Should the Government Have the Power to Kill Citizens?
Inside This Episode
Kelsi Sheren is a former Canadian Artillery Gunner, coach, author, TEDx Speaker, and host of The Kelsi Sheren Perspective. In this interview with Pastor Eric Huffman, Kelsi opens up about her journey from combat veteran to outspoken advocate against Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program. Together, they discuss the growing crisis of state-sanctioned death, the personal cost of her advocacy, and why she refuses to stay silent.
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Transcript
Eric Huffman: In Canada today, one in every 20 deaths is the result of a program called MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying.
Kelsi Sheren: The pro-death cults of Canada, because they really are a cult, lobbied the Canadian government to adjust the criminal code so that if a doctor provided euthanasia, then they would not be charged with murder. This is not just Canada. America is expanding at a rapid, rapid pace.
Eric Huffman: Is that right?
Kelsi Sheren: If you're a government, their new narrative was, we don't actually provide you palliative care, hospice, pain relief, and treatments, but we only provide you death, how do you think that will go long term? Out of 1,800 providers in Canada, roughly 300 do over 13,000 deaths a year themselves. This one person, she said, it's the most, and I quote, beautiful work she's ever done, and she will never stop.
Eric Huffman: Goodness.
Kelsi Sheren: Here's where things get really, really dark.
Eric Huffman: Combat veteran, Kelsi Sheren, launched her fight against MAID after hearing that fellow vets had been offered assisted suicide as a substitute for other life-saving treatments.
Help me understand what it's like to be inside the mind of somebody who's got PTSD to that degree. Do you just feel frantic? Do you feel paranoid?
Kelsi Sheren: All of those things. When I was injured in Afghanistan, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, treatment-resistant depression, hearing loss. Once that rule of law comes in in 2027, I qualify to die by MAID.
Eric Huffman: I guess the deeper question is, at your worst moment, would you have accepted it?
Kelsi Sheren: I 100% would have taken it. I don't feel like this is me. I feel like something else is using me to talk. And they're using me because they know that I will scream, and I will show up on everyone's doorstep until we can get the government to understand that we are not killing people anymore.
Eric Huffman: Hey, everyone. Today's episode tackles a controversial topic that I've wanted to address for a long time. But before we get started, I hope you'll subscribe to this channel.
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Well, Kelsi Sheren, welcome to Maybe God. Thank you so much for making the time. You are a force of nature. You've been out front talking about Canada's MAID program, Medical Assistance in Dying. We'll talk about why that's so important to you personally in a moment. But first, for us Americans south of the border, just catch us up on what's going on in Canada. What do we need to know that we're not talking about or we're not hearing from the mainstream media?
Kelsi Sheren: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be on a show that's so different than what I'm used to.
Eric Huffman: Of course.
Kelsi Sheren: Maybe a little less aggressive. So it's nice. So let's just go... we'll be real clear. This is not just Canada. America is expanding at a rapid, rapid pace. And every single state right now is currently put votes forward. And you have 10 states and one jurisdiction providing euthanasia through a slightly different type of program than what Canada is doing. Yours is called Medical Assistance in Dying, and ours is Medical Assistance in Dying, but we also provide euthanasia. So they're slightly different. They sound the same, but assisted death versus that is not quite the same.
So what's happening in Canada and has been happening since 2016 is what I call, this is my terminology for this, so there are other names used, but instead of giving them clout and using their names publicly, I try to just stay what they are. The pro-death cults of Canada, because they really are a cult, have taken hold in 2016 when they lobbied the Canadian government, the Supreme Court, to adjust the criminal code. Not to make it legal, but to just simply adjust the criminal code so that if a doctor provided euthanasia, then they would not be charged with murder. So that's all it was. Very clear.
In 2016, it was a case called Carter v Canada. It was an individual who was dying of terminal cancer who wanted the right to have her doctor help her end her life.
And before people jump in and say, and I have a feeling I know how your audience will be, but just for those that are saying, everybody has the right to their own body autonomy to make decisions, and how dare you say something as someone you love washes away and falls into the abyss through Alzheimer's, dementia, terminal cancer, or excruciating pain. I always caution people to take a look at this and take a step back and say, if your government and your healthcare and their new narrative was, we don't actually provide you palliative care, hospice, pain relief, and treatments, but we only provide you death, how do you think that will go long term?
So in Canada, we started this. And in 2016, it was deemed only for what is called Track One.
Eric Huffman: Okay.
Kelsi Sheren: Okay. Track One is for basically people who are going to die in a very short period of time that are terminally ill with an irremediable or grievous condition. These terms really matter here because Canada plays with words a lot. And this is how they get away with it.
So everyone kind of agreed. "Well, of course, we don't want grandma to suffer with Alzheimer's. We don't want grandma to..." And I hear you, nobody wishes that on their worst enemy. That's a horrific way to go. That being said, I believe in the natural foreseeable death process. That's why hospice is a 50-year science. There are ways to keep people in a healthy state to the point in which they can pass with no pain around their loved ones. Okay?
Eric Huffman: Right.
Kelsi Sheren: 2021 comes along. The pro-death cults of Canada, again, who get paid by the Liberal government of Canada, roughly to the tune of over half a million a year of taxpayer dollar, lobbied the Canadian government once again in closed-door meetings. They're very sneaky, these people. And most people who understand the dark understands it only needs a crack to get in. And it's not expensive to buy senators.
So, what happened was in 2021, they changed it and added track two. Now track two is for non-foreseeable death. This just means, simply, you need to have an irremediable or grievous condition and you need to be a non-foreseeable death. Meaning, for example, say I got diagnosed with early-onset dementia. I am a combat veteran. I have a traumatic brain injury. I do have a roughly 30% higher chance than others if I don't maintain my health. That's the key there.
Now, 2021 is when things got really nasty because the way that it works is that you need two doctors to qualify you, you need to see two separate practitioners and they need to be independent of each other. They need to go through your medical records, all of this, they need to look at your mental health status, all of the things. That's kind of not what's been happening, though.
And so in 2021, people who were not dying, who were not ill, who should never have qualified were being mated, meaning they were being killed. So, there's a few stories I tell, but I'll just give you a couple of overviews of a couple of situations.
A friend of mine, a very dear friend of mine who I spoke about before and her mother, we did a couple of documentaries together. She was in the Better Off Dead? one with Liz Carr, the activist. We were both in the Maid: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion together. Her mother was a 25-year psych nurse who got in a car accident, had a traumatic brain injury. And as most people don't fully understand, socialized healthcare doesn't work. You can't get a doctor for 18 to 24 months. You can't get a family doctor, ERs. People are dying in the hallways every single day. It's not a good situation right now.
She went to get help, couldn't get an appointment for 18 months, and she just started to spiral out of control. So much so that she applied for MAID, she knew how to work the system because she had been a psych nurse for 25 years, and they qualified her.
Now, the way that the pro-death cults have approached this situation is they don't like family members, and the largest, most prolific killer we have in Canada, provider, has stated that emphatically: families are our biggest burden because they will stop it. They will try to stop us from doing this. So a lot of people are encouraged to keep it to themselves and then we'll be your family. Feels a little Stockholm syndrome.
Eric Huffman: A little bit.
Kelsi Sheren: A little bit. A little bit of abuse there. So what had happened was her daughter stepped in and got a court injunction, and they told her she's not going to have it happen and then the following day she slit her wrists and survived. Less than four days later, they killed her anyway.
There's another individual that was out here and all he had was hearing loss. He was deaf and, for reference, I wear two hearing aids, so I'm losing my hearing, and he was depressed, is what they classified him as. They qualified him for MAID and he was also killed.
We have several cases, time and time again, including an individual we were able to get stopped last year, where if anybody reads my Substack or sees what I do, there's a few doctors I target specifically for a reason. Out of 1,800 providers in Canada, roughly 300 do over 13,000 deaths a year themselves.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: Now, that's taking out an average of three to five people a day. So this one person was known for doing abortions by day and MAIDs by night, and she said, it's the most, and I quote, beautiful work she's ever done and she will never stop.
Now, this woman, we had an individual reach out, she saw me on Jordan Peterson and said, "If we get to Kelsi, maybe we can get to Jordan." She was diagnosed with akathisia, which was because she was going off of a benzodiazepine from a depression state and akathisia can be quite difficult. It causes... you know, Jordan Peterson was very public about it, struggling with it, and his movement, he spoke about it with Joe Rogan and everyone kind of knows that story.
Well, that's a very big reality But here's the problem. Just like there's support groups online, there are pro-death groups online. So she found a way to get herself qualified and found her way to this one specific doctor because no other doctor in her province would qualify her to die because she wasn't dying.
So she got on one Zoom call with this doctor, and that doctor qualified her in less than an hour with never seeing her medical records. She was flying out to British Columbia, where I live, because that doctor also lives about 30 minutes from here, and we were able to get a court injunction in the 11th hour against this and now there's a criminal charge going towards this doctor. And this woman is still alive, thank God.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: So, in 2021, when we loosened the reins, we got Track One and track two, here's where things get really, really dark. In 2027, and this was supposed to happen last year, so 2024, they are looking to expand medical assistance in dying for those that are mentally ill only and for the mature minors.
Eric Huffman: Mature minors.
Kelsi Sheren: Yes, sir. So mature minors has no number age. It's what the doctor deems is mature enough to make the decision. Now-
Eric Huffman: Playing with words.
Kelsi Sheren: Yes, sir. The mentally ill one is a terrifying one and I'll tell you why, because they always, just like anything else in the world, when eugenics was rolled out in the 1800s and into World War I and into World War II, the first people they target are the vulnerable, the disabled, veterans, military, tough eaters, difficult women. And that's how the Nazis were able to perfect death during and before the Holocaust was through the eugenics program, okay?
So Canada now, this death, this same death cult I'm speaking about really bothers me. They have been lobbying now for a long time, doctors, lawyers, MPs, municipal powers, our Senate, to have the mentally ill only. To just break that down for you, that means that your 14-year-old could walk into an ER and say, I am depressed, I would like to have MAID. Once that happens, your parental rights are out the window.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Kelsi Sheren: We have a case in Alberta right now, excuse me, a dear friend of mine who was also a veteran, his daughter, they put a gag order on this family. She is autistic, but she's 28 years old and lives at home. It's WV and MV, it's the court case in Alberta, people have seen before. If you haven't, feel free to give it a Google. And what had happened is she applied for MAID, and she got qualified without her parents knowing and their family has spent everything trying to get the court to stop this so that she won't be euthanized.
Eric Huffman: Unbelievable.
Kelsi Sheren: Now, just for reference, when I was injured in Afghanistan, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, treatment-resistant depression, hearing loss, and then I had a child and then postpartum depression. As I sit currently, once that rule of law comes in, in 2027, I qualify to die by MAID within a 24-hour to I think a couple week period is what they're looking at.
Eric Huffman: With still two doctors or just one?
Kelsi Sheren: Still two, but the kicker is it doesn't have to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist, it can be a GP, a nurse, an ER doc-
Eric Huffman: Anyone.
Kelsi Sheren: Anybody who has a proclivity towards death. And what we know, Dr. Christopher Lyon, a very dear friend, also a veteran who teaches at York University in London, wrote a paper on healthcare serial killers. And we took a look at how people are after they provide MAID and things along those lines.
And what we have found is a lot of doctors speak openly, which is disgusting, about feelings of after they've done it, euphoria, even erotic feelings, and otherwise. So again, 1800 providers in the country, and roughly 300 are doing the majority of the deaths. And the last data we have is 2023 and that was over 13,000 and change. There's a 241, I think it was. And last year, we don't have the numbers yet because they like to really manipulate that data. We're estimating over 16,000 alone last year.
Eric Huffman: Yeah.
Kelsi Sheren: And right now, it's climbing and doctors can't keep up with the amount of applications of people wanting to die.
Eric Huffman: It's gone up every year since 2016.
Kelsi Sheren: Significantly. The first time I spoke about it was during my book tour to Pierce Morgan, and that was the time where he said, "Do you want to talk about the book?" And I said, "I think I would rather talk about the over 10,500 Canadians who have just been murdered by their government.
Eric Huffman: Right.
Kelsi Sheren: And he said, "What?" Because nobody knows.
Eric Huffman: Because in a few years that'll seem like nothing, because if the numbers hold, the trends hold, that'll be a small number compared to where it's going. You've talked a lot. You're quite a talker and I know you're fired up, and I love it.
Kelsi Sheren: Sorry.
Eric Huffman: There's several threads I want to pull on now.
Kelsi Sheren: Please.
Eric Huffman: And I appreciate your passion. First, you've mentioned several times a death cult or several death cults in Canada. Who are you talking about? What groups comprise that group and what are they up to?
Kelsi Sheren: Yeah. So Dying With Dignity Canada is the largest one. It started back in the 90s and people have always understood what they are. They're concerning at best. They don't value human life and they believe that you should never have to suffer and that everyone should have the right to take their own life.
I've always been very brash and if anybody's seen the way I speak on other shows, I don't care about your feelings, I care about the reality of what is happening. I did a podcast called TRIGGERnometry with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster. Came out this year. And they said, "Well, if somebody wants to take their own life," I said, "perfect, there's a bridge."
Eric Huffman: Yeah. I think that's an important point actually because the body autonomy argument falls apart there.
Kelsi Sheren: Absolutely. And what happens to me and why I say it so uncomfortably is it's not about... I've been in suicide prevention since I got home from overseas. I've lost more friends to suicide than I did on deployment. I've done a TED talk on it that's been banned. I've been very outspoken against the, you know, 22 to 44 a day in America because I served with the Americans. And I said, "You know, what I'm not understanding is why is it getting worse when we're supposed to have all this abundance of care and support and love and community? Why are people still choosing to leave us?"
And I realized that MAID, Medical Assistant Dying, I call it eugenics, I call it what it is, murder, is a symptom of a sick society. It is not a symptom of people wanting to end their life. It is a cry for help of people saying, "I have no support, no community, no faith, no light in my life." And then you have the government and a healthcare system and even department stores on TV, and TV shows, like Netflix did one called Mary Kills People, where they show how this is supposed to be an accepted way of society.
Denmark euthanizes children. You can fly to Switzerland. The leapfrog CEO just did it. He flew over to Switzerland with his family and ended his life at Dignitas. And there are organizations all across the globe like Dying With Dignity. America has a crazy list of rogue actors as well.
But long and short, these organizations can map the Canadian assessors of made practitioners. This is started by another individual who used to deliver babies for a living. And now she chooses to spend her day writing books about the people she kills and gets paid $50,000 a speaking gig. And then they have roughly about $8 million in donations a year. And when you look at the donors, you now start to see and make up the picture. Bell Canada, Telus, all of these large conglomerates and even Catholic institutions and Jewish institutions donating to them, saying, "We hope that it's okay. We want you to help other people to see that they have the right to end their life when they choose." But they don't have the right to invade my healthcare system and make that the standard of care.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. So are you saying that in this system, it's not just that it's offered as an option, which that is happening, but it also comes at the expense of things like hospice? Is hospice no longer being offered?
Kelsi Sheren: No. So here's what's absolutely bananas in Canada. There used to be a hospice about 30 minutes from me. It was called Delta Hospice. The woman that ran it actually went in as a cancer patient thinking she would never come out. And she healed and she came back and she took it over and she fundraised and built this incredible facility.
Health Canada and the government started stating that "if you're not going to provide MAID in the facilities, you're no longer going to have the funding." And so now there is maybe, if a handful in the country that are non-MAID facilities. And there are places in northern British Columbia and other places, like Kelowna, where if you say yes to MAID in your process of dying, at some point, you get a nicer room.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Oh, this is so chilling. I'm trying not to be caught up in alarmism or whatever because you hear about so many different issues that come up on the internet and everything, every day. But this thing, this is serious. It is not just the sign of a sick society. I would say it's the sign of a godless one, people that have lost hope and bad actors taking advantage of that hopelessness and preying on people at their most vulnerable.
It does sound a lot like what you hear about the early days of the abortion movement and the eugenics, you know, part of that, Margaret Sanger, and all of that. Basically, behind the goal, was to eliminate the most inconvenient parts of society or the most expensive ones for some sort of hyper-pragmatic purpose of having a more enlightened utopia, I suppose.
Because, you know, if you can eliminate those people, imagine how much money we would save. Has the money ever come into this conversation at the government level? Are they talking about how much they save now?
Kelsi Sheren: Yes.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Kelsi Sheren: Yeah. So, in 2021, we have a couple different things we can go through here in terms of the financial component.
Eric Huffman: Please.
Kelsi Sheren: The first one is, in 2021, they released a report by saying that just by not providing palliative care for that year, they saved over $86.9 million alone in healthcare. And then, recently, this year, and obviously this is, and I'm very careful to say this, so this is the Journal of Death and Dying by a university, well-researched, peer-reviewed, and published. So, this is not some fringe... This is sage. This is a real, real deal.
But they have actually written down and said, "Hey, look, let's take a look at what Health Canada is planning to do based on the numbers, based on the rollout, based on, you know, just the law as it sits currently and with the expansion attempted to roll out in 2027." And they looked at numbers and mathematics, and I've posted this on my Substack, and it's very easy. You can just Google the words Journal of Death and Dying MAID Canada. It will pop up. It's free. Anyone can see it. So, I'm not trying to hide some... come up with some, you know, number here.
The Journal of Death and Dying was very clear to state that by 2027 to 2047, if Health Canada rolls as it sits now, they're estimated to euthanize 14.7 million Canadians to the tune of 1.273 trillion dollars in savings. That includes the elderly, the mentally ill, veterans, the indigenous population, and even the suicide individuals.
So, instead of providing 72 hours’ worth of care, medical support, and getting them back on their feet and showing them that life is worth living, when you walk into an ER and you ask for a MAID, like it happened when I said this on TRIGGERnometry in June of 2023, at one of the local hospitals here, a woman was suicidal, walked in, asked for help, and they offered her MAID.
So, the savings is to the tune of trillions of dollars with an already crumbling, broken healthcare system. It sounds pretty good. And then when you start to take a look at people like CanMAP, who are the ones who teach all of your doctors how to do it, they are also the ones who advise them on the drugs to use. And what people don't understand about the drugs is not a single one of these drugs is FDA approved for killing, yet Pfizer makes the kits anyway.
Eric Huffman: Pfizer, huh? There's that name again. Oh, man. I want to get into the drugs and the effects they have on people in a moment, but first, I guess I just want to set the table a little bit by, you know, talking about why we're talking about this on a faith podcast.
So, what's the importance to a Christianity podcast, you know, regarding this... why does this matter to us, this program you have in Canada? First of all, as you said, it's spreading across the globe. It's not just Canada. But really, it comes back to what you just talked about with the pragmatism of this, the money saved. It seems, I guess, on one level, to be like a big time savings unless you consider and factor in what a life is worth.
And to Christians, a life is... you can't put a dollar's value on a human life. For people that trust the Bible and the God behind the Bible, it's like God made us in His image, gave us life. Every life is a gift from Him. And so to so, I guess, surreptitiously, just toss it aside and say, you know, this life wasn't worth holding on to or, you know, doing all that we can to, you know, make their lives a little better even if they're dying, that is spiritually a very dangerous road to go down and it could lead to, who knows?
You've been a predictor of several things over the last few years. You've seen things coming like this Track Two craziness. Where do you see this going next? I mean, who else might be in the crosshairs of this movement?
Kelsi Sheren: It's really troubling because I wish that I hadn't seen this if it makes it sound any better.
Eric Huffman: Sure.
Kelsi Sheren: I mean, look, I have a brand. I do suicide prevention. I work with athletes. I do so many different things. I wear a lot of hats. So to then, I would say, dropped into this is not a shock to me. I was born and raised in a Catholic family. I went to Catholic school. I went to church twice a week. I was raised that way until I went to college and then joined the army. And then naturally I went to war and did the whole question, well, if God's real, how can this be okay? And you go through that loss of who you are and identity.
And so it was only when I was hyper suicidal on 11 different drugs, told I would never function again at the age of 19 after my injury overseas that when somebody reached out to me and said, "I know that you've tried everything. Have you thought of ayahuasca?" And I said, "I don't care what it takes, but if I don't try something now, I'm not going to be here anymore." So I was at my last kick at the can.
I had lost my faith for so long after the war, which I think is a very common theme. I hear this a lot. When I finally did sit with the medicine, it's where I, you know, saw my first child I lost again, I saw God again. And I realized that, "Oh, you haven't ever left. You've always been here. I just haven't been able to hear you."
And so I was able to, through psychedelic-assisted therapy, come back to my faith in a really powerful way. And fortunately, unfortunately, it brought me here.
I had a veteran friend of mine reach out to me and say, Kelsi, one of our guys, when he was asking for help from Veterans Affairs Canada, was just offered, they said it would be easier than blowing his brains out on the wall. I immediately knew I had a platform, and I decided I was going to expose that as loudly as possible. That's how that started.
And it shortly followed with my chiropractor and my neurospecialist up here, who are very religious, very faith-based, was cracking me up one day and goes, "Hey, I got to talk to you about something. A woman at our church just got an email from this death group asking all of them to come to a library to learn about the new healthcare experience of MAID and how wonderful and beautiful it was." And they were terrified.
And they had seen me on podcasts and said, "Well, maybe she can bring this to light." And from that moment on, I've been battling up against what I would consider the darkness in a very aggressive way and been trying to do everything I can to protect myself mentally, spiritually, and in all other ways. I'm currently going through a lot of things against the government and being banned here for speaking out. And that has a lot of repercussions.
Eric Huffman: I can only imagine.
Kelsi Sheren: So, we're doing what we can, but what I've realized is that I never... I don't know that I ever predicted this fully, but what I did see was a trend of accepting things that we shouldn't be accepting that didn't feel right to me. I'm a very intuition-based person. I'm not so much up here. I'm more in here.
And I say that because I believe when we finally remove toxic pharmaceutical medications that are unnecessary and we commit to a healthy lifestyle of movement and community and love and just really leaning into the process of life, you can start to hear yourself and God speak in a different way. And that's really what happened to me here. So I can't put it down. And I don't know that I knew it was going to happen, but I had a bad feeling, if I didn't say something, this was only going to get worse.
Eric Huffman: And I'm sure it has felt like an uphill climb. If for no other reason then, the whole government's against you. But also it's a wildly popular program. I was shocked as I was researching it, how popular it seems to be among Canadians. What do you attribute that to? And do you see that changing maybe?
Kelsi Sheren: Data manipulation. I don't think it's this popular.
Eric Huffman: Really.
Kelsi Sheren: I think the polls, just like every other poll, can't be trusted in this country. We're a hyper-manipulated, hyper-propagandized nation with iron curtains that are... the only other countries in the world are Russia, China, and North Korea that have them. We have freedom of speech issues here. We have weapons protection right issues. You can get arrested for tweets like you can in the UK. Not as bad, yeah, but we're rolling into
We have an erosion of what was the Canadian identity and population for an understanding that the only people really utilizing this program are White, by the way. They're 96% white. And so currently, we are seeing individuals who essentially get left in nursing homes, and are left to kind of die there, you know, they're difficult to look after and all that they put them in nursing homes. And those are the ones being targeted.
So these organizations... this goes back to the 90s, right? They've always said, like, "We want to eliminate the difficult the burdens on society, and we want to do it under the guise of compassion and care." But true compassion and care is holding your loved one as they pass away in their arms while they cross the Rainbow Bridge and don't walk alone. It's not putting two IVs in their arms, pumping them full of so many drugs and paralyzing them while their lungs explode, and they drown to death. That's not compassion and care.
But what has happened, and I believe this wholeheartedly, because I don't believe in polls, I think it's pretty clear things can be manipulated to go with whomever, right?
Eric Huffman: Yes, we see that.
Kelsi Sheren: I mean, 80% of my business is in America. I follow you guys' politics very well. What I will say is that we have seen things manipulated. It's mainly, I would say, the more Ontario-Quebec base, so the middle of the country, which is like the hyper, hyper-liberal, massive population that really seems to lean into this.
But you go to places like Alberta, which are like Texas for us, and they're like, "Yeah, we're not doing this." But then you go to where I live, and they're like super liberal, and they're like, "Everybody has the right to die." And you're like, "Damn, what about the right to live?"
So when we start to look at this, I don't know that people believe it as much as they say, I think there's two things happening. Our healthcare system is so fractured and crumbling under our eyes. We are hopeless, we are helpless, and we don't know what else to do. And people are checking out early because they are homeless, because there's financial strain, because their family members have made them feel a burden, and because we have nowhere to put them, because we've brought in over 800,000 people from India this last Q1 and 2 alone. Canada is crumbling, and the rest of us are going, "What are our taxes going to? How do I survive? I can't pay my bills. Maybe. You know what, I don't have kids. I don't have responsibility. Maybe it's just time to go."
Eric Huffman: "My doctor told me," right? "Doctor said it was a good idea or whatever. It's an option."
Kelsi Sheren: "My doctor said."
Eric Huffman: Let's say you're disabled and need some orthopedic surgery, and that's caused you to be depressed, and it's 18 months away from possible surgery, that's a long time. That feels like a very long time when you're really suffering. And so, you know, that's how you can see this shift from terminally ill people only to anyone who feels like it, basically, with the doctor's consent.
Kelsi Sheren: Yes.
Eric Huffman: It's truly chilling. Again, I'm grateful for your courage and speaking out against it. I would like to talk now about your personal story and why exactly you've got a fire under you about this. And you've alluded to it a little bit, but it starts, I think, with your military service. Just take us back to that, how you got into the military, and things you saw in places like Afghanistan that left you traumatized.
Kelsi Sheren: I think anybody who goes to war is going to have those feelings. At least I hope. Otherwise, we're going to be talking about a sociopath. War is messy and war is uncomfortable. But in 2007, I went to college. I've never been a school person, not a big academic. And I met a lady on a bus. Just one of those weird moments after Remembrance Day, which is Veterans Day for you guys. Ours is more of a solemn thing you guys kind of celebrate, but we're following the British, so we wear poppies, that little red poppy you guys see. And that's Remembrance Day for us.
So I went to the ceremony. I came back to college, and there was a lady on a bus, and she was in a uniform. And I just got talking to her and it was like this, like, click. You know, I had never been, never hunted, never carried a gun. We didn't have guns. I think my dad had a 22 in the woods for raccoons. We weren't like, you know, military family.
At the time, Afghanistan had been going off. America loves to go to war, and because we're NATO, we get to join. So, in 2007, I decided I was going to quit college and go join the Army. And so I did that in November, I was sworn in December, and I went to basic training in January of 2008.
As soon as I got there, they said, we're in an active war, and based on your trade is you will be deploying next year.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: And I said, "Okay." So I had one year to.
Eric Huffman: Were you 20?
Kelsi Sheren: I was 18. I was 18. So, I mean, I was going to deploy at 19. My job was, at the time, I know Americans have them now, but Canada has kind of always had women on the front lines. So, my job was an artillery gunner. My job was a mortarman. And I ran the M777 155-millimeter howitzers. I ran them on a team of five to seven guys. Our job was to support our infantry and send rounds on range.
I did my training. And then on graduation, I got the, "Oh, hey, by the way, you're going to an all-French unit." And I went, "Okay." They're like, so you're going to have to go learn French and then learn all of this in French in the next six months before you go.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: So I said, "Okay." So I got to my unit. They didn't speak English. I didn't speak French. We just did the yes, no toaster game for a while. I ended up deploying in April of 2009 to September of 2009.
Eric Huffman: Where?
Kelsi Sheren: I was in Afghanistan, in the Kandahar province. And then my unit was taken and borrowed by an American unit. And so I got the privilege of going to serve at FOB Ramrod in the Maywand district. It's now been since renamed, but I served with a lot of the guys from the 101st and otherwise, and my artillery guns shot and mortar shot support for those guys at that FOB.
That was great. I loved my job. I liked to mess with the guys on the radios in French only because it was easy and I could. That was a good time talking to Texas boys in a French accent.
Eric Huffman: I'm sure.
Kelsi Sheren: Yeah, they didn't like it. And then we got this random call one day in end of May, beginning of June, they pulled me into the comms tent and they said, "Listen, you got to go." I said, "Well, where am I going? You know, where am I going?" They said, "You've been picked by the British military to go on an on-foot operation outside the wire on this operation, and you're going to go and be the female searcher with them. And your job is going to be to kick the doors in, and find the women and kids and go search them and just back your guys."
And I said, "Okay, but I'm an artillery gunner." And they said, "Yeah, well, you know, everyone who joins the military is an infantryman first." And I said, "All right, Roger, let's go."
So we got me prepared, got me ready, tacked up my gear. I got picked up by one of the Chinooks one day and left my unit and went and got dropped off to the 3rd Scott Battalion of the British military at Kandahar and then got a briefing that night. And then the next day I set out off foot onto the Panjwayi district of Afghanistan on an operation in June.
Then I went through the worst week of my entire life. And that's where I wrote about it in the book. And I was very honest and open about what had happened to me, but essentially, you know, we had IEDs, we had firefights, and not everybody came home.
Eric Huffman: So sorry.
Kelsi Sheren: It was my first [gut?]. People ask me a lot, "Do you regret what you did?" And I say, "No, and I never will because it made me who I am. And I'm grateful for those experiences as difficult as they were at the age of 19."
But I know that everybody's time is a different time and that you're there to do a job and be wherever you are. Wherever that is supposed to be, you're supposed to be right there. And so I'm just grateful. There was a lot of very uncomfortably close calls for me, and I'm still walking now because of those, thank God. And I have lifelong friends and I have stories that some people will never get to experience in their lifetime. And I got to help what I think was help as much as I could.
Eric Huffman: It's the hearing loss because of something that happened that week.
Kelsi Sheren: I have hearing loss from being an artillery gunner and having a hundred-pound round go down range beside my brain over and over for a four-year period.
Eric Huffman: I guess that'll do it.
Kelsi Sheren: That'll do it.
Eric Huffman: What exactly did you personally see or do that week that had people asking if you regretted any of it? What was the worst of it?
Kelsi Sheren: I think losing... you know, when you go to Afghanistan, the military and, you know, the media at the time, they show you the coffins with the flags coming home and these are the bad guys and these are the people you go take out. And so you're really in that mindset. As hard as that is to say, killing is wrong, I understand, but I always with a belief set, I'm going home, I'm going home. And if that's what I have to do, then that's what I have to do.
Eric Huffman: You have to have that mindset in that situation.
Kelsi Sheren: Yeah. Of course, I was 19. So there's naivety and there's that mentality. So, for me, we were on an operation and we were clearing a massively wide open field, which you never want to have to go, and we were in the middle of nowhere and we were going to be going down a road and two of our people went up ahead with a metal detector and a machine gun to clear out a great putt and the area so we could all start going down the pathway.
And while we were sitting there waiting, it was just too quiet. Quiet overseas is never a really comfortable thing. We were just sitting there and next thing you knew, I felt the ground shake like I've never felt before in my life. And I looked to the left, and I watched my friend explode into pieces. And then our machine gunner took the brunt of it out the door and he survived, but he took the brunt.
from that moment on, we got attacked by the Taliban, and we were getting mortar rounds dropped on us, and we were getting shot at from tree lines. My job with a couple of people was to run to make sure I get this one guy with the medic, get him onto the Blackhawk, and then get inside that compound or that great putt and start doing collection of everything, so that we don't leave anything behind.
At the time that was my first death I had witnessed, and it was my first outside the wire firefight. And my job was body collection. So we collect everything. We don't leave anything behind and we put every... whatever you can fit on a stretcher, then everything else in your pockets.
So that's what happened. I'll save you guys the nitty-gritty details of that so you can sleep tonight. And then we ran outside the great putt through a field being shot at, and got back to the compound as quickly as possible. And the Pedro flights came, which are the American Blackhawks. And there come in two and one picked up our friend and he was just, you know, bleeding and going through the process and, you know, just very out of it and just kept saying, "Where's so-and-so? Where's so-and-so? Where's so-and-so?" And you don't want to put someone in shock, so you go, "Ah, he's good. He's on the next one. He's on the next one. You're good." Meanwhile, he's in pieces behind him in a tarp.
So you just got to get him back. And then one of the other Blackhawks, it was one of the most beautiful sounds I'll never forget to this day, just took up and unleashed living hell. And it was just like a relief.
After that, we pushed forward. That was the second day we were out there and the first time I had experienced that. And then from then on, it was a continuous... they knew where we were now. And so we were being targeted for the rest of that operation. We had the unit down the road hit a massive IED when they went in and lost a bunch of guys. Their female searcher didn't do well. It didn't go great with her either.
Then I was getting shifted between units because there's only like two female searchers that were Canadian with us, and me and her. So we were getting shifted between units. So we were just constantly kicking in doors and taking women and kids. There was just a lot of... you know, the perception is women and women over there are on our side, and that's not reality. So they're very violent and they're very dangerous. So having to go through that.
And then there was a couple of close calls, you know, on the situation with roofs where we got flanked and... you know, just really bad things. By the grace of God, the sniper from South Africa that was lying beside me, jumped down, left his rifle on top of the roof and it protected my hip when three rounds came in and missed me by a little bit. But I was lucky because it hit the buttstock of his rifle. So now I have that tattooed on my finger.
Eric Huffman: Is that right?
Kelsi Sheren: Right. Mm-hmm. But at the end of the day, you know, the operation, the things we saw, the things we did, I was just grateful to be able to support the British military and do my job effectively and believe that I did the best I could with what I had to work with. I think I handled myself not bad, at least from their perception for what I had to do, being a five-foot, a hundred-pound person carrying 60 pounds.
Eric Huffman: Are you five-feet tall?
Kelsi Sheren: I sure am.
Eric Huffman: You seem a lot bigger than that when you talk.
Kelsi Sheren: I know.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: Listen, it's delusion.
Eric Huffman: It's not every day a 6'4 guy gets to talk to a five-foot woman that could kick his butt. But I'll take it today.
Kelsi Sheren: Thanks. But after that, they ended up bringing me to the hospital right after and they diagnosed me pretty immediately. They diagnosed me with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. And then they decided to put me on 11 different psychoactive drugs, send me back out to the artillery guns, not tell my staff.
And then I almost took a life of somebody because there was a little girl outside her compound that used to walk around and she always waved, but I thought she was pointing. And I racked around and something in me just said, "Stop." And I ran off the tower and was like, "Something's wrong." And that's when they said, "Okay, we're going to send you back."
So I ended up going back to the hospital before my unit about three weeks before the end, like the actual end of my deployment, got to my unit, told I was done, never saw my guys again, and was sent to the hospital and never heard from the military for about six months.
Eric Huffman: Wow. My goodness. For somebody that's never struggled in any way close to what you just described, help me understand what it's like to be inside the mind of somebody who's got PTSD to that degree. Do you just feel frantic? Do you feel paranoid? Do you feel unsafe at all times? What's it like?
Kelsi Sheren: All of those things. You don't feel. So that's the first one. You don't feel. You can't feel. You're so numb. That's why when people come home with mental health issues, you often get addiction, promiscuity, drug addicts. You get behaviors trying to feel, your body's trying to feel.
For me, I was hyper paranoid. Anybody that was wearing a burqa or a niqab was the enemy to me. I unfortunately attacked a family at a Walmart when I was wearing... I was at home and this family was standing there and his wife was in a burqa and they had children and he had looked me up and down and I went at him to say the least. And my mom was there, thank God, to stop that.
I would go in and out of flashbacks. I stopped sleeping for days on end. I was hyper suicidal. I couldn't be left alone very often. I had moments of bliss where I could fake things really well, but I ultimately was on 11 different drugs. And so I was not in my right mind. I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe half the time. I felt like there was something standing on my chest.
My nightmares were so bad I had to change my sheets twice a night. I would just shake. I looked over my shoulder everywhere I went, every sound, every firework, every pop, every noise, if I didn't know what was going on. I was so hyper-stimulated. I lived in fight or flight. I had gut health issues.
My traumatic brain injury hadn't been diagnosed. We didn't know what was going on with my head. My frontal lobe was shutting down. My gut health was eroding. I was bumping into stuff because my vestibular system was off. So I didn't know where I was in time and space. And I just slowly started to erode. And then they tried to retrain me in 2010. And they said, "If we can get you retrained, you'll deploy again." I said, "Okay, I love my job. I want to go back." You know, you want to go back. That's it. You don't want to leave. You want to go back. And any soldier who has been overseas, who's lost someone will go, "Oh, you want to go back. All right."
And so they tried, they brought me to a range, and they said, "Okay, you'll work two half days here a week." And I did. And then one day there was a grenade range they wanted me to go clear for a unit that was just tossing grenades. And I went to step on the sand and I collapsed. And they said, "Yeah, we think she's done."
They end up medically releasing me in May of 2011, and med boarded me out with a hundred percent disability. Now I am just what the government likes to call is like a broken toy, if you will.
Eric Huffman: Wow. Is it hard for you to talk about this stuff? I feel like I don't want to open a scab or something, you know?
Kelsi Sheren: You know, through God, through my family, through my very patient psychiatrist, who's been with me since 2011, who is a Rwanda Bosnia veteran himself, I have learned that it's okay to feel and it's okay to experience because it's what you do when you get to tell the stories of those that are no longer here. It's how you keep them alive. So I don't have the feelings I used to have. Now I hold gratitude for the situation and I'm grateful because I can feel now.
Eric Huffman: Amen. I'm glad to hear that.
Kelsi Sheren: So it's okay.
Eric Huffman: I'm so sorry to hear about all the other stuff, stories you've shared. I can't even imagine it. And you're so young Kelsi. I just couldn't stop thinking about the timing of it all because I wonder what the chances are if it had been, you know, 2019 instead of 2009, for example. Like what are the chances that coming back from everything you came back from that you would have been offered MAID?
Kelsi Sheren: Oh, for sure. I know. I know. I was in and out of suicidality. I wrote about it a lot in my book because I think it's important to be honest with people that I was suicidal. There was a moment where my ex-husband, actually, we were dating at the time called me and I decided I was watching a movie I probably shouldn't have been watching because it triggered the heck out of me. It was called The Kingdom and it's a great movie. My goodness. They did a fantastic job. If you've seen that movie, that's a brilliant movie, really well done.
I was watching it and I got stuck on repeat. And I remember sitting there thinking to myself in my empty house by myself in Ottawa, you know, the military told me I was broken. I had no purpose anymore. I don't know who I am. At this time I'm 21. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to give him a call. If he doesn't answer, that's my sign. It's time to go." And he picked up the phone. After that, you know, I decided, "Okay, I'm going to try."
Finally they got me a good doctor. I had case workers for a long time and that wasn't working. We didn't have the proper training back then. My sergeant to this day, I'm dear friends with him now, Mark LeBlanc. He's an officer now. He just retired after over 27 years. They brought me back to shoot my last and in 2022 to basically make up for what had happened to me and said, "You know, we never knew what happened to you. They didn't tell us. They didn't tell us after. They didn't tell us what happened to you outside the wire. We had no clue. You were just there and you were just gone." And so he feels, you know, to this day, he goes, "I hate that you were left alone to deal with that. We couldn't help you."
He goes, "I was 27. I couldn't help you. You were one of my people, but I didn't know how to help you. I had gone to Bosnia and done some stuff, but I didn't know what to do." And so you don't have to ask me. You don't have to apologize. I'm still here and I'm okay. But I got a doctor given to me in Vancouver, finally named Dr. Greg Passy. And this man has been treating veterans for over 40 years and never, ever lost one to suicide.
Eric Huffman: Goodness. What a hero.
Kelsi Sheren: He's a man that I will, for the rest of my life... I told him, "I don't care when you retire. I'm never leaving."
Eric Huffman: "You're stuck with me."
Kelsi Sheren: "You're stuck with me." He goes, "I know."
Eric Huffman: I think that's important to say, you know... I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's good doctors in Canada. It's easy to sort of throw the whole system under the bus. And there's a lot wrong, obviously, but there are good doctors fighting a good fight in Canada.
Kelsi Sheren: You know what? There for sure are. I have a lot of them that email me very privately who are anesthesiologists, who are obese, who are people who are in the system, hearing this stuff, saying, "Push harder. You're in the right spot. Push harder. It's worse than you think. Keep going." And these are my neighbors who are... you know, they're Christians and they have children. And they say, like, "Kelsi, we don't always see eye to eye, we didn't see eye to eye during the pandemic, but we definitely... they'll come up to me and be like, "Hey, I heard that episode. You're on the right track. Keep going. Lean in there. Push there."
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: And so I know there are good doctors and I know there are good nurses and practitioners and politicians who don't want to see this continue. But unfortunately, with Bill C-11, which is the internet censorship, the only way these messages get out is when people like you see me somewhere and say, "Hey, I want to talk to her." And it's only because Americans have given me a platform to do this.
When Lex Fridman gave me the platform in 2021, when I was involved in the Afghanistan pullout, you know, when Jocko gave me the platform, you know, I just did Jillian Michaels new show, I just did Sam Tripoli, like a comedian talked to me because he's like, "Somebody needs to hear this." You know, Jordan Peterson called me after talking to Constantine. And it's like everyone is seeing that I'm just trying to like... I don't have a choice.
I don't know how to explain this, so let me try to say this in my jumbled, chaotic way. I don't feel like this is me. Because I can say that now and I can say it with deep conviction. I feel like something else is using me to talk and they're using me because they know I'm stubborn and they're using me because they know I'm not afraid and they know that I will scream and I will show up on everyone's doorstep until the day Joe Rogan finally agrees to let me yell for three hours so we can get the government to understand that we are not killing people anymore.
Eric Huffman: Amen. You can yell at me as long as you want. Until Rogan says yes, yell at guys like me. I just want you to call it what it is. It's not just something.
Kelsi Sheren: It's murder.
Eric Huffman: Well, I want you to call that voice that's called you to do this work. It's God. God has called you and equipped you for it. And you talked earlier about being a person of great intuition and, you know, your heart knows right from wrong and you can't not talk about it. That's God given. That's the image of God and Kelsi. And so claim it and don't shy away from it and, you know, keep speaking up because it is bigger than you.
Kelsi Sheren: And you know what's crazy? I would like to be able to go to a grocery store and not talk about it. I'd like to be able to go to a dinner party and be like, "Don't ask her. Don't ask her what she does." I'm not kidding, I swear on my life, two days ago, I was in a stadium filled with 33,000 people, and somehow I got slammed by people in front of me because I was talking about politics about something I wanted to say. Somebody brought something, I said, "No, you need to hear this." And I'm sorry. I will shove it down your throat because you need to hear this.
Eric Huffman: And it's not because it's your favorite thing to talk about. You must rather talk about something else. Biblically it's what we call prophetic reluctance. The Bible prophets didn't want to be prophets. Nobody ever wants to be a prophet because your life is over for all intents and purposes. No one's going to like you ever again. You read Jeremiah and is like, "God, please let me out of this work."
Preachers talk about the hounds of heaven just chasing you down until you agree to speak up. It's a gift. It's a privilege to speak up for the side of what's right in the light of God. But it is a heavy, heavy burden, but your five-foot shoulders, you are more than equipped to handle that heavy burden in part, because of everything you went through.
Kelsi Sheren: Well, my mom said that too. She goes, "Kelsi," I'm not kidding. She goes, "I remember it in grade one, Ms. Tratnick, your teacher came up to me and goes, God, that girl cannot stop talking, but don't ever stop her."
Eric Huffman: See.
Kelsi Sheren: "She's going to do something with it."
Eric Huffman: Years before you ever knew this mission, God was preparing you for it, Kelsi.
Kelsi Sheren: Something like that.
Eric Huffman: It's almost like He knows what He's doing. I want to circle back quickly to a question I asked you earlier that we didn't quite tie up, which was, was there a chance you would have been offered MAID, you know, if it was post-2016? And you said, "Absolutely." I guess the deeper question is at your worst moment, would you have accepted it?
Kelsi Sheren: 100%. I don't question that even in my moment. I don't question that because... I tried really hard in this book because again, I barely graduated high school. So this isn't some intellectual book to read. This isn't some crazy difficult read. But I tried to put every other page, the voice in my head, the thing, the darkness that was there overlooking me.
And the only way I can visually see it is like, don't just think of the devil and the angel. I want you to think of a massive shadow that follows you around that's 10 feet tall, that just pushes down on your shoulders at every waking moment. And anytime you go, "Oh, today was a good day," it comes in and reminds you how horrible you are, how dark you are, how broken you are, how many people you've hurt.
It's what PTSD is, the intrusive thoughts. It's this voice, this darkness that creeps in. And I know for a fact that if I was offered it, I would have taken it because it would have removed... And this is what I think people need to understand is when you remove the responsibility, it's much easier to do the thing. That's why, excuse me, suicide is a moment of impulse, right? It has to be this overwhelming thing. And it often happens at night when we're at our weakest moments, our most exhausted, our most broken down. At least my friends have passed in the night that way.
What I have found is that when that voice wins, you just need it to stop. Taking a breath feels like running a marathon when you're in that much pain. I can't express it to people. It's like having concrete bricks on every limb of your body and every time you try to breathe. And so if I was offered MAID, I 100% would have taken it and not because I would have been even worried about what God would have thought, but I need the excruciating pain to stop.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. I think that's a very valid and important point. It's so compassionate to hear you say that too, because a lot of times around suicide, I've noticed in Christian circles, there's anger people feel toward the person that commits suicide or finger-pointing and "well, they were just selfish." I'm just like, "Guys, no, you don't understand," what it's like for people at the end of the rope, literally, and just how little they feel like they have left. And the pressure of that shadow you talked about, it is unsustainable. And so they are out of resources to deal with it."
Your life testifies to the fact that you can get through that and you can live again. But if you have as an option in that moment, a doctor or two saying, you know, maybe this, it is understandable why, sadly, there are an untold number of, you know, Kelsis potentially who are no longer with us today.
Kelsi Sheren: Oh, for sure.
Eric Huffman: You're here, you've bounced back, you're healing, you're speaking out, the light of God is in you and shining through you. And we have that because you were, by God's grace, able to get through your darkest moment. But if you have medical professionals in your darkest moment saying, "Hey, here's this way out, can imagine what that robs the world of."
Kelsi Sheren: Oh, I mean, for sure. I think about it and it's not just... you know, I had Dr. Greg Passy and at the time I had a supportive partner and I had people around me that were just like, "You're in bed for two weeks. It's okay. We got you. You're going to shower today. We're going to get you out of bed. We're going to walk you through the path." And I'll never fault my ex-husband for that. He was very solid on that. He went through a lot of hell with me, a lot of hell with me and never gave up.
And what I will say though, is that it took more than that. My healthcare system wasn't going to help me. Dr. Passy helped me. That was the man that helped me. The next step for me was an army ranger that saw I was drowning. I had started my podcast, which is now the Kelsi Sheren Perspective, in 2020. It's about to hit its fifth year. At the time it was called Brass and Unity, which is my brand name. So we just kind of rolled it at one time.
Eric Huffman: Sure.
Kelsi Sheren: I had been around operators before in Canada and I wanted to talk to some other ones in America. And so I reached out to a former ranger named... he goes by Griff, but he runs a company called Combat Flip Flops. he just seemed like this guy. I was like, "I'd love to have you on the show. I think you'd be a cool guy to talk to about resiliency." He was an officer. Like, "Let's have a conversation."
So he came on the show, and he was in Washington, and I'm up here in Vancouver, and we did a virtual one. And at the end of the episode, he leaned in — I call him the wise owl. I do. He's my wise owl old man — and he goes, "Are you okay?" I was like, "Yeah, no, I'm doing great. I'm just great."
He said, "Try again." And he looked right through me. And he said, "Look, I'm going to offer you something. I don't know you that well, I don't know if you know about this, but you kind of seem like you're at that point, and I know you're doing all the things, and I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, but sometimes we just got to reach outside the box and go, 'Hey, go with God, let's just try whatever we can. We have a group of operators in 30 days going to do ayahuasca here. Will you come?'" And I said, "I don't really know you. I don't know what that is, but yes, I'm coming."
And so I told my doctor I'm going, and he said, "Look, I know, I know I've known a long time. I'll never be able to tell you what to do, but I'll be right here when you get back, and whatever that looks like, we'll go through it together."
And I spent three days with a bunch of Rangers, MARSOC Marines, Blackwater dudes, just the top tier of guys, 10 of us in a year, with some people and some medicine, and just letting go completely. I came out of that, and that was the moment I said, "I can do this again." I just gave up. I said, "If this isn't it, I don't know what else it will be."
And so Griff started this thing for me, and I realized I could do it, and then I had a community again. I had a group of people who wanted to see me live. From that moment on, I started working with Jesse Gould, who was a former Ranger from Heroic Hearts Project, who helps get psychedelic-assisted therapies for veterans. And he helps change legislation in America to get research and everything else, along with other people like Marcus Capone, who was a SEAL team six guy from Vets, and a dear friend of mine.
I just said like, "Look, if we're going to do this, I got to lean in. How do I help you?" And since then I've been, you know, donating my time and helping other veterans get ready to go do this, and show them they can get through this, and how can we help them. And it's all because, you know, a Ranger who had no business helping me, and a charity who put me into brain treatment because they saw me on a podcast, because Canada wouldn't treat me, and Defenders of Freedom got special permission. And I was the first female and the first Canadian they ever treated. And they brought me to Texas, and they just grabbed my hand, and Donna Cranston just said, "I got you darling." And that was it.
Eric Huffman: She sounds Texan.
Kelsi Sheren: Oh, she sure is that woman.
Eric Huffman: You know, we're in Houston. I don't know if I told you that or not, but-
Kelsi Sheren: No, I didn't know that.
Eric Huffman: I wish we had time to go in more with the psychedelics conversation, because obviously that's something-
Kelsi Sheren: Any time. I'm always happy to chat.
Eric Huffman: ...maybe another episode we could have you back because it's a topic I want to get into more, and I need to bone up on. I'm tacitly familiar, but I feel like a lot of pastors, myself included, have been pretty dismissive or even derisive toward the ayahuasca and other psychedelics being used to, you know, find peace, find God. And I've seen negative effects of it on the part of mostly young, rich dudes that sort of just want to have some fun. But your situation's radically different, and if it brought you in a sincere way closer to God or reintroduced you to God some way, I'd love to hear more about that sometime.
Whatever it was that brought you back, you have been a workhorse for truth, and I would say for God on the front lines of this battle regarding MAID and the sanctity of life, in addition to your podcast, which... is it called The Kelsi Sheren Podcast? It is, right?
Kelsi Sheren: The Kelsi Sheren Perspective.
Eric Huffman: Kelsi Sheren Perspective. And your jewelry company, which-
Kelsi Sheren: Brass and Unity.
Eric Huffman: You've got your Substack. I know you've been doing some deep digging on what's going on with the latest with the death cults and MAID. You were talking, before we started rolling, about your latest piece. Do you want to share a little bit about that?
Kelsi Sheren: Yeah, I would love to. I'll be very brief. So, going through this process, I'm in this MAID group of what I call them, my merry band of weirdos. There's 50 of us who are just like on this 24/7—doctors, lawyers, people like me, family members—and we just put data in all the time. And, you know, they sent something in there two days ago, and I go, "Are you aware that Health Canada is now sponsoring and paying for CanMAP's new medical journal, which is going to promote death, and they just partnered with the Canadian Blood Services?"
Eric Huffman: Real quick, just to make sure we're keeping up, because who is Health Canada? Who is CanMAP?
Kelsi Sheren: Health Canada is our government and our medical system. Health Canada is the umbrella. And then CanMAP is the Canadian assessors of MAID practitioners. I know I said it wrong. But they're the people who train all of our doctors how to kill people.
And then Health Canada just started paying for their medical journal and then partnered with, and then had sponsored the CanMAP conference where all the doctors go to talk about how do we kill more people. The Canadian Blood Services. So you know, you know how you guys can go donate blood and then they distribute, that's Canadian Blood Services. They manage blood, plasma, stem cells, organs, and tissue. And they have been sponsoring these doctors in the conferences.
So what we're seeing now is this very uncomfortable correlation of our government sponsoring a medical journal, which will keep the standards for doctors, then teaching the doctors how to do it while sponsored by the people that make the money off of the blood and the organ donations, and shaping our entire medical culture.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: So that's concerning.
Eric Huffman: Just when you thought it couldn't get creepier, there's an emerging, burgeoning industry of organs and blood that's lucrative and probably serving the wealthiest and most privileged Canadians, I would guess.
Kelsi Sheren: Well, we export a lot, but we also have the College of Physicians in Quebec now advocating for MAID for children from zero to one, if they're born with a disability.
Eric Huffman: Wait, say that again. They're advocating to have a third track of infants?
Kelsi Sheren: Yeah. So they've always been... they've advocated now. So the head of the College of Physicians who trains all of our incoming doctors has publicly stated since 2022 that we should be considering euthanasia for children born with Down syndrome, spinal bifida, or any other ailment from the ages of zero to one.
Eric Huffman: Wow. How much traction is that getting?
Kelsi Sheren: Enough that the head of SickKids... So there was a child that we were just helping named Vea. Vea just recently passed away. She had medically complex Down syndrome and she needed a liver transplant. Her mother reached out to us because her daughter had been poisoned at SickKids. This is very public. I'm not saying anything that's not out there in the world.
I informed her that the doctor that was responsible for her daughter's PICU team and the head of SickKids Toronto was just speaking at CanMAP's conference on why we should have mature minors be allowed to use MAID.
Eric Huffman: Again, mature minors being a subjective term.
Kelsi Sheren: It's children.
Eric Huffman: But it's not even a certain age. It's just whatever a doctor thinks is mature.
Kelsi Sheren: Preferred. That's how they are wording it. Yes, very loosely.
Eric Huffman: Everything's worded loosely. You know, what'd you say earlier? The Track One was for I guess a more firm sort of group, which is the folks that are terminally ill will die within six months or something. And then track two was for, what was it? Untreatable?
Kelsi Sheren: Non-foreseeable death.
Eric Huffman: Non-foreseeable death, which again, you just get more and more vague until it's, you know, everybody's going to have a track.
Kelsi Sheren: Well, think of it this way. I just had a whistleblower on the show named Tammy, and she was a palliative care nurse. And she said, "Kelsi, the word palliative, we are all palliative the moment we come out of the womb."
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Clock's ticking.
Kelsi Sheren: We all start ticking. So if the term is palliative, if you have to be palliative, then by definition, doesn't that mean everyone is palliative?
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Wow.
Kelsi Sheren: So that's the fear. Now, the reason it's so important outside of the, what I call the communist country of blanket of information to be able to speak to Americans is because I have sat down with the United States State Department and I have made them aware of their own country and what they're doing. And they were not aware of what was being done in their own legislation.
You have 10 states and one jurisdiction doing this, and you have votes on the table almost in every state to expand this. So I do caution if you are an American... And this is not just... right, this is not blue states. Montana, Republicans just voted for this. So I caution you to always please take a look at the policies around medical care that are coming forward in the next little bit, because like the organizations that are similar to Dying with Dignity Canada, the organizations state this very clearly and very emphatically: "We just need to pass one and we can amend from there."
Eric Huffman: Yeah, that's right. Get the foot in the door and then you're off to the races. Kelsi, we're out of time, but I just want to encourage you, and encourage everybody watching or listening to follow you and support you if they can. What's the best way somebody can come alongside of you, in addition to prayer, obviously, and speaking up as well in our own right best we can, what more can we do?
Kelsi Sheren: I do let people know, I do speak very aggressively. I do curse. I know that's not always welcome, but just trust me, there's a time and a place. So if you read some of my writing, and you see, and you're like, "Whoa," just go with me on this.
Eric Huffman: A little disclaimer for the Christians in the room.
Kelsi Sheren: I have a lot of Christians who are like, "I can't mess with you." And I'm like, "Listen, if the word's going to stop you, I'm not sure how to help." So what I say is everything I say comes from a very intentional place of love and light, and sometimes I am still a daughter of the military who served with all men. So Substack is how you can help me there. It's free. You can do paid or free. Free is great. I love that. I just want the information out there.
If you have connections, I do a lot of keynotes and come donate my time to people. I come and speak at churches. I come and speak at pro-life events. I come and speak at conferences at schools. I educate. I'm also on the other side of my nonprofit work, I help veterans, first responders through my business, Brass and Unity, where we donate the money to these organizations to get the support for the veterans that they need. I am also a professional athlete coach. So I work with CEOs, athletes, and people who are struggling with their life, trying to find who they are, how they are, and how to move forward with intention in terms of the psychedelics.
I'm an integration specialist. So the reason that goes wrong is because people don't know how to integrate what they've learned, and they go off the deep end. So plant medicine is about intention and integration.
And then I have my show, The Kelsi Sheren Perspective, and I speak anywhere that is called to me to go and help the best I can. But I have a website, it's KelsiSheren.com, or you can follow me, Kelsi Sheren, on any platform on social media.
Eric Huffman: Awesome. I hope our listeners and watchers will do just that. I'd love to have you come speak at our church sometime, as long as we can agree on which words you're going to say.
Kelsi Sheren: I don't swear if I'm told not to. There's a line, right?
Eric Huffman: You can throw a damn in there once in a while, but let's leave it there.
Kelsi Sheren: You got it.
Eric Huffman: You're an inspiration. I sense God at work in you. I know you're not asking me for my take, but I hope you lean more into that and understand and see that this is not just a fight of right and wrong. It's good versus evil. It's God versus Satan. And naming that and seeing your work as a service to God's kingdom is a good reminder. And I think it adds more power and weight to your work and your words. And just claim the name, you know, you're serving him by fighting for the sanctity of life and the value, the unquantifiable value of every human life, because each one is precious.
Kelsi Sheren: I appreciate that. I would always value your opinion, you know, now, in emails down the road. I feel like we'll stay connected. I hope we stay connected. I hope there's something I can do to help. I kind of always came at it from the place of... I just come at the world with an open hand, and I stopped trying to control everything, and I stopped trying to, you know, work a certain way, and I stopped trying to... you know, I just kind of said this year, I moved, I went through a big transition in my life and I said, "You know what, I can't control everything, and I got to stop trying. I just got to go to the world with an open hand and say, This is what I have, if you can use it, use it." And I would be honored to speak or do whatever you feel is needed.
I actually just had this conversation with a dear friend of mine who runs the American Conservative Coalition, and I texted him the other day, and I was like, "Can we have a chat about God?" And he was like, "Kelsi, what?" So he leaned right in and he's like, "Let's talk." And I was like, "Amazing."
And I got to go to the Alliance of Responsible Citizens last year with Jordan Peterson. I got to go around and speak to people about this and about what was happening in the world and open some eyes. And so I just trust in the process and I trust whatever that looks like is the right path. So thank you for the opportunity to speak in a different light.
Eric Huffman: You're doing great. If you ever want to talk more about God, send me an email. We'll do it, all right?
Kelsi Sheren: I would love that. I would love that.
Eric Huffman: Kelsi Sheren, thanks so much for your witness and your courage and for joining us today on Maybe God. Hope to have you back sometime.
Kelsi Sheren: Thank you so much.