Kelsi Sheren is a veteran, artillery gunner, and founder of Brass and Unity. Note from Lex: I'm aware that Jocko temporarily took down his conversation with Kelsi to remove the names of some of the people involved in order to protect their and their family's privacy. I did the same.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Kelsi's Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelsiburns
Kelsi's Website: https://brassandunity.com
Kelsi's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelsie_sheren
Charity: https://www.heroicheartsproject.org/
Do the F*cking Work (book): https://amzn.to/3mGhguF
Notes from Underground (book): https://amzn.to/3mN5TRF
Brothers in Arms (song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhdFe3evXpk

PODCAST INFO:
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Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:45 - World War II
11:48 - Yeonmi Park, starvation, and mental health
26:04 - Kelsi's 9/11 experience
29:34 - Becoming a soldier
36:01 - Artillery: The Hand of God
45:44 - Weapons training
1:03:29 - Pre-Deployment
1:19:36 - Arrival to Afghanistan
1:41:49 - Tragic war story
2:06:54 - Feelings after tragedy
2:10:36 - The Taliban
2:16:12 - Retrospective: 20 years in Afghanistan
2:32:51 - How war changes people
2:38:13 - PTSD
3:07:07 - Ayahuasca and mental recovery
3:39:04 - Love
3:57:07 - Advice for young people
4:00:27 - Death

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The following is a conversation with Kelsey Sharon, Canadian Forces veteran, artillery gunner, who served in Afghanistan at 18 years old and came home with severe PTSD.

She went on to found Brass and Unity, which creates unique jewelry, large part of the proceeds from which go to help rehabilitate the lives, limbs, and mental health of veterans and first responders.

She has a big personality, big heart, and an intense passion for life.

So when our paths happened to cross, I knew we needed to talk.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, here's my conversation with Kelsey Sharon.

You mentioned that studying history had a big impact on you and that your grandfather was a World War II vet.

So people that have gone through World War II, in my family too, they don't seem to talk about it much.

Like the worse the tragedy, the less they talk about it.

I mean, it's understandable, I can respect that.

But I don't think people fully understood the value in human stories over time and sharing that, that certain civilizations don't have written language.

The value in that being passed down is extraordinary, but we didn't really have that with the World War II vets, it seems like.

Well, they kind of want to protect you from the pain.

Like my grandmother went through Holodomor, which is the Ukrainian starvation of millions of people.

And then obviously went through World War II with the Nazi occupation.

And same on the grandfather's side who, on my dad's side, grandfather fought in World War II.

And they seem to not want to talk about those experiences to protect you from the suffering, to protect you from the evil that they've experienced, which is sad because the lessons from that history are not then propagated through you.

And also there's something about the strength you carry with you knowing that that's in your blood.

And that's suffering, overcoming that suffering is in your blood.

If you have someone you know that comes from your lineage that has done something super gnarly, that's just been a badass in so many different ways, you wanna know about that person, you have that person's blood in you, that's important to acknowledge.

And when that isn't shared, I feel like it's just a detriment to that individual.

What do you make of World War II in terms of history?

Do you think about those kinds of wars where 2 times more civilians died than the number of military personnel?

So most of the war is basically just the death of civilians and the invasion of homes, the burning of homes, the bombing of homes, all of that.

World War II for me, I find that was the first experience where I became just obsessed with history.

I'm not sure if it's because of the dramatization of film and TV and the way that our generation has looked at it.

I felt a deep connection to it and I still can't figure out why.

People joke around about those past lives and those things or those connections.

And there's something deeper within me that feels a pull towards that.

And I'm not quite sure if it's because I had family that, you know, escaped Hungary once the Soviets came in.

Or if it was because my grandfather served in it, or for whatever reason, I just, I have this pull to it.

And so, when you think about the mass casualty of the civilian population, that's very difficult for me to wrap my brain around after being in a war and seeing when you have a small subset of civilians die, how much of an impact that has on that community right there in just a tiny area.

So to try to wrap my brain around what happened in Europe and all across and all that.

I really struggle with that because I don't know that I can comprehend what that would truly mean to somebody if I didn't experience it or see it for what it is.

A lot of people are drawn to World War II for different reasons.

So 1 is Hitler and Stalin trying to understand how it's possible to have that scale of evil in very different flavors of evil.

It's almost fascinating that human nature can allow for that.

And then also it's fascinating that so many people can follow leaders like that with the pride and with the love of country.

And that's like, it's almost like this weird experiment is like, wow, I wonder if I'm the same, I'm made from the same cloth as those people.

Like, would I be a good German if I lived in Germany and was, you know, during the time of Hitler, would I believe that Germany has been done wrong?

I'm Jewish by the way, which makes me a little bit more comfortable talking about this.

Is what I believe in the dreams sold by charismatic dictator who says that wrongs have been done and we need to correct those wrongs.

That to me is the compelling thing that draws me to World War II, the human nature question.

I think there's a way to look at people like that.

And at that time, there was no real, well, there wasn't a full understanding of the psyche the way that we're starting to.

I mean, we still don't understand any of it, but it seems like the time gap back then, there was no real understanding of sociopaths and narcissists and, you know, psychopaths and really what those traits were.

And I feel like you, you know, people will follow blindly if they're given a good enough reason.

Well, if you have an individual who is ranting and screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of these town squares, and he's getting this attention, it's human nature to want to understand and be a part of a group mentality.

And so, I don't know if it's more of people were at the beginning were just this is the cool thing to do Or if it was they were genuinely terrified Or if there was an aspect that was like this guy is saying something that resonates with me there could be a lot of different things.

I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get to, or no 1 got to really, you know, examine this individual's brain and this person and why they thought the way they thought.

Cause that's always been the biggest thing for me is I'm really curious about why people do what they do.

I'm not sure who's more interesting, the people that follow Hitler or Hitler himself.

So I mean, the question that's coupled with that is would history roll out in similar ways even if there wasn't a Hitler?

You know, it's the people that created Hitler or did Hitler create the events of World War II.

I think the people would be more interesting in my opinion.

That seems to be the, that the charismatic leaders are all out there.

The failed artists in the case of Hitler, they're all out there.

And it's just when there's this environment of anger and fear, charismatic leaders can take over.

And it doesn't matter if they're evil or good.

It's like a roll of the dice in terms of history.

What, how evil, how truly insane they are.

Like I think Stalin was much more cold and calculating.

Hitler was legitimately insane, like especially later on in the war where he would do irrational actions, I would say.

But that's like a weird roll of the dice.

You could have gotten a totally different leader.

Wanting to take over the entirety of Europe and then invading Russia, that's like insanity.

Yeah, just even just the first part of that, wanting to take over Europe, if you really think about the scale, If you really sit down and go he want this 1 individual was like I want all of this if you really sat down and You were to sit down and put him in his traits that we know of into any sort of Document nowadays that that deems somebody a psychopath or a narcissist this guy would set it on fire.

And he reminds me a lot of people now who struggle to find their way.

He reminds me a lot of angry individuals who are told no, either by women or by business or by whatever the sector they're in.

He reminds me very much of that like, what's the word I'm looking for?

Just that individual who is just like, the world is shit and the world owes me everything.

And when you foster that too long, you get that.

I might be misnaming the book, but it's about the bitterness of a man.

It's like, it breeds within his mind and it just grows, that bitterness.

I mean, we all have that sort of resenting of the world when you're younger, when you have a choice, when you fail, do you blame the world or do you hold, it's the Jocko thing, do you hold, do you carry the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because of that?

And in some sense, I mean, unfortunately, see that's because he took responsibility and leadership,

He's not a person, not a failure, but you can't say he's powerless, did not take action.

I think he's just basically a embodiment of the anger and the fear of people at the time.

But the insanity of obviously many of my relatives, not just murdering them, but putting them in camps and torturing them.

But many of those people, Jewish people, were also some of the best scientists.

The insanity of murdering some of the best Germans, it makes no sense.

But so that's why it's fascinating to kind of look back at that time in history is like, and think, are these the same humans?

And are we, is that going to happen again?

Is there going to be a World War III in some other kind of way?

Is there going to be some mass scale injustice in some other kind of way which we're not yet, Like because of our blindness and maybe not learning the lessons of history will allow it to happen again.

And then obviously it's a very common thing to whatever political leader you don't like to call them Hitler.

which is, that to me, I gotta tell you, when somebody calls somebody Hitler, the weight behind that has been completely lost in this generation.

This generation does not understand what that truly means to call someone Hitler or a Nazi.

Or Stalin, to be honest, the starvation, I've just been talking to a lot of folks recently, especially like North Korea, with

And I remember from my grandmother, it wasn't, I mean, time and time again, not having food to eat is the thing that people say is the worst, everything.

It's way worse than murder, not having food, and the places that takes your mind and the actions that forces you to do.

And all of that seems very distant in our history.

She is, I wanna talk to that woman so bad because when she was on Joe and she sat there and said, Joe's like, do you, have you done any therapy?

It's such a fascinating, I mean, I would love for you to kind of talk to her and explore her mind because we kind of explored her story.

And that's, there's power and importance to her story, but it's so difficult to understand, like how does she become healthier and better even more so than she's already?

She's found herself quite a bit, but I wonder, is she haunted?

You're saying questions I wanna ask, like that's what I mean, because after being in a war, there are certain things, there are certain atrocities that you see that it doesn't matter the therapy that you do, and I don't care what all the special ops guys say, like I know plenty of them that have a light switch and they turn it off and they can function, but I also know them when they've been out for 10 years.

There's things that haunt people differently, but there's no way there's not something going on there deeply.

Yeah, but it's also extra levels of complexity in her case because I mean, this is what just looking at history about family is she spent much of her early life loving the dictator.

We like water or we like this because there is no like individual, like when they said there was no love or anything.

And so, I mean, it's like the ultimate abusive relationship.

So it's not even, it's complicated because like, I wonder if she truly explored it, what you would find, because the trauma, much of her trauma, I think comes from when she was escaping North Korea, went and treatment by China.

she had to witness within that and being helpless with that on

So it's like evil men essentially abusing her, trading her, you know, and doing so nonchalantly, like it's part of just the way of life.

That I wonder if she sees kind of, yeah, it's so complicated because childhood.

It would be normal to her because she didn't know any different.

And there's like, I grew up poor, but I never sensed that because.

So the way you grow up, you only start to notice it when you compare yourself to others, when you learn of the alternative.

That's a dark reality when you're abused.

I wonder, I mean, you truly begin to suffer in some kind of way when you understand that you were being abused.

That's a dark kind of thought That I wonder if you live your whole life just in that abuse, if you don't know better, that that's a safer, that's like, what's a better life?

Suffering and then learning that you are suffering or just suffering until your last days.

I'd argue on 1 side that suffering and suffering till you die, you know no difference.

So you can't have hope, you can't have this idea that there's better.

And sometimes that's, keep that in its box.

But then if you have kind of what you have with Park, where she knows now that there's different, she knows that there's better, then you run into those, what is the damage that has been done, what is gonna be passed on as intergenerational trauma.

So it's like, now you gotta look long-term a little bit because now she's an influence on a child.

And there's a positive to looking at both, I would say, and I know that sounds horrible for the living in trauma your whole life and just not knowing any better, but there's, I don't know if that saves the brain and the body and just that overall, or if it actually would be better.

Cause there's no way to really find that out.

Yeah, I think, but the reality is when you give people hope and you make them realize that they're suffering, you're putting a burden on them.

And so, and obviously she, now that she knows that the suffering she wants to make people in North Korea currently suffer less.

It's what we do to each other is try to like, when you see suffering in the world, you try to make it better.

And unmasked, that's probably in a long arc of history going to make for a better world.

I'm hopeful at that idea for North Korea.

I'm hopeful for that because You never want to leave individuals suffering when you know that they're actively suffering while you're just living your day-to-day life in the Western world, just out grocery shopping and you see all this food and you know in the back of your mind, like that interview fucked me up a little bit, I won't lie.

Like, And I had some of the girls in my office listen to it.

They're just bawling because we're all parents and there's this idea that not being able to feed our children, just the idea of that damages the psyche.

It brings up the pain in the chest, like just the idea of it.

And so going to the grocery store for about a week after that, I just remember standing there looking and just going, what the fuck are we doing?

But then there's that snap reality that comes into play and goes, So how do we fix that?

And the reason that's not gonna happen, it's happening again.

So Akani comes down through Afghanistan, Chinese are all through Afghanistan.

Iran makes the deal with China for her, the roadway to get the oil.

Well, that's done in the blink of an eye without anyone knowing.

They control such a large aspect of our world.

Unfortunately, that to take and free North Korea, a drastic action would have to happen.

Did you hear what she said about Russians?

The Russian recruiting video that came out.

I told you about it, and of course you didn't watch it.

And then like a day or 2 later Russia put 1 out and the recruiting for video in the States was a animation of a Female soldier.

Yeah with 2 moms and she was gonna go change the world Right Russia came out with It's like it's the the character from like Rocky Essentially and they're guys in the mud and just in the rain, just fucking doing pushups, just pushing it out.

They're just like, they see their boot, they're just like crushing things.

And I'm like, and it's all like, and the deep Russian voice, I'm like, oh my God.

Cause when you're young and you're choosing to go to the military or not, it's not like you know, like none of us know what the best trajectory for a life is.

For many people, going to the military is a really, makes them incredible human beings.

Some of the best people in this world I know are soldiers.

So it's, I'm not, I don't mean like it's somehow bad to go to the military.

But there is something, the honest truth is I just don't like marketing people.

And so this is essentially a marketing effort.

So which 1 do you like as a marketing effort better?

Because Canada doesn't you know what our recruiting videos are?

So, Canada does these ones where it's like, it'll have a bunch of like soldiers doing movements and then they'll like snip it together really quick.

It'll be like a Navy 1 and then a guy jumping out of a plane, and then it'll be like an artillery, and then like an armored, and it'll be like, join the Canadian forces today.

So it's like very marketable, very palatable to Canadians who don't really want war and who don't really acknowledge their military in the first place and do everything they can to make sure that vets don't get any support when they come home.

What Russia did was meant to be more of an intimidation tactic in my opinion.

I think we need harder, I think we need people to be harder.

I think it's acceptable and okay to say that our soldiers need to have a harder mindset, a stronger mindset, a better mentality and mental health support going into the service and a harder body because I know when you go to the US, I've also encountered plenty of soldiers that are 600 pounds.

So we should say that you, when you join the military, you're in incredible shape or not maybe incredible, but

No, I would do sit-ups in the morning when I was little until I could see my, like I always had a 6 pack because all I did was train.

But like if I couldn't like see it, I would just sit there in morning cartoons and just do sit-ups.

And my mom and dad thought that was like normal acceptable behavior.

So if you had like Instagram back then, you'd be a David Goggins.

Without the cursing, that cursing started once the military started.

So, I mean, the people should know, is it probably already know that you also competed in Taekwondo, like you were an athlete of all kinds.

I played that for 7, 6 years, I guess you could say, total.

I think the worst injury I ever ended up having was I tore my right eyelid off.

What I was saying though to you was that we did an exhibition game and the team ahead was winning.

The team we were playing was winning, which was annoying.

And so there was an opportunity to take out a girl that was going 1 end of the field to the other and she just kept hitting tries left, right and center.

So I figured if I just aimed her up, like she's a target and I just run full force at her cause she was really, she was a tall individual.

If I just, If I do that, I'll take her out of the knees.

But what that resulted in was she put her tooth through her mouth guard and knocked out and didn't, she just stayed there.

But when I stood up, I tore the right eyelid off and it was hanging from the inner corner.

My mom was there because mom was my, mom's my biggest fan.

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