Welcome to the Best Ever You Show with Elizabeth Hamilton Garino. Here to help you find success in all areas of your life. The power is in your hands. Join our network for free at bestevere dot com and now here's Elizabeth.
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Best Ever You Show. We have been notified that blog Talk Radio is closing at the end of January, so we have switched over to iHeartRadio Speaker and also Riverside FM, so this will be one of the last shows we do over here live on blog Talk Radio. We are sure going to miss being over here for fourteen years now and it has been wonderful. But today I have a very special guest with me. I have Sean Prue with me. Sean, I think I hear you there.
Hello, Hello, you hear my breathing. Hi, hell you, I hear you.
I'd love to see your beautiful face. But you know, I don't know about you, but my hair is a mess. So well we're going to sing.
I thought this is audio only, and then at the last minute you sort of said video and I was like, no, I've been wearing my winter coat all day along with my foot up. My hair is like twenty different directions right now, I can't do video.
Yeah, I hear you, Yeah, same thing. My hair's on top of my head, my glasses are on and I'm good. So but you know you, you're so modest with your bio. I'm going to just I'm going to read everybody this for a second. It's so you are so talented, So I multi talented in the media and entertainment industry, so loved. You're a TV personality, a host, a producer, a talk show host for a really long time up there on Sirius XM and Canada, motivational speaker. You write columns, you
pet books, also acting, publishing, live event hosts. But anything that you can do, you Oh, it's so neat and I and one of my favorite things too is here's the big one activist for issues of mental health, animal rights, and h stigma. I think that's just where I want to go right off the bat with you. Tell me, tell me what's uh, what's happening in your world these days?
Well, you know, if you want to talk to animal rights, I'm a big proponent of of of treating animals as well as we treat ourselves. Really on my lap, right now I have a beautiful Cocker Spaniel mixed with I think hound dog. He's four and he's a rescue from Turkey. He was living on the streets of his den Bull for two years.
As a puppy.
And I don't know if you know about the situation there, but they slaughter dogs there. They round them all up. You can see horrible videos of the backs of trucks with these garbage bags full of dogs wriggling and trying to get out of these bags, and they slaughter them.
It's a very sad situation over there. So I was lucky.
I got him just in the nick of time because Canada stopped allowing dogs from other countries except for the US of Mexico, almost like two days after I got him. So I always remind him what a lucky guy he is.
Turkey. What's his name and layout?
I didn't know you named it.
I shouldn't be unlucky, but he.
Lucky. I wish I was doing videos.
And I think I think mental health has has got a nice spotlight shawn on it right now. We've got an initiative up here that certainly has has made it normal to talk about mental health issues. I've always been open about the fact that I've sought mental health assistant since my twenties when I just wasn't feeling myself and I couldn't figure out why. So I don't go all the time. But over the years, I've certainly gleaned a lot of insight and knowledge about myself and tools.
And I don't think anyone should be ashamed of saying, you know, we'll go to the doctor for a cold.
You know what I mean, We're a bit of a flu bug or something, and we'll race off to the doctor for some help. But we're feeling anxious, we're feeling depressed. We don't know why we don't feel the way we like to feel, and we don't do anything about it. And so it's good to speak ood about that.
I think, yeah, and rights and things like that. I know we're going to talk about a lot of different things, but tell me what you mean about HIV stigma as well. Go there if you would please.
Well, that's the last frontier, or the new frontier that we face in the HIV AIDS movement now is stigma. You know, we're blessed now to have medication you can take called prep that stops you, and I think about ninety six point nine percent of all cases of acquiring the HIV virus, and so we have that, we have kind of a morning after pill, and we have pills for those who are HIV positive to keep them what's known as undetectable, which means that you cannot transmit the virus to anybody.
We live in a blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.
World, but people who acquire HIV still these days they're ashamed of it, and they're they're marginalized for it, they're othered for it. They do that to themselves, and the society around us does it to them as well. We still live in sadly, in an era that is not that far away from the Reagan era when he wouldn't even use the word.
AIDS for eight years after.
It beginning to become an epidemic. We still have this kind of really bad association about HIV. And I think it's because it's acquired through sex, and it's acquired through intravenous needle use, and.
So sex and drugs, so those are so taboots still in our world.
And when we think about people who are HIV positive, we talk about them being dirty. We do that with a lot of medical conditions. You know, your doctor comes back and said the test you're clean, Well, you weren't dirty if the tests.
Weren't clean, right y stigmatized. But you know, you use.
People alcoholics or drug users will say, oh, I haven't been using for a while, I'm clean. Well, you weren't dirty when you were using. You had an addiction disease. And so we have all of the stigma around HIV and it's still alive and well. And so I believe in talking about it as someone who is HIV positive, undetectable and not ashamed of that, and I think others should as well. And so I'm big on helping and the stigmatization of a disease that we only get from
being human. Sextis is a human thing.
Don't you think it's.
Important to share your stories like you're just doing, to be vulnerable about it because it helps. It's like somebody's listening right now and they don't feel good. They might have just heard your voice and you might have saved their life.
I always say that on my show too with I guess they also things that I just know somebody is listening and that they've they've been changed from it, whether that's not feeling so alone anymore, or whether it's been giving information or inspiration.
So I know exactly what you mean there. I hope that's the.
Case right now, and I hope so too. Tell me about you as a kindergartener. Oh yeah, all the way back. Take me back to like you know, baby.
Sean, I was the little boy who would go out and play with all the other kids, and the mothers would come up to my mother really annoyed at the end of the play date because they would be like, Sean Prue played the exact same games as all the other kids, playing in the dirt, playing in the grass, playing rolling around, doing all the things. And his outfit is completely clean and perfect, ripped up, soiled, destroyed, and here comes show and is the love it? And you
wouldn't know play the same games. And my mother used to laugh. And I think that's still me today. I don't like to get dirty, but I'll still play the same games as everyone else.
Were you did you know that you had had young talent for TV, radio, acting all that stuff too.
Yeah, My mom chucked me into bed one night and she said, what do you want to be when you grew up, and I said, an actress. Boys are actors, they're not actresses. And I was like, whatever, that's what I want to hear. I knew from a young age that I was a creative kid and was leaned heavily into my creativity.
And I think for queer people that.
We lean into that side of ourselves a little bit more readily, because there's an element of escapism as well that comes into the lives of young queer people who don't feel like they fit in, who feel very different. No they're different somehow, don't know why there's they feel that way, And so I think escapism for creativity is something that's not unique to me. I think a lot of little gay boys and queer girls do the same thing always, you know.
I think all of us, no matter who we are, we just want to be included. Like that's one of the things that I love about you, Like from I've known you since I think I started best ever you and you were like you go girl, you know. And I'm a mom of four sons. They're twenty three, twenty five, twenty seven, and twenty nine now, and I've known you for a really long time, and I remember thinking, you know,
we're different, and yet we're not. And I remember thinking that for a really long time ago, with you just going. You know, you accepted me, and I always love you for that.
Of course, why wouldn't I doing great things? You continue to do great things. Of Course I accepted you.
I was.
I was inspired by you and me you and in awe of you and what you've done.
And I still am.
Yeah, me, you too. I've seen us climb and it's so much fun. It's it's really cool.
So welcome to the lot, everybody.
Oh yeah, isn't it fun? This is the way it should be. Actually, there's so much hate out there. It's like, oh man, enough of the hate already, you know, and I get. I know you and I had discussions like you were supposed to be on like I don't know how long ago, during the you know, like the day after the election or something. You are both like I don't know, and neither do I, and we were both like.
Do this the day after the election. I couldn't.
I couldn't either. We both looked at each other and we're like, oh, I.
Was in shock and such disappointments. I couldn't believe the way the election turned out, and to a degree I still can't, and I'm even though I live in Canada, in Toronto. I watch US politics very closely. I watch an MSNBC a couple hours every night almost and to stay informed. Because of the things that trickle that happened
down in the States, they trickle up here. We've got a leader of our Conservative party who is very right wing and is playing from a Trumpian playbook as well, like he wants to the degree that MAGA means make America America great again. His slogan has fixed Canada. The underlying subtext is that it's broken, which is the same story Trump has been running on for however long he's
been in politics. Now that it's broken and those are the beginnings of authoritarianism, and he's playing for the same playbook. So I watch US politics a lot, not just out of interest, but because I want to see what's going to happen up here. We see it all the time, and you know, one great example is the the attacks on trans people, the attacks on drag queens, the attacks on of the queer community, making us into pedophiles and all that kind of those tropes that have been going
on for centuries now, that's all trickled up here. As soon as it started in the States, it began up here as well. So it's important to keep an eyeball on you, guys, because you're the leading indicator of what's happening.
You know, what do we do when you know entire groups of people are friends or potentially having their human rights in fear and jeopardy? What do we do?
Well, if you're talking about a group of people such as the queer.
Community, we need allies more than we've ever needed allies. And a lot of people think allyship is just showing up at pride and joining in the dancing and the family, the parade and all that sort of stuff. And that's important.
That's important too. But you've got to you've got to speak up when you hear nonsense being said about any group, whether it's black people, Latinos, queer people, whatever marginalized group is being under the attack, it's important that you speak up and not allow that to be the conversations that's being had, whether it's at the dinner table, is coming Christmas, or whether it's just in general. When you hear someone
on the subway say something. You must speak up because you can't just you you stay silent.
You can flicit.
Yeah, you're part of the problem and staying silent. So Allyship, I think is needed more than ever there in the States where you are and here in Canada. We need to stand together as the communities. And we also need both people who are this frankly, the straight white people to stand up and speak up and speak out and say to.
Gather people, yeah, you know, I want to tell you this story and it's going to come out choppy and it may not come out right, but just hear me out for a second. So our sons both graduated from Georgetown University with their master's degrees in twenty twenty four. Wow, yeah, really cool, really cool moment. And so the way we do little celebrations is we take people out to a steakhouse. So me and my husband and kids, and his sister
and Beyonce's friends, you know, everybody. We all gathered at a steakhouse in DC and I made reservations at Annie's Paramount Steakhouse. And so I looked at the reservation and I'm like, huh, I wonder if we're going to be welcome here. So I placed a phone call and I said, you know, this is a predominantly you know not I don't know, you know how to say it. I'm looking for their wording as we're talking. But not a place where like we would go all the time for a steakhouse.
You know, it's it's gay couples and get you know, it's it's flags everywhere and things like that. And I'm like, are we going to be welcome there? You know what? You know what I mean, just like the reverse of it, right, And so I called and I said, are we okay? Can we come in? Because I really want to be there all of my friends are you know okay? I have drag queen friends, I have every kind of friend
known to mankind. Are we welcome there? There are twelve of us coming in, and he said, bring it on. You're going to have the best dinner of your life. And I can't tell you the number of people that came up to us. We could barely all eat because everybody was hugging us and telling us how much they loved we were there and telling us what a beautiful it makes me cry, what a beautiful family we had, and on and on and on. It was I can't I might have goosebumps. I love them so much. There
they made us have the best memory ever. And it wasn't intentional and we were kind of scared because we didn't fit in at all. But I mean that, and then we did.
They know what it's like to not fit in to you.
No, it was beautiful. It was I wish like CBS Sunday Morning would have followed us in or something to show you how the world's supposed to be. You know, that's kind of cry Oh god, it was so I love.
Them this world. Yeah, moments like that.
Yeah, yeah, And we have a it makes me cry and we have a no, And I want to just touch people's hearts with this conversation about how hard it is when you don't fit in, because it makes people so I feel like.
Related feeling they're wrong? What did they do wrong?
I find me a queer person, especially someone in my age when the times have changed so much now. But I can't tell you how much bargaining I did with God to make me straight when I was a young boy, when I was a teenager, when I was becoming a man, I wanted to be straight.
Because it was just so.
I was so tired of being othered by schoolmates and fellow students and adults around me in my community. I was so different than everybody, and that difference has been a blessing in my life and has been me unique. But at the time when retina support and stuff like that, I know so many people who are in my age bracket who say the same thing. I used to ask God to make me straight and to not make me gay.
It was just a terrible way to be. But at the same time, it's a blessing because I think the people who have had the roughest starts in life, whatever that may look like for you, they're the ones that become the most extraordinary later.
On in life. That's not the brightest, you know, I think you've had nothing that ever happened to them.
That are that are the dull, boring ones in life because nothing is the worst thing that can happen to you.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's funny. I sometimes say, please, I don't want to have food allergies anymore. I've been resuscitated twice. I just want to eat something. And that was the other thing they took care of me too. Because I always feel like a fish out of water with the life threatening food allergies that I have. So I called them. They're like, well, we are going to give you the best dinner you've ever had. You're going to live through it. And they oh, they were just so cool.
Yeah yeah, no, is that just like that? They were just the coolest people. So anyway, I love Annie's Steakhouse. Annie's Paramount Steakhouse in DC is amazing. STA shout out everybody. Oh yeah, I love them. So the other thing I think too, is that you know, sometimes without conversations like this, we don't understand each other at all.
And yep, well just you know, we're talking about allyship and what can people do and that sort of thing. To talk to each other as well and just have a conversation doesn't have to be full of threats. It doesn't have to start getting violence, you don't have to
start calling to the names. Just have a conversation, because you know what it's like, even though you're a straight person to feel different, and you just talked about having life threatening allergies that stop you from enjoying your life and stuff like that. That's a very unique situation. You feel alone and different in that as well, so you can relate to me feeling different. We're so much more connected. It's such a cliche, but we are. We're so much
more alike than we are different. And if we just take the time to get to know each other a little bit more, know your neighbor a little bit more, you see that you've got more in common than you have the differences. And we've got the likes of Trump. And as the guy's name up here is kier palie Eva, trying to divide us all and make us all angry with each other.
Don't fall for that trap.
It's it's classic authoritarianism once again, dividing the people up, making them afraid of each other. Don't, don't. Don't fall in line with that. Know your people, know your neighbors. Yeah, even better, so I don't agree with you.
Oh yeah, yeah true.
Right.
So we were this is years ago now, We were walking in the mall here in Maine and my husband's like, I really need a haircut. I'm just going to get a really quick haircut over at Mastercuts, and I'm like, you go for it, you know kind of thing. And this kid named Nick Irish was like I'll cut your hair. I've got you, okay, mister Greeno, I've got you kind of thing. You know. It was so cute. And now over the years we've gotten to know Nick as family. His name is Nick Irish and he is a drag
queen and he tells he's come over. He comes over to our house to cut her hair. He does all sorts of amazing things for us. During COVID, he came over and cut her hair in the garage, no kind of thing, so we could have haircuts. And he's such a cool soul. But when he when he when he is in drag, he looks like Marilyn Monroe, like it's like night and day, Like, oh my god, how do you do that kind of thing? He has the best blonde hair. He knows my blonde hair so well, oh
my god. Yeah, so if you get it wrong, you've got the wrong color.
Yeah.
And I'm fifty five now, so I've got gray coming in all the stuff to deal with. So anyway, he is the most lovely human being. So when I when he's here, when I have conversations with him or I talked to him about things, you know, I always want to know, like what what's happened, what's happening to you, what's going on in your life, what's happened to you?
You know, because sometimes you'll be like sad and things like that, and he will tell me, like some of the meanest crap that has happened to him over his life, and he's the nicest human being on the planet. Why do I want to go there? Because I know we were talking about your sub stack and things like that, and you said, I'm going to just go why the drag hate? Why the drag hate? But I just want to I know, I skipped around a little bit and I know.
So he's got so everybody listening.
Sean pro Crue got subs substack dot com. I'm going to spy your last name it's p r o U l X and I'll put a link up and you but you've got topics here and like that one. That one stuck out to me because I have a friend, you know, a bestie who's a drag queen and it hurts my feelings. And I also my dream you know, my I love I love you, but you know, I want to know who my absolute dream interview is. It's never gonna happen. Do you want who it is?
It's I've interviewed Love I lovel too.
The best.
Yeah, Yeah, I interviewed him once. Her at the back. Yeah.
I've interviewed her a couple of times, but the first time was at the back of an airport shuttle because she was going to a gig and her hair was so big it wouldn't fit in a car. Yes, so we rode the back of this shuttle together having a chin wag for forty minutes going to her gig.
Her success. Yeah. Oh, so you want to talk about why the drag queen hate kind of.
Yeah, because I don't understand it.
Well, I think it's about Missagua.
To me, I think a man in the heels and address who's self determined pushes really uncomfortably hard against where a lot of society is firmly rooted on the topic of women and autonomy, because a woman, to a lot of society is less than you know. Madonna's saying about that in her two thousand and sung what it feels Like for a girl. Girls can wear genes and cut their hair, short wear shirts and boots because.
It's okay to be a boy.
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think being a girl is degrading. So what kind of man sacrifices massculinity and trade down and find personal liberty as a woman in the doing. You know, we hate the idea of a powerful woman in our patriarchal society, the one that knows their value, that they're inconvenient to have around. Women who delight in who they are, like drag queens do, who don't need to fix themselves. There's a lot of effort to keep up with a
woman like that, which is why women are suppressed. They're held back from thinking about reaching the fullest of who they really are as early as childhood. Our society is held bent on keeping women in their place insecure. We teach them through the media or any shop they go into selling all the beauty products so that she can use to correct it and prove herself that she will never be enough. Constantly women are being told theres something wrong with them. We don't want to see autonomous women.
You know, look at it in your country, the male led fight to rest away women from women control over their own bodies. You know, it's dystopic and woman should be whoever the f she wants to be, and we oppress women and we don't like it when a man actually chooses to look and act like one in drag.
That's my theory.
That's a good theory. It's an interesting theory. Yeah, I'm gonna just leave that. I formulate thoughts sometimes on this topic, but I do as a female, fifty five year old female, I can't tell you how many times in the workplace. I've had uncomfortable encounters with men.
Oh I'm sure, I'm sure.
I can't even I could. I could go on and on and on. It's a different show. I mean, like, right off the bat, I was a news anchor. Made me never want to be a news anchor again. Some guy hit as the general manager of a news station, hitting on me, saying if I did this, I'd be the weather girl in Ohio in a shot, you know. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know kind of thing. And it's interesting. That's an interesting analogy, for sure, But you know how the.
Wherewithal to say now though, a lot of women don't know how to say no to that.
Hell no, actually, oh hell no, hell no, hell no. Yeah, and then and then really did a big rethink on the news business. It made me go, oh, this is the way this is going to be. And then you go, as a twenty year old kid, you go, oh shit, this is the way this all kind of is right now, because remember I'm one hundred and it was like that. It was bumpy all over the place, and oh yeah. And then and then you'd come across those men gems that weren't like that, and you were like, oh my god,
you're not going to hit on me. You're just gonna let me work. Really, Oh this is beautiful. And I've had a lot of those two and it's like, thank god, yeah, but tell me then this could be. If this is a really stupid question, I cannot edit this out. So if this is stupid, just laugh at me, right, okay, okay, what about like a.
Movie like Tutsie, what about it?
Oh yeah, what about it? Like that's kind of like is that not kind of draggish in a way?
Yeah, one of the top. Everything's dragged. Everything's dragged.
It's just a decision on how you're presenting yourself at any given moment in time. Like we're all born naked and the rest is drag, is what she says. And my my friend Leo was a he's retired now, but he taught grade two for most of his teaching career, and so he had his day drag he would call it, and then his after work drag, but he always called it drag. And his day drag was really just a suit and tie for teaching, and then his drag drag was jeans and the tea shirt, but he always called
a drag. And RuPaul calls it all drag. So what interesting is a woman or was it?
However you're presenting yourself, that's your drag.
Got it? Okay, that's good learning, right there. I'll have to look at that a little more. Yeah, yeah, all right, What else? What else is on your sub steck that you want to talk about? Because there's some really good there's really good stuff here.
Well, I'm really happy with the way it's it's turning out. I mean a lot of traffic to it. I'm trying to find stories that people don't normally introduce people to, people who you don't really.
Get a chance to meet.
So my latest post is called what to Do if You're kidnapped and it takes you behind the scenes of humanitarian aid worker named Kessa. That's not her real name, but we use a pseudonym so she could talk more freely. She's been to Gaza, Kiev, Somalia, Yemen. She's supposed to go to Afghanistan, but that got canceled.
She's back in Gaza.
Right now and she sees a lot of incredible things and one of the dangers it's always predominant in wherever she goes, is the risk of being kidnapped. And so she lays out what she knows about kidnappings, and it's fascinating because there's three types of kidnappings.
There's the one.
That you get held for ransom for, there's the one that you get held for as a political statement, and there's the one that's where you're kind of a bargaining ship get you'll be released at the hostage just the
other country really, since they're hostage type of thing. And the whole object is to stay alive, of course, and there's all kinds of ways in which you can try and stay alive, unless you're a political statement, because the chances are really high that you're going to be killed, because that's the point of having kidnapped you to begin with, so your chances are really low. But the other ones have all these tips and tricks, and she just goes into the details of those and it is just fascinating
to me. She's a fascinating woman, especially because she in twenty twenty quit her career to start doing this, and now she's sixty years old and going into places like Gaza and helping out there, and I find that a fascinating.
It's never too late story as well. You know, we get we age, all of us age. I'm fifty five.
Fifty six now, and I'm not sure I could contemplate beginning a new career again. And yet there was a guest on the View today that I overheard saying that at fifty five her mother moved to Paris and began her life a new way back when and shoes very inspired by that. So I'm inspired by stories like that, and like test a story and also a store on there about my friend Aaron, who became homeless suddenly. I watched his homelessness happen. He lost his roommate, he couldn't
find a new roommate. His landlord blessedly lewed him stay there for almost nine months, paying only half of the rent and then finally evicted him. And he's a gay guy, and gay guys are resourceful, and he had nowhere to go. He couched, heurved for a while, but that he's running out of you know, couches after a time, so he would get on apps like grinder and hook up with guys to have a roof overt's head. But the problem is is that if you're hooking up with guys, they
expect you to hook up. And he would be meeting guys at like two or three in the morning, and the problem with that is that if you're hooking up with guys at two or three in the morning, they're probably using substances to stay up that late. And so Aaron would be up at guy's places using substances like crystal math and to stay up and party. So he's getting no sleep, who's eating nothing, And when you have
that combination, it's very dangerous. He started to become develop auditory hallucinations and then visual hallucinations and start to almost lose his mind. And so it's the story of what happened to him all because he'd lost his roommate, and we see so much homelessness here in Canada, and especially in Toronto. I don't know what it's like where you are, but I know that homelessness is a problem in the US as well. We have encampments in all.
Of our parks, people lying on the streets. It's just pardon me for a rich nation like we have, like you are, it shouldn't be this way.
And he had no support. He couldn't go to shelters because they're violence and dangerous there. It's just the story of his spiral downward and me watching it. I tried to help him as best I could. He stayed over many times. I buy him food and stuff like that. But it's a story that's kind of chilling because it can happen to you, could happen to me. And I talked about the types of homelessness there are. There's people get divorced, there relationships end, they've got nowhere to go.
People leave abusive relationships, they've got nowhere to go. People in the pandemic lost their livelihoods, they had nowhere to go. And one of the reasons we've got so much of a homeless situation here is because of the pandemic, and that shouldn't be either. We should be taking care of people a pandemic hit.
It's not their fault they lost their livelihood. So I'm ready about subjects like that as well.
Don't forget that a lot of people, including my parents, were like a medical bill away from homelessness. My parents would be homeless had we paid your house payment among my dad had a stroke in two thousand and four. It just completely turned their entire But you know, my dad lived from two thousand and four to twenty eighteen, but it turned their lives completely upside down, Like had we not made their house payments and things like that, they'd be homeless.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's all it takes.
And so we have a we have holes in our net and people are falling through those holes, and we've got to we've got to tighten it up and repair that and make it so that people get the assistance and the.
Help that they need. People aren't choosing to be homeless.
We have a terrible premiere of Ontario who's kind of like the governor, I guess in your system, and he said homeless people should go out and get a job, and it was such a myopic comment, such an uneducated, privileged comment to make that. He disgusted so of humanitarians here when he said it, because that's that's a man who should be out there helping people who are homeless.
You know.
And I'm so sick and tired of the politicians and their photo ops at Thanksgiving and at Christmas time. I'm ranting, I know, but they go to the food banks and they pose with the workers and say what great work there all doing, and how how, how how they are saints for doing this work. There shouldn't be there shouldn't be food banks. I'm just going to go, you know, those very politicians should be making it so that food banks are eradicated, not posing for photos in them. Yeah,
I'm not but on my high horse right now. But those are the such of things that I explore in that in that article.
I think we're going to need to be on our high horses a little bit to make sure we take care of everybody from a humanitarian standpoint. You know, tell me what you think like humanity to be a humanitarian like humanity needs right now. I know we I was going to go next into you with like food safety and food security, but you know it's it's everything from
you know, rights, food, housing, shelter. I mean just there's like so many facets of it that are just falling down, and like I get, I get really really sad when I see people that don't have food. It really freaks me out. Yeah. Absolutely. I was in a Olympia snow
leadership foundation here in Maine. She's got she's a former senator, and she has a foundation that helps people graduate from helps women girls graduate from high school who might otherwise have something thrown in their path to prevent it, for example, you know, a parental circumstance or whatever. And I volunteered to be a leader and help these five girls graduate, which all of them did. But I cried all the
way home ninety minutes. My husband had to drive me to and from the meeting with them because it made me so sad. I just wanted to like adopt all of them, and you can't.
Do that kind of thing.
So what I would do is I would secretly write checks to the school so that like the school had food and back it. Would they would like that? Well, no, not from that standpoint. I just mean, like it's just like the conversation of being aware, like scratching below the surface to be aware of what's really happening with people, because I don't have to know.
If we go there's an empathy, you know. I had to go down to the mall near me and I took an uber the other day because it's just too cold and gross and wet out and there's too much construction by that mall, and so it dropped me off about a block or so away, and I was going through this kind of you know, construction underpass kind of mess, and there was a young black man curled up in the fetal position, and people were all stepped stepping over him,
stepping over him, stepping over him, and he and I stepped over him too, and then I looked back and he was just looking forward. He wasn't sleeping, he wasn't passed out, he was just looking forward in the position.
I gave him some money and went on my way. But it's so heartbreaking to me to see people like this. And I live in a community. I live in the gay community of Toronto, and.
So it's a safer area for people to come to when they're homeless or hungry or whatever, and they sort of it's less violent. I guess and you see so many people passed out on the street, Elizabeth, you can't imagine or just the mental health spike and mental health issues that have gone up since the pandemic. You know we've done nothing about that here at all. We've got housing, we've got hunger, we've got mental health as primary issues
around Canada, around the US. I know here in Toronto it's really really bad.
I have a question for you about safety, one of my friends, and then we'll go. I kept you on and on here, but I love this conversation. So one of my friends wrote the book out in the world. Her name is Amy Sheer, and it is I'll just read the Shift. It's actually a book by Disney. It says Meet the first totally inclusive guide for every traveler
out there. And this inspirational guidebook readers will discover one hundred welcoming destinations where lgbtq IA vacationers and their allies will feel safe, comfortable, and ready to make the most of their experiences. Tell me what you think of something aside from her being my friend, Amy, if you know it makes me so I was like, oh my god, I can't believe we need a book like this, and
then I'm like, OK, God, you wrote it. But on the same on the same I'm like, oh, that makes me so sad that we need a book like this tell me about you.
And it's weird to have a book like this because for queer people, you're not welcome in many places in the world. There are seventy two countries in the world right now where you can be punished for being queer by being imprisoned or by being killed. You know, when I talk about my friend Tessa, who's a humanitarian aid worker and she was in Yemen, she texted me saying, don't ever come here. It is not good for gay
people at all. She saw people being taken away, she saw people being beaten all because they were gay, hanged from cranes on display if you can imagine seeing a crane like a building crane and someone hanging from it as a warning to other gays. And so there's seventy two countries in the world that you don't want to be going to. And one example, it's improved a lot, I understand, and friends who are from there say that
it's improved a lot. But Jamaica was the deadliest place on Earth, according to Time magazine, for queer people about ten years ago. Again, they've made some yes, and I've interviewed people who've sought asylum in Canada, queer people who are from Jamaica, and they tell horror stories of what it was like there. Again, it's been improving, but you know, I wouldn't feel comfortable ever going to Jamaica at this point.
And it's important for queer people to know where they're welcoming when they're not welcome, because where you're not welcome, it's not just like nose in the air and ignoring you, we're not serving you or something like.
That, or not letting you in the hotel.
It's violence, and it's jail and possibly death. So a book like your friend's written is very necessary.
She wrote it with Mark Jason Williams. Together they wrote that book.
Good job guys.
Yep, that's what I said too, And then I went, oh god, I'm so sorry. We need a book like this, everybody, you know, I apologize for all of us.
No, But but going back to what you were talking about earlier about allyship and what can people do, just knowing that people listening to this right now, just knowing that a book like that out there is needed. And imagine if there was a book for straight people on on where not to go because it's not safe for you. Imagine that that's that's part of your experience a little.
Bit as a woman. I got to tell you that it's as a woman.
Yeah, there's a little bit.
There's a there's a thing. I was at a conference here that did the main conference for women, and and one of my books got handed out and everything like that, and I was all happy. And then I went into one of the presentations. I took a break from signing books and went in and listened, and I stumbled upon hearing a conversation would you rather be in an alleyway with a man or a bear? Almost one hundred percent of women will choose a bear.
So the bear a bear, the bear winds.
It's like, oh, oh my god.
Yeah.
And as a mother of four boys, it made my skin call. I'm like, oh my god, because you don't think about them being perceived that way because they're such sweet kids, you know kind of thing that I've got nice, really nice boys, you know kind of thing. And I'm like, oh, this is going to be tough on you.
The other spoil it for everybody. Others spoiled it for everybody.
But I think our patriarchal society has changed, you know, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.
We see small movements, we see big movements. We see me too movements, We see the queer movement. We see people you know, fighting back. We saw the Winds march on Washington first time.
Trump got in. You know, there's there's a sension going on. It's just taking so damn long.
Like I don't know where else see it in my lifetime or not, But I believe it's happening. And I'm an optimist, and I like to think the good things are happening in the universe that the universe has are back.
Yep. I agree. All right, we got to go. We're out of time. Where do you want people to go to find you and listen to you and love you.
We'll go to Seanprue dot substack dot com. Go to Seris XM channel one sixty seven on weekends to hear the Sean Prue Show, and you can find out more about me at Seanpru dot com. And Elizabeth, I love you, Thank you so much for having me on your show today.
I love you too, all right, Thanks everybody for listening, Take care and have a beautiful day and visit us at bestevere dot com. We thank you, Sean, thank you for listening.
We're so glad you tuned in. Be brave, be bold, See you, and remember to visit us at besteveru dot com.