? I really love it. But the way you said that, and there's, I love that you pick keywords, it's just in my brain. You said take, you're not taking, you're being given gifts.

Michael: But you must take them, you must receive them.

Kelsi: You have to receive them, but you don't take them. They're different.

Michael: Fair.

Kelsi: So, I think that when you're taking something, it's different. You have to be open to receiving them. And so the example I give is when we lost that child, I didn't cope with it. I didn't deal with it. And when I sat in medicine, I met her and she came and she sat with me and she walked from the other side of the room as this grown adult who looks identical to my son, by the way. And The same blonde curly hair. I'm blonde, by the way, that's where it comes from, but not anymore. And she walked from the other side of the room, I didn't Google it. I didn't understand it. I just said, they'd said, drink the tea, you're in a circle of army Rangers and Blackwater dudes. And I was the only woman, but I felt so safe. I didn't feel worried, and I sat there and she walked and out, but as she walked toward me, she got smaller and smaller. And then she sat down in my lap and she just looked up at me and she said, hi, mommy. I'm here and I'm safe and I'm around you all the time, but I'm around Jack all the time. I'm always with you. You just weren't ready for me. And that was a gift I didn't have to take. I was just open to receive and that's like that in anything like in life at all. One of the great examples I give is you get these gifts given to you when you don't realize it. And I find they often come in forms of people. That I would have had no no, how did I meet so it's like, where David was a good one for me. I just saw this guy on Instagram talking about gratitude. I thought to myself, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna shoot my shot on Instagram. So I did. We'll give you 20 minutes, you get 20 minutes. I thought to myself, this is one of those moments. These are one of these moments where you're challenged with opportunity. And these are gifts, and you can show up and receive, or you can close yourself off because you're scared and you're fearful. And that's what Ayahuasca is. You get these opportunities given to you, but whether they come in forms of people or jobs or events or whatever you want, but you have to be open to receiving that gift. And when people walk in my life, they are a gift. I don't know what the reasoning is or why, but they are a gift. The same way where I got a last minute call. Hey Kelsi, you want to do this tomorrow real quick? Yeah, sure. What an opportunity, what a gift. Just what a gift to receive the opportunity. Because I'm open. Because when I was writing that and I was in it, I wasn't open to receiving anything, nothing. And so now, after Medicine, I realize that if you just go in open with an open hand to the world and say, everything I have is yours. Everything. The world comes back every time because I'm open to receiving now. And that's what medicine helped me do. It helped me heal by showing me that I could be open to receiving. And when you're open to receiving, you're open to healing. And when you're open to healing. That's when the change actually happens.

Michael: And this is why I always tell people I, I coach and, obviously I don't take them down a path like you do with plant medicines. It's something I contemplate could be a possibility. I don't always.

Kelsi: It's not. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, I get it. But, it's something I contemplate. But what my point is, the 1 thing I always tell everyone that's I'm just here to show you the path. That's it. You've got to be willing to receive it. And like on a daily basis, those who pay attention and listen, like I get messages from them and they're like, Holy shit, great news, or this is happening or that is happening. And all it is I'm just opening them to awareness when people sit across from me and they're not open and they're not willing to have the truth come, the truth of who it is that they are, nothing about their life ever and I always can tell. And the hard part of it. The hard part about it is the willingness that you have to have as the individual to shed whoever it is that you think you are, because I wrote this in my first book. I said, I took the old version of me out behind the shed and I shot that motherfucker because that's what was required. I had to literally have an egoic death at 25 years old to be here at almost 40. Having this conversation and whether it's through therapy or coaching or plant medicine, it all leads you down the same path. It's are you willing to look in the fucking mirror, tell yourself the truth and then do something about it? Because most people close the loop on where we started this. Most people will look at their life and say, I can't, and I will look at them and I say you're right. And that's so difficult. Because you are just one decision away from everything being different. And so, I'm wondering if you were to sit across from someone, they've gone through hell and back, maybe not your hell, maybe not my hell, but they're sitting in life and they're looking at this and the guy can't, I can't have the website. I can't build the joy. I can't have the book. I can't do the podcast. I can't be a great mother, a great wife. I can't. And it was like this thing that consumes them. What would you tell them?

Kelsi: Not with that attitude. You can't. Can't do anything with that attitude. You're right. Absolutely. You cannot with that attitude. So let's change our perspective. Let's take a look at the evidence in front of us, right? I had that death you just talked about four weeks ago at a retreat I was coaching on.  Not participating. Oh, but she sure participated. The difference between people who do and say they can't, it's really simple. It's perspective shift, truly. So when I have clients that come to me and say, I can't do this, I can't do that, I can't do this, I can't stop drinking, I can't do that. Not with that attitude. You can't. Absolutely. You're right. Where you are, how you're thinking. Of course you can't, ‘cause you're all up here, you're not in here. And when you're up here, this controls your life. We need to drop back down into our body. Give ourself the evidence. A friend of mine taught me this and I loved this. This was in the moment of a couple weeks ago. He looked at me and he goes, I said something. I have no problem telling you what I said actually I said something. I said we're standing around a fire in the middle of Montana and he looked at me and he goes, why do you think you your show is you have who you have and just, I said, people don't want me. They want who I know. Cause it's a self-worth thing. And he got down to my level like this over the fire and he looked at me and he goes, Shut the fuck up. And no one in my life talks to me that way. I'm not the person you talk to that way. It's just, I just give off that you don't do that. And I like this, and he goes, did you hear me? I said, What? And he goes, Shut the fuck up. I said, what did I do? And he goes, why do you think that? And I said, Cause that's just what I think happens. And he goes, Show me the evidence. I said, what do you mean? He goes, if I were to take 12 of the people around you all the time and your child's life was on the line, would you still believe that? And I went no, I don't. And he goes, do you get it now? They want to be around you. It's how you make them feel. It's not who you fucking know. It's how you make them feel. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. We are the stories we tell ourselves. Every day, every day. So, if you say, I can't, I won't, of course you can't and you won't then, we have to change how you talk to yourself. You have to be worthy of the gifts you're asking for. You have to be worthy of the love you so seek, but how can you be worthy if you don't love yourself? So, I tell my clients you love yourself and they give me an answer. Yes or no. They'll be pretty straight up, pretty honest. And if the answer is no, I don't, I go, okay, then I understand why you think you can't because you don't think you're worthy of it, but I'm here to tell you, you can and you will. I'm going to show you how and it starts by learning to go in here.

Michael: Yeah. And I love that. And I could not agree more. And it's if the, I save us constantly, it's I'm sitting here talking to a mirror. I say constantly, we are the stories we tell ourselves. If you think you can't, you suck, you're fat, you're dumb, you're lazy, you're going to be poor, you don't get abundance, you're lack. Everybody's better than you. Fuck you. When you get exactly what you asked for, because here's what's so fascinating. The universe doesn't understand what you don't want. It only understands what you're saying. And my hope is that more people will step into that this journey, this thing that you're in front of in this life. Even though it's difficult as it's supposed to be. Like, you're the difficulty comes because this is a hero's journey and you're meant to discover who you are. And the only way that you will ever discover who you are is by facing the most dark depths of your existence that challenge you to rise like you don't become a phoenix unless you first burned to ash. And people don't understand that because it's they expect and they want what they want. How they want it now, but it's going to take longer and cost more and take more time than you can ever begin to imagine. And my hope is that it will just, it'll do this thing for people. My hope is that if people will understand one empirical truth about this journey, is that it doesn't matter when you do it. It matters that you do it.

Kelsi: That is so good, that is so good. Because I have people, I have clients in their fifties and their sixties.

Michael: Same. I have a guy right now I'm coaching is like 74.

Kelsi: That's amazing.

Michael: I agree. It's fucking bad ass. Like he's the best.

Kelsi: How amazing is it that you decide, you know what? I'm not going to wait another minute. I've waited long enough. To take your life into your own hands and take radical accountability for your thoughts and your actions, the changes you want to see and be. That, to me, is courage. That, to me, is bravery. That, to me, Is what will change the world, but it starts with ourselves and we can't ask others. We can't ask children to show up and be different. If the examples we give them are shit because they don't learn by talking, they learn by watching. And if you're not giving the example, it's a problem. And we do that with our son. We give him small, acceptable doses of adversity with risk involved. Absolutely. I can't go swimming in the ocean in the winter with me. Cause he said to me, mommy, I want to do it. I posted a video. I don't post, there's no photos of my son online. Exactly.

Michael: We'll save that conversation.

Kelsi: Yeah, exactly. And I said, I'm going to go swim. I'm going to build a fire by the beach. Do you want to come with me? He goes, okay, so he put his little half wet suit on and he goes, I'm not ready yet. So that's okay Mommy's gonna go in first. Okay, I'm gonna go in for a little bit and then I'll come get you Okay, and there was this big rock, probably about, I don't know, a couple hundred yards, not even far. And I came back in and he goes, mommy, you're all red. Are you okay? I said, mommy's great. Mommy's absolutely amazing. He goes, why? I said, because that was hard. But I did it anyway, and now I'm really happy that I did it. And he goes, okay, I'm ready. So we go, and he goes into the water. And the entire time, he goes, oh, I don't know. And I said, grab my hand. And he grabbed my hand. And this is what coaches are for people. He grabbed my hand, and I said, are you ready? And he goes, no. And I said, try again. And he goes, I got this, and that entire way to the rock, you can hear him in the video go, I got this. I got this. I got this. I got this. And he got to the rock and he sat up on the rock and he took a moment and he goes, that's pretty far to go back. And I said, but you're already here. You're going to live on the rock forever. Are we going to stay put? Does mommy bring your toys here? What happens when the waves come in? He goes, I guess I have to go back. I said, I guess we have to go back, now don't we? And he goes, okay. And this time I said, are you ready? And he goes, I got this. And I grabbed his little hand, and you can hear him. You can see the train go by, and you can hear him. I got this. And he got by the fire, and I think the realization of how cold he was hit him. And he stood there and he goes, I got this but I am really cold, but I got this. And I was like that right there.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. He'll be a strong man. And that's beautiful because the, in the same way that, and I believe that some, I don't have kids and I'm always very open about this, but I was a kid and I know what I believe kids need because I was one and I think that kids need that. And that's the same thing that adults need. And the only difference between children and adults is that children don't know that fear exists yet. And my hope is that the people who will listen to this and really consume this will understand that the only thing in their way is them, that's it. Here's the thing I always ask myself every day. And this is I've worked with some of the greatest people in the world personally coached by them on about Tom Bilyeu, Tim Storey, David, I predominantly have worked with men because I had an absent father. So that's something I've moved towards and David said, out of all of these guys, I love them dearly. I know some of them will listen to this. David said something to me one time we're having dinner was just me and him and his wife and his children. And I was lucky enough to be in that environment. And he goes I was talking about a problem I was having. He goes, you don't listen to me very well. Do you like, just as such a great Dave thing, sometimes this isn't about Dave, but here's my point. He says to me, you're not listening. You don't pay attention because I told you that you need to ask yourself every day. How am I interfering with my own success? And then I was like, Oh, that's right, I forgot. This is a me problem, like all of my problems. And then I just went, okay, I'm going to go and handle the me problem. And that to me is what coaches do. That's what we're here for. That's why I pay this guy. That's why people pay me because it is a forest for the trees. Yeah, and I think people are going to get so much guidance and coaching out of this book, not only through your own story and journey and examples, but I want them to connect with you. So, before I ask you my last question, where can everybody not only get the book, but learn more about you?

Kelsi: Absolutely. And thank you for that. And thank you for the space to talk about these things. I don't often get these types of conversations. So they're very welcomed and I'm very grateful for them. So you can, everything is on social media, I despise it, but it is a tool. And if you use the tool properly, it works. So you can get the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble anywhere there. It can get it on our brass and unity website. You can get signed copies there. You can hire me for coaching or you can hire me for speaking at kelsisheren.com. I only have six spots left for this year and I'm being very intentional about who I bring into the practice. And yeah, pretty much anything else. I'm also a breathwork practitioner, so I'm always open for retreats and I'm always loving to come speak and do workshops with breath. I think, when you provide people an actionable tool, that's how we get to where we want to go. And so everything is pretty much, kelsisheren.com breast and unity. You can pretty much find anything there.

Michael: Brilliant. And guys go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. Look up Kelsey's episode for this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Kelsi: It means that we are not the labels we tell ourselves. It means that the things that we go through are gifts. And it means that if we choose to see this life. That is so beautiful and so giving and so gracious and so humbling when we see it as happening for us and not to us. It just means that you can heal you don't have to stay stuck.

Michael: Take that to heart. It will change your life forever my friend. Thank you so much for being here unbroken nation Thank you for listening. Please like subscribe Remember when you share this With other people, you are helping them transform their trauma to triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs, and help them become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See You.