September 10, 2025 • 24 mins
In this inspiring episode of The Soul Talks Podcast, Theresa Bruno sits down with Shaun Proulx—radio and TV host, writer, and storyteller whose journey from a small farm in rural Ontario to the national stage is nothing short of remarkable. Shaun opens up about growing up gay in the 1980s, facing daily bullying and cruelty, and how those early experiences shaped his resilience and authenticity. He shares tender stories of his late father’s influence, describing how love continues to flow through him and guide his life’s work. With honesty, humor, and heart, Shaun reminds us that courage isn’t about being fearless—it’s about being yourself, even when the world tells you not to. Tune in for an episode full of wisdom, vulnerability, and the kind of life lessons that stay with you long after the conversation ends.Subscribe for more soulful conversations. Connect with us: Get your copy of "He's Not Coming Back": https://bit.ly/40qGX6Y Connect with our guest: Shaun Proulx’s website: https://www.shaunproulxmedia.com Follow Shaun on Instagram: @shaunproulxmediaincFind Shaun on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShaunProulx?mibextid=LQQJ4d
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, I'm Teresa Bruno with the Soul Talks podcast. I'm
here today with Sean Prue. He is the host of
a hit podcast on series XM's Canada Talks, the Shawn
Proof Podcast. He is a thought generator, I like to
call it. He has sparked what he calls a thought revolution,
(00:27):
where he encourages us not to just have conversations, but
to have conversations that explore our personal growth, our mental resilience,
our authentic lives, if you will. And he comes from
a really interesting background that is kind of unexpected for
a media star. He dropped out of high school immediately,
kind of got on this financial career place where he
(00:50):
exploded and was in a six figure salary really quickly,
and then in the most unexpected way, left it to
pursue what he's doing now. So can't to share with
you Sean's life and the good that he's doing in
the world. But I have to say the reason I
wanted to have Sean on the show today is that
the last time I talked with him, he was interviewing me,
(01:15):
and I expected because I've seen his show and I've
listened to him and all of his press. You know,
I expected this really irreverent, great sense of humor, and
I'm not funny, so I was like kind of worried
about that guy to come on, and I thought, how's
my story going to play here? And I have to say,
bar Nunn, I was met on the other side with
(01:37):
the most compassionate, the most empathetic interviewer I've ever encountered,
So Sean, I just you know, I walked away from
that time that we talked that day, and I told
several people about it afterwards. I was like, I feel
covered in a sparkle.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Dust, like.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
You just completely settled and saw me, and then you know,
you just he went down this path. You immediately gave
me some of yourself, and you talked about being a
teenage boy and your father dying and your mother having
to step in and start to work and raise four boys.
(02:15):
Immediately gave me something really vulnerable in yourself.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But it was just a beautiful interview. So thank you
for that.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
You're welcome, and thanks for having me on, and thanks
for such a great introduction. I'm glad you enjoyed the interview.
I felt a responsibility to handle your story with care.
It's a tragic story and I know, anyone who's experienced
what you experienced is always going to be in some
stage of grief, and so I wanted to make sure
(02:45):
that I was not triggering too much of that. That
you're my guest in my house almost and I just
wanted to make sure that you were treated properly. And
so I'm glad that you felt so so nicely about it.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Thank you really did.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I was.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I was just awed by you know how much you
gave me, and that speaks to I think what you
are doing. I wanted to start a little bit. I
would love it if you talk a little bit about
being a teenage boy and dropping out of high school
and the whis behind that that started to, you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Know, for your life.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, I grew up in the eighties as an eighties brat,
and I grew up in rural Ontario and Canada and
on one hundred and fifty acre farm outside of a
very small town, so no neighbors, and having lots of
kids who back in the eighties you can only imagine
how they reacted to a gay boy. You know, I
(03:44):
had durandurin hair and shoulder pads, and you know, I
went to the city and bought my clothes at this
store that's no longer called the Chateau, but it was
all this kind of edgy kind of clothing back then.
And so they're walking around in their baseball shirts and
here I'm coming in and protecting Joan Collins from Dynasty,
my big Air. And so it was. It was a
(04:08):
rough ride in terms of in terms of the other
kids in school, and my school was a violent school,
oh gosh. And so it was. It was rough that way.
And I'd get off the school bus every day with
a half mile driveway to walk down to get to
my house, and the kids would be throwing things at me.
They'd be spitting at me from you know, they lower
(04:30):
the windows, spit things down me. Tell me, I hope
they hoped I died of AIDS. That kind of thing
on a on the daily. And I'm not alone in that.
Their their kids still suffering from bully as what you speak.
Obviously that's just an ongoing thing, but that that happened
to me. And then I would get home and wait
(04:52):
for the hour in which my father arrived home. And
he was an alcoholic, and he was quite a brutal alcoholic.
I would say he had a jeculine hyde personality. When
he didn't drink, he was a wonderful man, very soft,
very gentleman. And when he did drink, it got nasty.
So there was always this kind of what's going to
(05:14):
happen when I gets home? And so my dad died
when I was seventeen of a esophagal cancer. He was
sick for about a year. And when he did pass
and I say this and a lot of people can
understand it, even though they may not have acknowledged it
to themselves, I was relieved. We had a very volatile relationship.
(05:38):
We didn't see eye to eye on anything. I was
a very mouthy teenager, very braddy teenager, and I witnessed
a lot with my dad and my mom. I'm the oldest,
and I saw some terrible things happen, and I had
terrible things happen to me. And so when it was
all over, and he'd been sick for a year, and
(05:58):
it was in and out of the hospital, in and
out of treatment, in another hospital, in a treatment, it
was exhausting. When he passed, I felt a sense of relief.
I was acute, and a friend of mine, a family friend,
would once tell me five years later when your dad died.
It was like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. Yeah,
(06:23):
it's painful.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I mean, I'm struggling here to just you know, you boy,
this is what I know.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
This is what I know for sure, is that the
people that have the roughest starts end up doing the
most interesting things and becoming the most interesting people when
they're older. And I was taught resilience, I was taught
to nacity. I was taught resourcefulness. I was taught many
things through the experience of living with my dad and
(06:53):
in the situation I was in, and that that those
things you can't you can't buy. Those things, That resourcefulness,
the tenacity, the strength. I developed those things and they
served me so well. They served me well when I
quit school and went on to do what I was
(07:14):
doing in finance. They served me well today. And so
those are blessings out of that experience that I appreciate.
And the good news it is is many years ago.
This is going to sound cooky, but I had a
spiritual reconciliation with my father.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I was feeling that as you were talking, I could feel,
even though you said you were relieved that you had forgiveness.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I was listening to some stuff about the idea of
death and dying and do we keep our personalities? And
this woman who was talking was explaining that when we die,
she thinks that when we die, we keep our personality
and that we are everywhere in the lives of the
people that love us. And she said, like when her
husband died, they were running a multi million dollar business.
(07:58):
When her husband died, she had to find someone to
replace him, and she couldn't find anybody. So she he
was very very good at this, and so she decided
to try her hand at it, and she discovered she
was very very good at it. And she discovered when
she picked up the phone, whoever she needed to talk
to was receptive. When she turned the corner, she would
round just the person she's wanted to meet. Things unfolded
(08:21):
for her, unfolded for her. My dad was creative as well.
He was a writer as well, a very gifted writer.
And my career, I've often noticed, has been similar to his.
And so when I was listening to these ideas about
what happens when we die, and and this woman trying
(08:44):
to find her husband's you know, footing and take over
the business. What she wanted to say was that was
her husband flowing through her the entire time, Yeah, giving
her the cue to pick up the phone, giving her
this brace to turn that corner, not that corner. And
I realized I heard this, and I was on a
plane and I was seated between two massive guys who
(09:06):
are both sleeping, and I just burst into tears because
I realized that I have done well in my career
because I'm a high school dropout. I am not college
or university educated, and so who am I to have
a radio show? Who am I to have been published
in all of Canada's major papers and had to call
them and had a TV show? Who am I to
have done all of this stuff? And I realized from
(09:28):
listening to that woman that my dad has been flowing
through me this whole time and giving me the love
that he couldn't give to me in the physical and
guiding me step by step by step throughout this career
that I've had. And so I'm on this plane and
I burst into tears and I felt this rush of
like gold liquid love go through me. It was pure
as anything I've ever felt, and I, in that instant
(09:52):
forgave my father for everything. Let go everything between my
dad and I and I have, as I say, now
this had the reconciliation with my dad and now I
talk to him all the time. If I've got a problem,
I'm like, help me out with this.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
No, I'm the same with my late husband, James. It
took it didn't.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Take that long. But you know, I definitely have always
believed that spirits live on beyond the body, and that
I never really explored it before because I wasn't driven to,
but that we have communication with those who go on you.
And so I began very early talking to James because
I didn't know how to handle everything he left me with.
(10:34):
I have two young boys who aren't men yet, and
so still today, I talked to him just a few
minutes before we came on and said, guide me, help
help us both have a voice in the world that
you know will serve people today. But I talked to
him all the time, and I feel like there are
many times I would have made one move, especially with
the boys. I feel his guidance going, no, they're not girls,
(10:56):
they're young men. Do this, you know, or picking us up,
you know, I can. I feel like I get I
kind of get notices from him when something's going on
with the boys, especially that I might not know, and
then included in So, yeah, I'm in the same place
for different reasons.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
But even small things like I'll give myself into some
crazy hair brained situation, or something will happen to me
that is funny, and I can feel my father's laughter.
I can almost picture him in my mind's eye, and
it's so such a pure feeling. It's not something I'm
searching for seeking, it just is suddenly there. So I
(11:37):
would encourage anyone who's ever lost somebody to reach out
to them because they're there.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I that one a beautiful story, and I think we
all know that when we hold on to unforgiveness, it's
us who's getting eaten up, you know, it's not the
person on the other side, and it is very debilitating
to our abilities to move forward positively.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
It was so bad that if I went to therapy,
or if when I was in relationships, we might have
gone to a couple's counseling, and they always ask about
your family and stuff like that. I could never talk
about my dad without bursting into tears, like I had
so much built up pain about my dad, that the
subject matter alone, I couldn't get through it. I couldn't speak.
(12:20):
And so that's how much I let go of when
I grasped onto the idea that my Dad's been here
the whole time, guiding my career, guiding me.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I mean, I suddenly have one thousand questions for you.
And first of all, I just want.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
To applaud you that you.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You were emotionally and mentally flexible enough and open enough
to take something like that in, because many people might
have been presented with that woman's story and even and
wouldn't have known how to fully like take that golden
light in and let it spread around and do its work.
And I assume you made a pretty big pivot in
(12:58):
your life from there forward.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Oh yeah, it was. It was like a thousand pounds
on my shoulders were lifted. It was like everything that
had ever happened between my dad and I never happened.
And so the pivot that I would have made was
just the releasing of all of that and going forward
with this idea that my dad's with me all the
(13:22):
time and he's proud of me and guiding me in,
cheering me on. I don't want to get her come
to them.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Might go back to something you just said, because you know,
in reading about you and preparing to talk today, something
that really resonated for me, and didn't I didn't know
the story of that long walk home every day and
the abuse that you got for being, you know, a
young man coming out. But you are such an empathetic person,
(13:52):
you know, and you do give so much understanding regardless
of who's on the other side of a mic from you.
Do you feel like being gay and being suffering all
kinds of bullying and abuse expanded your empathy as opposed
to your anger.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Without doubt, it's the same way that living with my
dad taught me lots of things, Like I talked about
resilience and resourcefulness and tenacity. Being gay you go through,
especially in the nineteen eighties, when there was no internet,
there was no understanding, We didn't have gay characters on television,
there weren't helplines. There was a very lonely time for
(14:32):
all gay people. You have things happen to you, and
empathy is the ability to put your imagination, use your
imagination to put yourself into the shoes of someone else. Right,
and when you have had experiences like I had, like
a lot of gay people have. Then you do have
that ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and
(14:55):
to you know, when you came on my show, I
empathized with you because I've known the pain of losing
a major figure in my life and you lost yours,
and so I just felt for you. It was not
hard to be empathetic.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was extraordinary you.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
You know. It was a million hugs through the screen
kind of thing, you know, but it was so genuine.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
It didn't take it too far. It wasn't sappy. You
just held you held it, You held the pain.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Thank you, beautiful, thank you. That takes me.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
It fast forwards me to a number of things I
wanted to talk to you about. You know, I really
love your concept of thought revolution and what you've done
with that in the in the style that you interview
and your own six month journey that you made extremely
public on your show of your you know, your transformation.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I wanted to ask how.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
What was stirring in your mind when you started going Okay,
I've got this show and I'm having these talks with people,
but I want more, like where did that a'll come?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Well? I grew to understand that you know, we have
sixty thousand thoughts a day, and that we are that
those are the only things we can control in life.
You can't control anything around you other than the thoughts
you think. And I'm not standing here saying that I'm
perfect in my thoughts. I'm I'm a ugger and a
bastard and get sarcastic and get angry and get pissy
(16:23):
and that sort of thing. But for the majority of time,
I look for the things that make me feel good,
and I look for the things that make me feel happy.
And you know when you solar plexus and you've got it.
We've all got a GPS in our stomach. It tells
us whether we're thinking the right thoughts or not because
we feel off or we feel too didn't tapped and
(16:43):
turned on and excited and feel hope and optimism and love.
And if we're not, if we're thinking thoughts that are
contrary to that, we're feeling negative, we're feeling depressed, we're
feeling angry, we're feeling mad, we're feeling frustrated. And so
if you pay attention to how you feel, you know
you're thinking thoughts that serve you or don't serve you.
And I try to catch myself when I'm having thoughts
(17:05):
that don't serve me and reframing them, refocusing my thoughts
to something that serves me better. And the result is
that because our thoughts have vibration to them, we attract
like things into our experience. And my mother was very
much a practitioner of this idea when I was a
(17:25):
little boy. She was always mind overmatter, mind over matter
to me, and so from an early age, I've had
this understanding that it's really what you think about that
creates the experience you're going to have. And I'm not
saying that I have lots of experiences that are challenges
and that I don't like, but I have drawn into
(17:46):
my world a lot of wonderful things, and I credit
that to thinking the thoughts that I think and believing
in them and believing in myself. I just have an
office at one point. Now it's such a spare bedroom,
but the one wall was a vision board and I
put everything on there that I desired, including one of
(18:07):
my biggest career goals, which was to interview Oprah Winfrey.
And you didn't and I did, and I did on
the show. I guess that's probably like eight years ago now,
but I did it. And Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins, Yeah,
Tony Robins's not not so hard to get. But Oprah's
a hard or.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I don't even know how you could make that happen.
But to the nexus of that is, you know, one
hundred percent agree. Our thoughts, you know, create our internal values,
and it creates how we live out life. Yes, you
know it's just and it's so it's so easy to
(18:47):
talk about and sometimes difficult harness, But I think if
we could all get a hold of, you know, the
thoughts that we're thinking, the words that we say, becomes
the life.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
We live, we that we live. I mean, it's not
as hard as people make it out to be. Fifteen
minutes of meditation a day. We'll put you in sort
of a nice place where you know, you change. You
start thinking positive thoughts on a subject and start going
on a bit of a rampage, and you hold those
thoughts for seventeen seconds. You now have a new stet
(19:18):
point of attraction in your life. It doesn't take much
seventeen seconds of just going I love this I love that.
I like this look at that look and you can
change everything for yourself or just journaling down. I mean,
I write down almost every day five things that I'm appreciating,
and that's that's a focus for a minute or two.
(19:38):
Whereas I write, that changes everything. Yeah, and it sounds
very fairy, but that vision board on my wall was
just there. Wise I worked. I'm staring at the things
that I desire and that has a lot of power.
And science has told us that we're much more than flesh,
blood and bones, sitting in our chairs and being who
(19:59):
we Arebration mostly yep, and vibration attract vibration. You can
either believe that or you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
But that's where I agree.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I told you, you know, years before all the tragedies
struck my life, I had spent a lot of time
in LA, and you know, LA was just way ahead
of the curve in spiritual thinking, manifesting abundance. Thoughts are
your create your life. And I had, you know, read
Louise Hayes teachings and I was kind of getting into
doctor Bruce Lipton and doctor Joe Despinsa and those kinds
(20:31):
of thoughts.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Certainly, Mary and Williamson.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And I, you know, I had put all of that
into my being, but I can't say that I was
really living it in a daily way. And then when
James took his life, I couldn't figure out the first
way to like turn turn the faucet to positive. And
so I told you, I just I started remembering those
teachings of Louise Hey and just got sticky notes and
(20:56):
I put them on where I put my makeup every day,
and it's I am courageous today.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I have confidence today.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
And I would put one in my wallet, and I
put one by the gearshift and those three places, and
just the simplest, Yeah, I have courage today. Before James
took his life and before I lost the business I lost,
the courage was not a problem. You know, I lived
well pretty fearlessly.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
The minute those things happened. You know, all that courage and.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Resilience I had built in business and in life evaporated
for a while, and those positive affirmations, those thoughts began
to seep in and help me live that way.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It was really powerful for me.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
There's a Luis Hey quote it goes all Isabella. In
my world, everything is working out for you has good
out of this experience, so only good will come and
I'm safe. And I say that probably five times a day.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Oh, I love that. I'm going to go write that
one down.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yeah, it's really really good, and it's the ending is
the best. I am safe. I am saying yourself, I'm safe.
And so every time something comes up that's got me
cranky or losing my temper or fearful or worryful, I
say that.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So it's easy for me to see, but I would
love for our listeners to hear how you got there.
It's easy for me to see, given how you are thinking,
how thoughtful you are, how you have gone down this path,
why you would not approach an interview as just an
interview but spark this thought revolution concept.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Well, I think everyone's got a story. I think everyone.
I'm curious about everybody, And it's a deeper dive when
you get to talk about how were you at the
beginning of this story and what made you that at
the end of the story. I think that's the most
interesting part of any interview. Today on I'm tapping my
show later on today and we're doing Pride Month shows.
(23:00):
And there were four lesbians fifty years ago in Toronto,
who went to a bar and they got up on
stage and they changed the words from a Rogers and
Himmerstein lyric from I Love being a woman too, I
Love being a dyke. And eight police officers arrived at
the bar. They attacked these women. They beat these women.
(23:23):
They arrested these women and let them out because they
had nothing to charge them with, and said, don't go
back to the bar. The women went back to the
bar to get witnesses and the police were there again.
They grabbed them again, they beat them up and they
threat them in jail. And this went on. There was
a court case about it, and they're known as the
Brunswick Four. So I've got one of the surviving members
(23:46):
coming on today. She's an older woman now, and how
do you to me, how do you survive and thrive
from an experience like that? Is the most interesting thing.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Next time, Sean reveals his h I V. Journey and
the incredible story of interviewing Oprah
Hi, I'm Teresa Bruno with the Soul Talks podcast. I'm
here today with Sean Prue. He is the host of
a hit podcast on series XM's Canada Talks, the Shawn
Proof Podcast. He is a thought generator, I like to
call it. He has sparked what he calls a thought revolution,
(00:27):
where he encourages us not to just have conversations, but
to have conversations that explore our personal growth, our mental resilience,
our authentic lives, if you will. And he comes from
a really interesting background that is kind of unexpected for
a media star. He dropped out of high school immediately,
kind of got on this financial career place where he
(00:50):
exploded and was in a six figure salary really quickly,
and then in the most unexpected way, left it to
pursue what he's doing now. So can't to share with
you Sean's life and the good that he's doing in
the world. But I have to say the reason I
wanted to have Sean on the show today is that
the last time I talked with him, he was interviewing me,
(01:15):
and I expected because I've seen his show and I've
listened to him and all of his press. You know,
I expected this really irreverent, great sense of humor, and
I'm not funny, so I was like kind of worried
about that guy to come on, and I thought, how's
my story going to play here? And I have to say,
bar Nunn, I was met on the other side with
(01:37):
the most compassionate, the most empathetic interviewer I've ever encountered,
So Sean, I just you know, I walked away from
that time that we talked that day, and I told
several people about it afterwards. I was like, I feel
covered in a sparkle.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Dust, like.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
You just completely settled and saw me, and then you know,
you just he went down this path. You immediately gave
me some of yourself, and you talked about being a
teenage boy and your father dying and your mother having
to step in and start to work and raise four boys.
(02:15):
Immediately gave me something really vulnerable in yourself.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But it was just a beautiful interview. So thank you
for that.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
You're welcome, and thanks for having me on, and thanks
for such a great introduction. I'm glad you enjoyed the interview.
I felt a responsibility to handle your story with care.
It's a tragic story and I know, anyone who's experienced
what you experienced is always going to be in some
stage of grief, and so I wanted to make sure
(02:45):
that I was not triggering too much of that. That
you're my guest in my house almost and I just
wanted to make sure that you were treated properly. And
so I'm glad that you felt so so nicely about it.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Thank you really did.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I was.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I was just awed by you know how much you
gave me, and that speaks to I think what you
are doing. I wanted to start a little bit. I
would love it if you talk a little bit about
being a teenage boy and dropping out of high school
and the whis behind that that started to, you.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Know, for your life.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, I grew up in the eighties as an eighties brat,
and I grew up in rural Ontario and Canada and
on one hundred and fifty acre farm outside of a
very small town, so no neighbors, and having lots of
kids who back in the eighties you can only imagine
how they reacted to a gay boy. You know, I
(03:44):
had durandurin hair and shoulder pads, and you know, I
went to the city and bought my clothes at this
store that's no longer called the Chateau, but it was
all this kind of edgy kind of clothing back then.
And so they're walking around in their baseball shirts and
here I'm coming in and protecting Joan Collins from Dynasty,
my big Air. And so it was. It was a
(04:08):
rough ride in terms of in terms of the other
kids in school, and my school was a violent school,
oh gosh. And so it was. It was rough that way.
And I'd get off the school bus every day with
a half mile driveway to walk down to get to
my house, and the kids would be throwing things at me.
They'd be spitting at me from you know, they lower
(04:30):
the windows, spit things down me. Tell me, I hope
they hoped I died of AIDS. That kind of thing
on a on the daily. And I'm not alone in that.
Their their kids still suffering from bully as what you speak.
Obviously that's just an ongoing thing, but that that happened
to me. And then I would get home and wait
(04:52):
for the hour in which my father arrived home. And
he was an alcoholic, and he was quite a brutal alcoholic.
I would say he had a jeculine hyde personality. When
he didn't drink, he was a wonderful man, very soft,
very gentleman. And when he did drink, it got nasty.
So there was always this kind of what's going to
(05:14):
happen when I gets home? And so my dad died
when I was seventeen of a esophagal cancer. He was
sick for about a year. And when he did pass
and I say this and a lot of people can
understand it, even though they may not have acknowledged it
to themselves, I was relieved. We had a very volatile relationship.
(05:38):
We didn't see eye to eye on anything. I was
a very mouthy teenager, very braddy teenager, and I witnessed
a lot with my dad and my mom. I'm the oldest,
and I saw some terrible things happen, and I had
terrible things happen to me. And so when it was
all over, and he'd been sick for a year, and
(05:58):
it was in and out of the hospital, in and
out of treatment, in another hospital, in a treatment, it
was exhausting. When he passed, I felt a sense of relief.
I was acute, and a friend of mine, a family friend,
would once tell me five years later when your dad died.
It was like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. Yeah,
(06:23):
it's painful.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I mean, I'm struggling here to just you know, you boy,
this is what I know.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
This is what I know for sure, is that the
people that have the roughest starts end up doing the
most interesting things and becoming the most interesting people when
they're older. And I was taught resilience, I was taught
to nacity. I was taught resourcefulness. I was taught many
things through the experience of living with my dad and
(06:53):
in the situation I was in, and that that those
things you can't you can't buy. Those things, That resourcefulness,
the tenacity, the strength. I developed those things and they
served me so well. They served me well when I
quit school and went on to do what I was
(07:14):
doing in finance. They served me well today. And so
those are blessings out of that experience that I appreciate.
And the good news it is is many years ago.
This is going to sound cooky, but I had a
spiritual reconciliation with my father.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I was feeling that as you were talking, I could feel,
even though you said you were relieved that you had forgiveness.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I was listening to some stuff about the idea of
death and dying and do we keep our personalities? And
this woman who was talking was explaining that when we die,
she thinks that when we die, we keep our personality
and that we are everywhere in the lives of the
people that love us. And she said, like when her
husband died, they were running a multi million dollar business.
(07:58):
When her husband died, she had to find someone to
replace him, and she couldn't find anybody. So she he
was very very good at this, and so she decided
to try her hand at it, and she discovered she
was very very good at it. And she discovered when
she picked up the phone, whoever she needed to talk
to was receptive. When she turned the corner, she would
round just the person she's wanted to meet. Things unfolded
(08:21):
for her, unfolded for her. My dad was creative as well.
He was a writer as well, a very gifted writer.
And my career, I've often noticed, has been similar to his.
And so when I was listening to these ideas about
what happens when we die, and and this woman trying
(08:44):
to find her husband's you know, footing and take over
the business. What she wanted to say was that was
her husband flowing through her the entire time, Yeah, giving
her the cue to pick up the phone, giving her
this brace to turn that corner, not that corner. And
I realized I heard this, and I was on a
plane and I was seated between two massive guys who
(09:06):
are both sleeping, and I just burst into tears because
I realized that I have done well in my career
because I'm a high school dropout. I am not college
or university educated, and so who am I to have
a radio show? Who am I to have been published
in all of Canada's major papers and had to call
them and had a TV show? Who am I to
have done all of this stuff? And I realized from
(09:28):
listening to that woman that my dad has been flowing
through me this whole time and giving me the love
that he couldn't give to me in the physical and
guiding me step by step by step throughout this career
that I've had. And so I'm on this plane and
I burst into tears and I felt this rush of
like gold liquid love go through me. It was pure
as anything I've ever felt, and I, in that instant
(09:52):
forgave my father for everything. Let go everything between my
dad and I and I have, as I say, now
this had the reconciliation with my dad and now I
talk to him all the time. If I've got a problem,
I'm like, help me out with this.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
No, I'm the same with my late husband, James. It
took it didn't.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Take that long. But you know, I definitely have always
believed that spirits live on beyond the body, and that
I never really explored it before because I wasn't driven to,
but that we have communication with those who go on you.
And so I began very early talking to James because
I didn't know how to handle everything he left me with.
(10:34):
I have two young boys who aren't men yet, and
so still today, I talked to him just a few
minutes before we came on and said, guide me, help
help us both have a voice in the world that
you know will serve people today. But I talked to
him all the time, and I feel like there are
many times I would have made one move, especially with
the boys. I feel his guidance going, no, they're not girls,
(10:56):
they're young men. Do this, you know, or picking us up,
you know, I can. I feel like I get I
kind of get notices from him when something's going on
with the boys, especially that I might not know, and
then included in So, yeah, I'm in the same place
for different reasons.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
But even small things like I'll give myself into some
crazy hair brained situation, or something will happen to me
that is funny, and I can feel my father's laughter.
I can almost picture him in my mind's eye, and
it's so such a pure feeling. It's not something I'm
searching for seeking, it just is suddenly there. So I
(11:37):
would encourage anyone who's ever lost somebody to reach out
to them because they're there.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I that one a beautiful story, and I think we
all know that when we hold on to unforgiveness, it's
us who's getting eaten up, you know, it's not the
person on the other side, and it is very debilitating
to our abilities to move forward positively.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
It was so bad that if I went to therapy,
or if when I was in relationships, we might have
gone to a couple's counseling, and they always ask about
your family and stuff like that. I could never talk
about my dad without bursting into tears, like I had
so much built up pain about my dad, that the
subject matter alone, I couldn't get through it. I couldn't speak.
(12:20):
And so that's how much I let go of when
I grasped onto the idea that my Dad's been here
the whole time, guiding my career, guiding me.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I mean, I suddenly have one thousand questions for you.
And first of all, I just want.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
To applaud you that you.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You were emotionally and mentally flexible enough and open enough
to take something like that in, because many people might
have been presented with that woman's story and even and
wouldn't have known how to fully like take that golden
light in and let it spread around and do its work.
And I assume you made a pretty big pivot in
(12:58):
your life from there forward.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Oh yeah, it was. It was like a thousand pounds
on my shoulders were lifted. It was like everything that
had ever happened between my dad and I never happened.
And so the pivot that I would have made was
just the releasing of all of that and going forward
with this idea that my dad's with me all the
(13:22):
time and he's proud of me and guiding me in,
cheering me on. I don't want to get her come
to them.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Might go back to something you just said, because you know,
in reading about you and preparing to talk today, something
that really resonated for me, and didn't I didn't know
the story of that long walk home every day and
the abuse that you got for being, you know, a
young man coming out. But you are such an empathetic person,
(13:52):
you know, and you do give so much understanding regardless
of who's on the other side of a mic from you.
Do you feel like being gay and being suffering all
kinds of bullying and abuse expanded your empathy as opposed
to your anger.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Without doubt, it's the same way that living with my
dad taught me lots of things, Like I talked about
resilience and resourcefulness and tenacity. Being gay you go through,
especially in the nineteen eighties, when there was no internet,
there was no understanding, We didn't have gay characters on television,
there weren't helplines. There was a very lonely time for
(14:32):
all gay people. You have things happen to you, and
empathy is the ability to put your imagination, use your
imagination to put yourself into the shoes of someone else. Right,
and when you have had experiences like I had, like
a lot of gay people have. Then you do have
that ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and
(14:55):
to you know, when you came on my show, I
empathized with you because I've known the pain of losing
a major figure in my life and you lost yours,
and so I just felt for you. It was not
hard to be empathetic.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was extraordinary you.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
You know. It was a million hugs through the screen
kind of thing, you know, but it was so genuine.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
It didn't take it too far. It wasn't sappy. You
just held you held it, You held the pain.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Thank you, beautiful, thank you. That takes me.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
It fast forwards me to a number of things I
wanted to talk to you about. You know, I really
love your concept of thought revolution and what you've done
with that in the in the style that you interview
and your own six month journey that you made extremely
public on your show of your you know, your transformation.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I wanted to ask how.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
What was stirring in your mind when you started going Okay,
I've got this show and I'm having these talks with people,
but I want more, like where did that a'll come?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Well? I grew to understand that you know, we have
sixty thousand thoughts a day, and that we are that
those are the only things we can control in life.
You can't control anything around you other than the thoughts
you think. And I'm not standing here saying that I'm
perfect in my thoughts. I'm I'm a ugger and a
bastard and get sarcastic and get angry and get pissy
(16:23):
and that sort of thing. But for the majority of time,
I look for the things that make me feel good,
and I look for the things that make me feel happy.
And you know when you solar plexus and you've got it.
We've all got a GPS in our stomach. It tells
us whether we're thinking the right thoughts or not because
we feel off or we feel too didn't tapped and
(16:43):
turned on and excited and feel hope and optimism and love.
And if we're not, if we're thinking thoughts that are
contrary to that, we're feeling negative, we're feeling depressed, we're
feeling angry, we're feeling mad, we're feeling frustrated. And so
if you pay attention to how you feel, you know
you're thinking thoughts that serve you or don't serve you.
And I try to catch myself when I'm having thoughts
(17:05):
that don't serve me and reframing them, refocusing my thoughts
to something that serves me better. And the result is
that because our thoughts have vibration to them, we attract
like things into our experience. And my mother was very
much a practitioner of this idea when I was a
(17:25):
little boy. She was always mind overmatter, mind over matter
to me, and so from an early age, I've had
this understanding that it's really what you think about that
creates the experience you're going to have. And I'm not
saying that I have lots of experiences that are challenges
and that I don't like, but I have drawn into
(17:46):
my world a lot of wonderful things, and I credit
that to thinking the thoughts that I think and believing
in them and believing in myself. I just have an
office at one point. Now it's such a spare bedroom,
but the one wall was a vision board and I
put everything on there that I desired, including one of
(18:07):
my biggest career goals, which was to interview Oprah Winfrey.
And you didn't and I did, and I did on
the show. I guess that's probably like eight years ago now,
but I did it. And Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins, Yeah,
Tony Robins's not not so hard to get. But Oprah's
a hard or.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I don't even know how you could make that happen.
But to the nexus of that is, you know, one
hundred percent agree. Our thoughts, you know, create our internal values,
and it creates how we live out life. Yes, you
know it's just and it's so it's so easy to
(18:47):
talk about and sometimes difficult harness, But I think if
we could all get a hold of, you know, the
thoughts that we're thinking, the words that we say, becomes
the life.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
We live, we that we live. I mean, it's not
as hard as people make it out to be. Fifteen
minutes of meditation a day. We'll put you in sort
of a nice place where you know, you change. You
start thinking positive thoughts on a subject and start going
on a bit of a rampage, and you hold those
thoughts for seventeen seconds. You now have a new stet
(19:18):
point of attraction in your life. It doesn't take much
seventeen seconds of just going I love this I love that.
I like this look at that look and you can
change everything for yourself or just journaling down. I mean,
I write down almost every day five things that I'm appreciating,
and that's that's a focus for a minute or two.
(19:38):
Whereas I write, that changes everything. Yeah, and it sounds
very fairy, but that vision board on my wall was
just there. Wise I worked. I'm staring at the things
that I desire and that has a lot of power.
And science has told us that we're much more than flesh,
blood and bones, sitting in our chairs and being who
(19:59):
we Arebration mostly yep, and vibration attract vibration. You can
either believe that or you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
But that's where I agree.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I told you, you know, years before all the tragedies
struck my life, I had spent a lot of time
in LA, and you know, LA was just way ahead
of the curve in spiritual thinking, manifesting abundance. Thoughts are
your create your life. And I had, you know, read
Louise Hayes teachings and I was kind of getting into
doctor Bruce Lipton and doctor Joe Despinsa and those kinds
(20:31):
of thoughts.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Certainly, Mary and Williamson.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And I, you know, I had put all of that
into my being, but I can't say that I was
really living it in a daily way. And then when
James took his life, I couldn't figure out the first
way to like turn turn the faucet to positive. And
so I told you, I just I started remembering those
teachings of Louise Hey and just got sticky notes and
(20:56):
I put them on where I put my makeup every day,
and it's I am courageous today.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I have confidence today.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
And I would put one in my wallet, and I
put one by the gearshift and those three places, and
just the simplest, Yeah, I have courage today. Before James
took his life and before I lost the business I lost,
the courage was not a problem. You know, I lived
well pretty fearlessly.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
The minute those things happened. You know, all that courage and.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Resilience I had built in business and in life evaporated
for a while, and those positive affirmations, those thoughts began
to seep in and help me live that way.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
It was really powerful for me.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
There's a Luis Hey quote it goes all Isabella. In
my world, everything is working out for you has good
out of this experience, so only good will come and
I'm safe. And I say that probably five times a day.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Oh, I love that. I'm going to go write that
one down.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yeah, it's really really good, and it's the ending is
the best. I am safe. I am saying yourself, I'm safe.
And so every time something comes up that's got me
cranky or losing my temper or fearful or worryful, I
say that.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So it's easy for me to see, but I would
love for our listeners to hear how you got there.
It's easy for me to see, given how you are thinking,
how thoughtful you are, how you have gone down this path,
why you would not approach an interview as just an
interview but spark this thought revolution concept.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Well, I think everyone's got a story. I think everyone.
I'm curious about everybody, And it's a deeper dive when
you get to talk about how were you at the
beginning of this story and what made you that at
the end of the story. I think that's the most
interesting part of any interview. Today on I'm tapping my
show later on today and we're doing Pride Month shows.
(23:00):
And there were four lesbians fifty years ago in Toronto,
who went to a bar and they got up on
stage and they changed the words from a Rogers and
Himmerstein lyric from I Love being a woman too, I
Love being a dyke. And eight police officers arrived at
the bar. They attacked these women. They beat these women.
(23:23):
They arrested these women and let them out because they
had nothing to charge them with, and said, don't go
back to the bar. The women went back to the
bar to get witnesses and the police were there again.
They grabbed them again, they beat them up and they
threat them in jail. And this went on. There was
a court case about it, and they're known as the
Brunswick Four. So I've got one of the surviving members
(23:46):
coming on today. She's an older woman now, and how
do you to me, how do you survive and thrive
from an experience like that? Is the most interesting thing.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Next time, Sean reveals his h I V. Journey and
the incredible story of interviewing Oprah
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