Just Women Talking Shit
Just Women Talking Shit is your go-to self-help podcast for real talk on personal & spiritual growth. Hosted by Jacquelynn Cotten, personal evolution mentor & founder of Spiritual Support System, this podcast features juicy interviews with badass, one-of-a-kind women. We dive deep into the good 💩, bad 💩, weird 💩, & life 💩, offering insights & inspiration to help you live a more authentic, fulfilled life. Join us for relatable stories, expert advice, & practical tips on overcoming challenges, building resilience, & embracing your true self. Tune in & start your journey towards personal evolution today!
Just Women Talking Shit
Reflections at 36: My Wild Ride Through Life
Birthday reflections hit differently when you're staring down 36 years of life experiences, complete with all the messy, beautiful, and sometimes downright painful moments that shape who we become.
My journey has been anything but straightforward. I've navigated divorce, blended family dynamics, pregnancy loss, and the death of my daughter's father—all while battling anxiety, CPTSD, and coming to terms with being neurodivergent. The constant struggle between wanting acceptance and needing to be authentically myself has finally reached a tipping point where I'm choosing the latter, even when it's uncomfortable.
Through the chaos, I've somehow managed to create a podcast, meet fascinating people from Olympians to professional fighters, write a book, buy a camper, and raise amazing children. These achievements didn't happen because life was perfect—they happened despite life being imperfect. That's what I want you to take away from this episode: you're still here, still fighting, still creating, and that alone makes you a warrior.
As I enter this new year of life, I'm setting my sights on performing stand-up comedy, finishing my memoir, recording music, and traveling in our camper while homeschooling the kids. It's a tall order, but if there's anything these 36 years have taught me, it's that life is just a set of experiences—and I'm determined to make each one count.
Join me in this raw, unfiltered birthday reflection where I peel back the layers of social media perfection to show you the real, sometimes struggling, but always determined person behind the microphone. Because in a world full of fake shit, couldn't we all use a little more authenticity?
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Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to Just Women Talking Shit with your host, jacqueline Cotton. Hello, it's Jacqueline, your host of Just Women Talking Shit. And well, actually today is March 31st. But today, when this is released, if you're listening to it on the day that it's actually released, will be April 1st, tuesday. And 36 years ago the world was gifted with me At 3.22 pm. Actually, april 1st was when I was born and I just gotta say that my life has been a fucking wild ride.
Speaker 1:The older you get, the more you reflect and you're like man, none of that made sense at that time. You know I was acting crazy, or I had these certain types of emotions, or I had this perspective on life and I thought I knew this. And look back and you're like oh, look at that little baby human. She thought she knew it all. You know young enough to know everything Right. And just older I get, the more I realize man, life has a funny way of teaching you things Right. So I just put together a reel. Every you know sit, and I think we tend to do that as humans, especially as anxious humans. You know what I'm saying and for me, I am overly anxious. Everyone near and dear to me knows this, and I've gotten a bit more verbal about it online and different versions of me are starting to come out of the woodworks.
Speaker 1:Okay, this podcast and I'm very open about my mental health and how it is all over the place and, as of recently, my anxiety is through the roof, even though I feel like it shouldn't be. So I bought a camper thinking, you know, I just need to travel more. So we're about to do that and I just started really coming into my own. But with coming into my own is owning all of the shit, and I've got some shitty bits about me, like things I accept, but like I have a certain type of way. So something that I want to I want to reflect on for a second is I always get a hoot out of you know, on online or people getting like online on you, right, because if, if dudes could see how I am in real life, like I try to convey who I am, but like you're seeing all the like icky habits or, like you know, smell my breath in the morning, shit like that. So it's just going into this like unapologeticness and a wild ride for me, and the more unapologetic I get, the more variations of me that I am letting out into the open. For instance, shady Cheryl. I just introduced to the world this funny bitch that I call Shady Cheryl. I don't know where she comes from, but she just gets real weird and she gets judgy and she's funny and she's also not afraid to say what's on her mind and like she thinks in a weird way.
Speaker 1:I'm neurodivergent, something that I didn't quite understand until I heard what neurodivergent meant. And you pair all this with creativity and a really interesting and weird life. A lot of struggle, a lot of hardship, right, and that's what makes a person like the struggle, the grind, the uniqueness, the hurdles right. And it's just been a really interesting past. I would say 36 months in general. Life has happened, life has lifed. You know what I'm saying. And here we are again.
Speaker 1:I'm a whole year older, my spirit still feels so young and free, and I'm having a really hard time accepting things like and going from being funny to now I'm going to be like really honest with you all, because it's something that's really hard to internalize and keep to myself, but it's kind of. You know, I'm 36. My husband is 40. Um, oh God, he's going to be 45, nine year age gap, right, and so in the beginning it didn't seem like anything, it didn't seem like a fucking thing. I was like, yes, I'm ready for some maturity. Thank you, wham bam, thank you, ma'am.
Speaker 1:Okay, but there are just things, you know, time it's it, it, I guess it does make a difference. And so, for instance, um, he, he's, he's in his mid forties. He had three children before me when we met he told me he was done with kids, not gonna happen, right, and that was really hard for me to swallow because I only had one kid. I got one baby out of him, right, and I'm so beyond grateful. And even though he is a challenge, and now that I'm older I don't have quite as much patience. And then you tag on three kids that I'm not my biological offspring. So it's difficult to have that relationship and no boundaries. And like it's difficult the more we get into it, understanding how to balance parenting whenever it's a blended family, right.
Speaker 1:So, and are just these moments where you know she has three babies and she always said she was to have no babies, and so it's not a competition thing, it's just that like since little girl, I was like I'm going to have four or five kids like a mom, right. And there was just this time in my life where I felt like I wasn't going to get any more babies. So I'd accepted that and I applied to be a foster mom and I made it through the process and they were doing my home check and then I was dating my husband and we weren't engaged or anything like that yet, but I was laid off of work right before the pandemic. And that's, if you don't have an income, but not just an income, you don't have a job, then you can't foster. So I was immediately disqualified. But shortly after that and I was really torn up about this y'all because, like, I've called by God to foster children, like it, like it was the next natural step for me, because I wanted children so badly and my daughter was lonely and she always begged me for a sibling and it was just really fucking hard for me to accept that. I was like, that's okay, I'm going to be single and I'm not going to have any more kids, that's okay, but that's God's will, right. And then I meet my husband and less than a year into being, you know, in relationship, I get pregnant and it really opens both of our eyes and it really opens both of our eyes.
Speaker 1:On the day of that following month I miscarried. So I spent Mother's Day miscarrying our baby and really another hard pill to swallow, because I thought to myself this baby was an accident If we were to go by the standards of getting married and planning and you know things. So I thought, man, I was really excited about that baby and I had no idea how excited I could be about something like that again. And it turns out he was really excited too. So I had the conversation with him. I was like, would you ever want to, you know, have a baby down the line? And he was open to the idea. So, lo and behold, I'm pregnant and I'm pregnant with a boy.
Speaker 1:But the whole pregnancy was spent throughout the pandemic and so he got to go to zero visits, including the one where I miscarried our baby. And that was the most difficult news to receive by myself ever, because shortly and then shortly after that, I got this. I got, you know, my daughter's dad dying too. So, lost a baby, lost her dad went through the whole pregnancy, really stressed out, trying to be happy, trying to get my husband's family to accept me, really wanting to. You know worth in the world of new family, because you know sure, and y'all know a good brunt of you know, had a really hard life and and mom had a really hard life. So it's no wonder that it's getting a little bit better with each generation, because we don't want our children to relive all these generational curses right. And so I thought for sure that I would come into this family and it would just be smooth, smooth butter.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, the past few years have been really hard for me. 35 was a really hard year for me. I'm coming to terms with the fact that mental illness does in some sense rule my life. I don't 100% know how to function in front of people in social settings. I'm learning a lot about being neurodivergent. I'm learning a lot about my chronic illnesses chronic illnesses but the constant pressure of wanting to be accepted has really had more of an effect on me than I think I was willing to admit. And so the past few years have been really hard. I've showed up to certain people like a certain person hoping to be accepted. I thought that he would bring this family together, and he has in a sense, but like there's situations where you know now he's left completely out. I feel like the past few years have really shown me who's our side and who is there when it's convenient for them or they want to snap a picture for social media. And so I think that year 36 is going to be a lot of hard truths and I'm afraid of losing a lot because I'm just becoming so concrete in who I am and accepting that I do suffer tremendously and that the CPTSD is really, it's got a grip on me, and that I don't know how to hold a relationship together for very long before I try to self-implode, self-destruct.
Speaker 1:I'm learning so much about myself. I'm learning so much about what it's like to be a partner. You know, been married, truly married. The marriage I had before this was a total sham. Had before this was a total sham. I mean interviewed. They never published it, but like I was interviewed by a big publication in the UK about my husband, my first husband, being a serial husband. He married three women within less than like three. Every time I needed somewhere to live pretty much and restart his life, he would jump into relationship and I truly feel like I was a victim to that because I was so naive, so fucking damaged.
Speaker 1:So figuring out, you know am, and so this is like what we call a starter marriage. You know, it was a dumpster fire. I was so naive and wanting to just be loved and once again accepted, and trying to be someone I wasn't, so that somebody would love me and hold me and appreciate me and just tell me I was good enough. You know, relationship in general got me in so much trouble. It onset, you know, dad, you know sanity, because I was so convinced he was the one that I made irrational decisions which, looking back now, dude, I would have done the same fucking thing Most likely.
Speaker 1:You know, this is like my real marriage and it's hard, it's really hard. It's hard considering the circumstances, considering, you know, we were in the middle of the pandemic. We had just lost a baby, he was freshly divorced, I was freshly divorced, we had a legal obligation to get married, to live with each other. Not saying that we never would have gotten married, but it was a lot of pressure and it almost feels as though it's been held against us, like my son not being involved with some certain family situations and just feeling left out, and I feel like I'm punished by this life that I've built in a way.
Speaker 1:And so this past year has been really rough, trying to figure out how can you be happy when you're not always happy, when it's hard to be happy because of mental illness, how can you be happy? And I've tried, you know, and anxiety medicine and things of that nature. And I smoke marijuana, cannabis, I'm sorry, medical cannabis, right, and even that I'm pulling back from and figuring out how to function without relying on something to calm me down. But it's hard, hard, because I've been in such denial. I want to say that I've honestly been like toxic to a certain extent throughout the past few years. You know, I could just like fuck, fake it till I make it. If I just kept appearing to be strong, nobody would question my strength. And now I find myself most days cornered on a couch If I'm not being active, walking, you know, doing things with the kids or running errands or working out at the gym, which is like you know. And fitness has taken on a huge part of my life. I cannot function without it. My mental health cannot function without it.
Speaker 1:Age 36, I'm going to be in the best shape of my life. I hope to be. I don't have a heart attack or a stroke before then. But it's been such a wild ride and I just think back, you know, I'm realizing so much about myself and how I limit myself through my chronic illness or I feel limited through chronic illness and chronic mental health crises. I've been told that I undermine myself and I undercompensate for my situations or I don't give myself enough credit, in a sense. And so I want to take a second to toot my own horn, I guess, back on how much I've accomplished throughout all the heartache, you know, divorce, losing my child's father who, regardless of the terms that we ended on, and you know being in the middle of a custody battle and just fighting for what we each truly believed was right man. He was my best friend. You know miss him, even though we fought a lot like we had such a common denominator our daughter and I miss him and I'm still hurting from that. I'm still hurting from losing that baby um. And so it's really cool to be able to, you know, say, oh well, I made a whole new human.
Speaker 1:I started a podcast in the middle of a pandemic, when the world needed connection more than anything, and I met an Olympian, I met a professional fighter. I met so many interesting people, so many interesting women. It's insane. I've made some of the most genuine connections. I feel like I could call on people all around the world and they would have my back. You know a book I've somehow managed to.
Speaker 1:Even though we're not financially well we don't do well, we are in such we're overcompensating for debt borrowing. You know from over the pandemic. I think a lot of us went into heavy debt during the pandemic. We're still trying to catch up from that. So but but I've somehow been able to stay home and and nurture my anxiety and figure out how to.
Speaker 1:To right, I was able to buy a camper even though I didn't get to have a wedding. I got married. I got to have my miracle baby. I was playing music again. I got to travel to the Ozarks and not only go to the Ozarks but pay for a friend, which it put me in debt and, looking back now, I probably should have been smarter, but I just wanted her to go so bad right. I meet a client in the Ozarks who I'm going next week to. I get to go see her again. I'm taking the camper and I'm taking my kids, and just things that I never would have done years ago. I never would have been able to push myself, I never would have been able to work up towards it and I just can't. It's kind of wild to me. Oh, I got to go to Chicago. I went to meet, you know, my coach and celebrate with her for the 100th episode of Just Women Talking Shit. I obtained my first sponsor. You know they send me free products that I don't have to pay money for. So it's just like all these things after some really big brands throughout the past, you know half, and so all I'm saying is like I'm sitting here tooting my own horn.
Speaker 1:But I hope that you stop every year on your birthday and you really reflect and think about how strong you are, how amazing you are, how there is no one else out there like you Not a fucking soul and how You've done so much, even though some days it feels like the world has dealt you. You know, hand of cards On the bad mental health days, when you're feeling unwell. You know, don't feel on top of the world. I hope that you at least can on day when the day you were born, the day that you took your first breath, can go man, happy birthday to me, like I'm, because we don't feel like that all the time. But then if you can sit and reflect and if on this birthday you can just make the promise to yourself to push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit more, you know, if you have a big list of things that you want to accomplish, just pick one thing you know, work towards that. Take like once every day maybe, like day one is just look into it on the internet, and then day two is make a list of things you need to do and on day three it's just start working towards that first thing on the list.
Speaker 1:Like what I found, and I'm not that fucking old. I tell myself, oh, I'm getting old as shit and I feel old as shit some days, right, but my spirit is young. But what I'm seeing and what I think I've known from a very young age, even from a very young age, even though it's really hard to slow down, to appreciate this is that life is just a set of experiences. And if you want to go into the whole matrix and the whole illusion of life and you create your own reality, then your reality is based on your perception reality, then then your reality is based on your perception and perceptions are built off of beliefs. Beliefs are built off repetitive thoughts over time. So if you can just just do your best to change your thoughts, you know environment like just we'll create a new reality is what I found, and it's really hard to stop sometimes and just slow the fuck down and go. Yeah, life is set of experiences and, like I, just stop and appreciate this particular experience for what it is and be able to, in any environment, any predicament, any situation, any phase or season of life, be able to just go. I appreciate this for what it is. This is an experience. What am I supposed to experience? What am I supposed to learn?
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of us are so busy talking, so busy trying to distract ourselves, right With these phones, with podcasts, with that we don't actually sit with ourselves to get all the answers. So I think 36 is going to be a lot of me sitting with myself and with my children figuring out how to navigate so that we can all be at our happiest. You know we can be. Is every day going to be a fucking rainbow? No, you know, it's not going to be rainbows and unicorn buttholes right, it's not always going to be that beautiful Like I imagine buttholes being beautiful, like I know buttholes are really beautiful, but if anybody's would be unicorn, right, okay, Just so we're in agreement there. But how can we feel the most aligned in life so that we can all greatly benefit from this experience called life?
Speaker 1:You know, just going to sit here with myself, do a little bit of work, get this podcast scheduled, all the things, and just remind you to take some time, like I just did with you all, to just stop and reflect, reflect yourself, give yourself some grace, pat yourself on the back. You're still alive. That in itself is an accomplishment if you really stop and think about it. You're still alive. So that's pretty fucking cool. You're a badass for still being here. That means you're a warrior. Yeah, we might have bears or lions chasing us, but like the way crazy. But you're still here, I'm still here. So that's an accomplishment. I just want you to know that I love you. I love all of you so much, I appreciate you all so much.
Speaker 1:I don't know when this podcast will you know off, but this is the year that I completely just release, release and just show up the best I can be, even when it's messy, and be as real as I can be with all of you. I think that is the key to success is being able to truly capture my authenticity and realness with all of you, because the world is full of too much fake shit, too much scary shit, too much fluff Right, and I want this to be like the place you can go and go. You know what I don't feel judged. I feel like I'm always going to be able to see a fresh perspective. I can write in I can you know what I don't feel judged. I feel like I'm always going to be able to see a fresh perspective. I can write in. I can you know I can get answers and I feel included. I feel loved, accepted, appreciated, even if they don't know me, because it's just going to be a constant rotation of beautiful minds, experts and just so much wisdom. I've got some really great episodes coming up.
Speaker 1:I can't wait and wait, because I don't want to get too much older, or at least I don't want to speed up the process. You know, I want to live in the present more. That is really age 36. That's my thing is figuring out how to relax. I feel like I don't know how to relax, and so learn how to relax and be present and somehow still capture, through vlogs and content, our road trips. You know, be on the road. I'm going to be renting the camper out. I'm starting a business with that. I'm going to be working on passive income streams. I'm music again, so I'll be, you know, together putting an album together, touring all those things. I'll be, you know, together putting an album together, touring all those things. Shady Cheryl has made her appearance. I'm working on my comedy skit right now and I plan to be performing within the next year. By age 37, I want to have my debut stand up and I want to have my book done by 37, too, my memoir, and so lots of things coming up.
Speaker 1:I'm getting older. The older you get, the more you realize how every day is a fucking blessing, and I'm so, even though you know days where I, like you, don't want to exist. It's not that I want to hurt myself, it's just that I, that's feeling sometimes the mental illness gives you is like what would it be like to just not exist? It's not a kill me or anything like that, it's just straight up, I don't want anybody to touch me, I just want to to, and for me that's sometimes like I'd imagine being in the middle of a field of flowers and like just knowing what day it is, not having anything to worry about, money not being a thing, having no pressure, no expectations, like nothing. I want to exist. I want to take me about the beach and give me a book and throw me some coconuts. Like I want to unplug from the matrix, right so? But I'm still so grateful to be here because just in voicing this, I feel so much more empowered to get all these things done. That's a tall order. That's a tall fucking order. And if I can do it, you're going to be like what the fuck is she taking and what is she on? And I'm going to be telling you if I'm still smoking cannabis, cannabis Life. I'm on law and life Because I don't know.
Speaker 1:I just can't help but feel like there's so many more people I need to have discussions with. Somebody needs to talk to me, or I need to talk to somebody and I'm ready to connect. I'm ready to have those heart to soul conversations. I want to look inside the nitty gritty and I want to change the world. The joke is is this podcast is my version of you know that Ricky Lake was the coolest bitch ever when I was a kid and I'd watch her show and I was like I'm going to be like Ricky Lake. I was afraid to talk to people but I was like I might be like Ricky Lake.
Speaker 1:That was before the world really got me down, really made me think I couldn't do something like this, and so I started with the podcast and it was made me think I couldn't do something like this, and so I started with the podcast and it was all voice. I wasn't showing videos and I've just recently started putting videos out and now I'm getting a set together and I'm going to be taking it on the road and interviewing people on our homeschool trips and stuff. You know it's coming together. It's weird seeing it come together and I knew it could come together and I wasn't sure how it come together, but it's coming together and so if I can pull this off which I think I can I will have the life that I've always wanted and that's just entertaining people, making people laugh, making people feel loved, getting to show my art traveling, getting to show my art traveling. I don't want to meet a stranger, I want to be able to hug everybody. That's the world I want to live in and I'm 36. Whoa, close to 40. And they say Tina Fey got her start around 40. So 36, here we come. It's going to be a banger. I don't know what I was talking about five minutes ago, but I'm pretty sure I got off topic and so we're getting older that dementia could be setting in. So bear with me, but I'm done. I love y'all so much I'm going to go.
Speaker 1:I was trying to get this episode done real quick because my daughter Finley and my son Camp well, he wants to be called Phillip, his name is Phillip Camp, but went with my husband because it's really important to Finley that she feels like she makes me feel special tomorrow because she sees how I go above and beyond for everybody else's birthdays right, and part of that mental illness is like she and she suffers too, especially with her dad dying. But she's able to identify really quickly when I'm really sad and some days she'll just like tell me everything and I'll just, ah, I feel especially so. She knows and she listens and she takes notes. She literally takes notes in her phone. She's been asking me for a couple weeks now what's your favorite breakfast, what's your favorite snack, and so I was trying to get this episode done before they get home and I'm going to go now because I can like. I know mommy sense is going off. It's like four o'clock. They should be home right now, so I'm hoping to get out before they got home so that I didn't have any big interruptions. But thank you for listening to me. I love y'all so much.
Speaker 1:If you go to the website, you can now send in vocal recordings. So if you have any questions for me, if you have any questions in regards to a specific topic, go ahead and send those in. You can also email us. You can also send us a text. We will take these questions and ask them to the appropriate kind of expert or the appropriate guest, and we'll get you the answers that you need. If you want your name to be listed, just put your first name and your last initial, and if you want to be renamed anonymous, you can do that too. So that's all I got for y'all. I'm 36, getting old as shit, 37, here we come, another whirl around the sun, and I am just getting started.
