- I think my favorite potent combination
is strength and empathy
and you embody both.
You have grown up in extraordinary circumstances,
take the Hollywood extraordinary,
most glamorous Academy Award winning,
everything you have lived an extraordinary life.
You know what real life is all about.
- Listen for you to say that, I feel that way about you.
We were raised
in maybe not the most perfect circumstances, right?
Very different.
You were raised right in the middle of all of this
and I was raised in South Africa,
which couldn't be further away from this
by two parents who had a road construction company
and I was raised in a country during a time,
that was filled with a lot of turmoil.
Apartheid. I was raised during the apartheid era.
I was white and of privilege
and I witnessed how my privilege,
for years while I was a young child,
got me to places that had just didn't afford to other people
with a different skin color
and it really traumatized me
and then of course I had my own family issues.
My father was an alcoholic.
He was really sick
and this was at a time when there was no AA in South Africa,
nobody knew and that in South African culture,
it's just like what a man does.
And so I was raised in a lot of things that,
when I look at my kids now,
they're gonna have their own trauma somehow,
of course, right?
But to have a little bit of calmness
in the home environment,
that's, I think the other reason why
I'm not so eager to jump into a relationship
because I'm so proud of the fact
that my kids live in a home where they feel safe
and they feel like they're never gonna have
to walk on eggshells.
and they're never gonna have to come down
and worry about how their day is gonna go
because mom's boyfriend is not or I don't want any of that
'cause that's how I was raised and it's all horrible.
It leaves marks on you for sure.
- My dad was an alcoholic too
and it was because of all those things that made us
the parents we are today, the women we are
and I'm so grateful for my wacky circumstances
because they've made me so not a victim
and so demanding of having goodness around me
and being such a protective lion
and maybe I wouldn't have been like that
had I not seen the crap I saw growing up.
- Yeah. Right.
We'll never know, but I do,
I wanna say this, I love that about you.
I love that you have just made such a definitive decision
to just go through your life with joy and happiness
and to actively move towards that
and you do that so, so beautifully.
- Thank you and you fight for others.
You have CTAOP. That's the event I came to.
That's your organization that is a fully functioning,
incredible manned organization
that makes massive change in the world
and in South Africa and in Africa, in general,
the latest cause you have, will you talk about that?
- CTAOP was kind of birthed out of what I felt
was a necessity for prevention care with young people
and at the time it was really focused on HIV
and AIDS in South Africa.
We're still, unfortunately,
the hardest hit country in the world.
We are 1% of the world's population,
but we represent maybe now over 17% of the HIV population.
So when COVID happened,
we checked in with all of our organizations that we support
and the one thing that kept coming back to us
was that COVID had changed the world of domestic violence
because what was saving most of us, staying home,
was a death wish for people
who were in abusive relationships or abusive families.
They were locked in that danger place. They can't escape it.
And so domestic violence just skyrocketed.
And so Together For Her was a platform for us
to just kind of get together and to spread that message
so that we can support those grassroot organizations
who were already doing such important work,
especially doing an epidemic like this.
There's just not enough resources.
- The fact that I'm getting to know you
is like such a highlight of my life
because you are such a person of depth and soul
and I just have so much admiration for you
and you're just a stone cold rad brad rad chick,
You're rad.
- I feel that way about you.
I wanna have women around me
who inspire me every single day and you do that for me,
so thank you.
- I'm really honored that you came on the show
and when life opens up a little bit,
I would be so thrilled if our kids get to meet
at being such similar ages and we can reminisce
about the lion in our life,
Steve Warren, and laugh and tell fart jokes
and just do our thing.
- I would love that. Thank you so much, Drew.
- Thank you for your time.
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