In the Life: Interview with Jewel and Rue Thais-Williams [unedited footage]

okay so um can you tell us how you met and when you met and how you met and i'm i'm not we're not gonna include my questions so okay well um rue and i met at unity fellowship of christ church that we've talked about before and uh like most couples we have two different versions or slightly different versions of what happened after that so i'll tell a little bit of mine and then she can take over for the rest of that um we were involved in an aids candlelight service i think this was one of the first times that we really kind of noticed each other for the first time even though we had seen each other for several months prior to that we never really kind of i never really kind of focused in on i'll just speak for myself because hers is different like i said and uh so we ended up spending that day together prior to going to the candlelight service and ended up kind of just holding on to each other that night it was cold and then um the next day i invited her to dinner and she never went home [Laughter] that's the truth my neighbors thought something had happened to me they were about to call the police we lived in different parts of town and it was quite a commute and we had already determined before i went to her house for the first time that this was a one-shot deal it was to pac lesbian what is it lesbian shout chosen for the u-haul there's a lot of truth to that uh it makes it a little bit strained after a while and different because you're trying to to do two different layers of a relationship you're courting and you're committed all at the same time and i believe that that probably contributes to a lot of the reasons why and after three or four months it's like what have i done done done you know um but rue and i being a little older and having had probably a lot more experience than a few folk and a lot more patience to work through those um difficulties and so we've we've been almost seven years since since we've moved in together and we've been married six of those that's what i wanted to ask about actually i i think it was in the documentary that christina did where you talked about that having your wedding was very important to you can you can you tell me about the wedding and why that was important for you to do right well i came from a broken dysfunctional home as most people do and i had never experienced a big wedding no one in my family ever had experienced a large wedding and um jewel also wanted something very formal and we had noticed that in our community people simply don't they generally don't take vowels and when they do they don't have ceremony when they get rings it's generally very inexpensive rings this is so we don't take ourselves seriously and if we don't take ourselves seriously with our relationships we can't expect society to do so you know um one example is we don't even know what to call each other i i refer to jewel as my spouse not my lover we were lovers before we had a ceremony you know you can meet someone and and um make a little lightweight commitment and know it for a week and that can be your lover you know uh we hear permanent partners we hear significant others i mean there's nothing and in the regular you know society in the community you know it's husband and wife and that is respected it is accepted all over the world and so it was very important for us to have um just a traditional ceremony you know just as any heterosexual person would have we didn't want anything any different because of our lifestyle in our society this is what is accepted in terms of um a wedding you know you march down the aisle to the wedding march et cetera you know you exchange vows and this was what we wanted to do i personally don't see anything different with our relationship in terms of us being lesbian because to me i just happen to be in love with a woman i prefer women and it's just no big deal it's only one aspect of my life it doesn't you know make me as a total person and so um i just i don't see what all of the hoopla lies about and we did the max that we could do too which was legally have our names changed we took on each other's light uh last names and uh so this is the the max we can do legally at this time to um you know formalize our relationship or sanction our relationship so we're waiting for hawaii or california somebody to to make it so that we can legally be spouse and spouse no um so how does your relationship contribute to your work i mean you're both you're both very busy doing a lot of different things in the community how do you find time for each other when you're so busy we take a lot of mini vacations or we take many many vacations um and that's the most time that we have uh to spend and we usually plan for those and and their quality time otherwise we're discussing each other's work and we're involved fortunately we're not youngsters and and so um you know we can concentrate basically on our work and our relationship um we've done the partying independent of each other and uh and and lou is a very um uh confident and uh independent lady and she can find her own way in this world and it's not necessary for for her to you know be with me and and i'm the same way basically so we can go places and a lot of the jealousy that i know that i had as a youngster is not there anymore so i trust her implicitly to um you know to to to be okay person and and i believe she trusts me too that's definite um you know you get to a certain age you only have enough energy to do so much and we had ours is generally spent in the community trying to make a difference so um you know like jill said that we're not very uh dependent needy people per se you know we can kind of go our own separate ways and kind of handle our own parades and do what needs to be done and then when we get together it is it's choice you know and we just truly enjoy each other there's no telephones the whole bit and i get to experience watching her you know she read a magazine i mean this is just this is marvelous i've often said i'd film it unbelievable you know so it's it's fun and we have have a rule that if we need each other we will say it that we won't hold on to it we'll ask for what it is that we need you won't have to guess you know do i need to come with you or whatever and it's the same thing if we both have a lot of commitments uh outside of it and and one of the other of us might not feel like going to all these things but if it's one that we need each other for then we say that you know i need for you to go with me to this place in that place or to this event or whatever or i need for you to just come over for us to spend some time you know feeling that now and we can say that to each other and respond and yeah it works this is just one more question unless anybody else has anything it's just do you do stuff as a team as well in the community like does that come up where you combine your connections and your experience since that's been the major joint venture it seems and i'll ask you separately too about it but um so um what about like oh wait hold it and then we'll talk um okay so how was it starting we basically wanted to do something um to help the the children and uh the mothers uh in terms of keeping them under one roof no one was doing that they were separating them and the children were going to foster care and women were going into adult shelters and we felt that it's just about impossible to keep someone clean and sober to encourage them to go on living and snatch their child from them we have women that come into this house first of all by law everybody is required to have their own bed but they'll sleep with their children that's all they have they hold their children you know and we wanted to keep them together and so we felt we had a unique idea and we had this big house and we wanted to do something with it and the house had a vibe it just has a healing vibe to it you know and it was meant to help people and so um we went about uh checking out into basically what we had to do to open this house and just that's what we did we just opened up the doors you know and and uh okay here we go okay so and and um tell me about catch's role in being well um first of all we would not be in existence if it weren't for the catch one the catch has held numerous fundraisers and they more or less uh keep the word out that we that we exist and that we are in need and we can use all the help that we can get um julia has always been there for us she's on our board of directors and uh i can just count on her for anything that i want to do i know that she is behind me 100 she's supportive and there's just not any doubt in my mind that you know she won't continue to be there the catch has contributed monies uh jewel has come out of her own pocket i've come out of my own pocket to keep these doors open and it's been rough you know it to be truthful it's very rough we are small enough that a lot of the celebrities and a lot of big organizations really don't care to get involved they're not going to get any kind of publicity or play out of it you know and um we're small enough to where some people uh you know don't feel that we're helping enough people in the community we're not one of these big foundations or our big organizations aids organizations that can say that we help thousands and thousands of people we do not you know we can only house a combination of uh 12 women and children and we do our very best to get them um ready for independent living and for those that are too ill to to leave here we keep them until they're hospice ready if they have children without families we see to it that they are placed in permanent loving homes instead of going into the system so we're more of a one-on-one in instead of uh you know helping large numbers and with the statistics and what have you um we have i've had uh women to come and stay as long as three years we have women that will come here and clean up and then get back out on the streets and they will use again and they'll come back they'll call me and ask me if they can come back and when they come back they're just a little bit sicker just a little worse off and we help them again and i've had them come in and out and as long as they don't give me any real problems when they're here this is their home they can always come back here and so it's not very clinical you know this is something that we do with our heart we try to make it as home-like as comfortable as nurturing as possible and that's that's our reputation and we feel that that but that's one of the things that makes us unique our shelter's just a little bit different and our hearts are in it and so the catches with jewel being being catch one you know it just kind of go they go hand in hand that's great um i'm wondering if here we go um i'm wondering if you become very close to the women and the children here if you have some stories about about those relationships or is that is that hard to become close to them at night you know it's amazing in working with the homeless some of the families that we deal with have been through so much pain there's been so much hurt and trauma in their lives that when they aren't being abused and they experience kindness they become the abuser so as a result i cannot get close to every family or every woman that comes into our shelter they simply won't allow it they're not used to it those that do allow us in i've become very close to them the women leave here and go into independent living and they come back all of the holidays they'll call and they'll say well you know my child is having a birthday can we have a party there uh it's my birthday of course you know when we throw the party in the whole bit and decorate any excuse for a party will do and uh it it it makes us feel good because we know that we're doing something right you know that we are providing uh a home for them to want to come back to some of them come and visit us almost every weekend you know and and it's fun um when they get uh sick i've had some that have had to go into the hospital and they would say tell their families if at all possible i want to go back to rue's house you know before going to a hospice i want to stay there as long as i possibly can and we keep them you know for as long as we can and then when they go to hospices we visit them at the hospice uh when they make the transition we're at their funerals so we're very involved we have paid for cremations you know we've had burials at sea when they've requested that we try to see to it that their needs are met and that their wishes are fulfilled because this is just so important while they're here we try to give them as much power as we possibly can i have lived in shelters before for homeless and i know what that's about it seems a hundred years ago it was a totally different life as far as i'm concerned uh but i can't forget that you know and so in opening the shelter it was very important for me to to make these women and their babies feel as comfortable as possible that's real important thanks please okay okay mainly uh just in terms of us operating we get our support mainly from the straight community uh there are some organizations in the uh gay community that have been extremely helpful we can depend on them every year you know for for just a very generous annual donation um in the lesbian community very little support i'm sad to say um we the everyone knows that we're out here you know and i'm hoping that very soon that it will change and that we will get more support from the women okay so um so uh your experience in a shelter how does that help you run this house you know i had um [Music] years ago i was in a very abusive relationship and i had spent time in four shelters for battered women and the last time i was there i was just determined that i was going to change my life and just turn everything around and i went and went to therapy i'm still in therapy it's been years now and i've kind of gotten myself together and i just wanted to do something for people that were out there in the streets in trouble who needed help and so i opened up this house and we've just been going full blast ever since