How to Remember Who the F*ck You Are (When Life Gets Loud)

What happens when the labels get louder than your own voice? In this episode of Just Women Talking Shit, Jacquelynn gets real about identity loss, burnout, and mental health—the moments when “mom,” “partner,” or “coach” start to drown out you. Through honest storytelling and practical mindset tools, you’ll learn how to separate who you are from what you do, rebuild self-trust, and find clarity again.

She shares three actionable steps to help you reconnect with yourself: remember who you were before the noise with a quick journal prompt, audit your mental inputs with a 24-hour detox, and use a five-second rule to take small, brave action that reignites momentum. Expect relatable examples, laughter, and grounded advice for women in transition, healing, or evolution.

If you’ve ever asked, “Who am I beneath all this?”—this episode is your sign to begin again. Follow Just Women Talking Shit for more real conversations about womanhood, mental health, and personal growth.

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Chapters

• 0:44 Gratitude, Milestone, And Today’s Focus
• 1:47 Parenting, Roles, And Losing Self
• 4:51 Mental Health Spiral And Marriage Strain
• 6:45 Business Conflicts, Refunds, And Burnout
• 10:09 Diagnosis, Therapy, And Root Causes
• 11:41 Identity Versus Roles
• 16:22 Step One: Remember Before The Noise
• 20:34 Step Two: Audit The Voices
• 23:02 Step Three: One Brave Tiny Action
• 26:07 Weekly Challenge And Celebration
• 27:54 Consistency, Funding, And Community Support
• 31:40 Mailbag, Topics, And Guest Ideas
• 33:40 Retreat Invite And Closing Rally

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to Just Women Talking Shit. Can you believe that we are already at episode 125? I say already. Now this thing's been going on a hot minute, but y'all know me, I've been inconsistent AF and so but we still like we're here 125. Like what? How freaking cool is that? Um, if you've been here since the beginning, seriously, thank you. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that you keep on coming back and that you share these episodes with friends, with family, or even if you just keep them to yourself. You're listening, and I just I gotta say thank you from one homegirl to another. If you're new, welcome, welcome, welcome. Around here, I feel like we keep it real and we talk about you know the stuff that most people avoid, and my goal is to help us all just grow through this mess together. Not just go through it, but grow through this mess because, well, life be crazy, is it not? Today we are talking about something that I know that a lot of us have been feeling lately. Um, and it's like this sense of I don't even know if I know who I am anymore. Whether, you know, it's motherhood, work, heartbreak, healing, or just I don't know, the noise of being a woman or or being human, right? In this world where I feel like it's really fucking easy to lose track of who you are underneath it all. So this episode is really about reclaiming you, the version of you who existed before the world told you who you were supposed to be. And my hope for you is that by the end of this episode, you'll have three really doable steps to start finding that person again. Um now I say all this as I see um pictures appear on my television. I've got like, you know, Amazon pictures that play across the fire stick screensaver. Um, and I see all of our kids, and I feel like having kids is such a good example of one, losing yourself, yeah, in the identities that come with being a parent. Like it's so easy for kids to not even know that you are a person outside of being mom or dad. Like it probably blows our kids' minds when they find out that, like, oh, we have interests, we have feelings, we don't want to just clean up after you all the fucking time. We have things we want to do, we want to be respected, we want to feel pursued, we want to, you know, still chip away at those dreams that we had when we were little so we can be what we wanted to be when we grow up, right? But it's very interesting if you are a parent because you are helping people become who they're meant to be, and all of a sudden you are in a way reparenting yourself. Everything that you didn't like in childhood, hopefully, hopefully you're trying to correct that in in their lives by helping them discover who they are and removing the shame or you know, stigmas that might be socially impressed upon them because there's such a pressure to fit in to be like everybody else to keep up with the Genesis, right? So, um I'm excited. I'm excited about this episode, and I hope that you find such great value in it, and if you do, be sure to share it with someone that you care about so that she or he, um, and if you are really listening, my stepson, you know who you are? Tell me that you heard this shout out because I'm not completely convinced that you listen to this all the time. But that would blow my mind if you really do. Apparently, one of our kids listens to my podcast, and I just never saw it coming, especially him being a boy. But anywho, now that I've like talked about that too much and and made this a little awkward, let's jump right in. I want to think back to in my 20s, especially, like late 20s, and um, I'm now mid-30s, I'm 36, um, which is wild, close to 40, right? The older you get, I think the less of a fuck you give. But the older you get, the more you learn yourself and you become yourself and you personally evolve, right? But I remember a few years ago, like I hit a point where I did not recognize myself, and this happened again like earlier this year. I had a complete fucking meltdown, which is why these episodes kind of came to a halt. I had gotten in a car accident, I uh I never went to the doctor for my foot. I'm pretty sure it was almost broken though. But we're just gonna go with it, it was fractured, it was sprained beyond life imaginable, as far as I was concerned. My foot still hurts, and this happened in June, and it is now November, just to put things into perspective. But I had like just I I had lost myself and I had started drinking and I had started disconnecting with my husband, and my husband was disconnecting with me, he was drinking more, and and we were just kind of going in this volatile cycle of we both needed help and we were both screaming, but we couldn't hear the other person because we both were crying for help, right? Now, I say that, not saying that he was like being a bad dad or being a bad partner. I think I just have the tendency to push a person away, and so he was coping the best he could. Hopefully that makes sense. However, you know, I was showing up, is what I realized. I was showing up for everyone else. You know, I was pouring myself into my clients, still pouring myself into my family, going and traveling and seeing clients, meeting them in person, trying to get more involved in like our little community around here, taking the gifts of the pool, trying to really get out of my comfort zone by talking to people. But I really I couldn't remember like when was the last time that I'd shown up for me. Ever since my mental health had spiraled, you know, I was going from making like what I would consider good money, especially living in the south, growing up on food stamps, uh, not having two fucking nickels to rub together, right? To going back to felt like my career was my career in coaching was taking off and uh um I was excited about it, but it all really backfired on me. Uh had three situations, um, three clients who became a pain in my ass who wanted refunds and weren't entitled refunds because when you work with a coach or you work with a service where their time is invested or the money is used for the experience and and you do like pay it later options. So for instance, one that you might be familiar with is like a firm or uh I'm trying to think of another one. Klarna is another one after pay, but I had started making really good money because I was offering these ways for people to work with me. I could get paid up front, they would make small monthly payments, and it was their understanding that the money they invested was to another company, they owed them that money. I I my mental health spiraled real quickly when I started getting a couple of people who wanted to file disputes with my merchant, saying that they were owed money and legally, rightfully, and integrity-wise, in my opinion, they were not owed anything. They were disgruntled people who don't put in the work, who honestly were just living in such scarcity that they were they were wanting to get this money back, and and it's just that's not the way it works. So it did something to me. I felt like I was like I was I was I was hurt because the people that went and did these things and and and wanted to, you know, ask for the money back, I'd been I'd known for quite some time. I'd done numerous favors for, had been in my programs, had attended things, had I had gifted and sent to them gifts, you know, had people deliver coffee to them, to their house, um, birthday gifts, like when I say I went above and beyond, it still hurts my feelings that it happened. And and I realized after a lot of reflection, because I was real quick to back off, back off coaching and say, I'll finish with the clients I have, but maybe this just isn't for me because I felt like I had I'd failed. Like, why else would these people do this if if I wasn't a terrible person? All of my old programming started to fucking kick back in. And so I pulled back and my mental health was shit. I was just over-serving, um, overserving, being underserved myself, and I didn't know what to do. I was just spiraling shortly into the year I, you know, after having so many issues with my my like my personality, my I was staying depressed, my anxiety was on fire, like I was getting I gained a bunch of weight, all these things, right? I decided that I needed to really talk to somebody because it was starting to scare me. The thoughts that were running through my head whenever I felt like on paper I should be fulfilled. It looks like I've got this, you know, beautiful, perfect life, and and it is, it's beautiful. It uh nothing's perfect, obviously, but I was starting to recognize that I was the problem. So I wanted to get down to the root of the problem. The root of the problem was some underlying health issues, some underlying mental health issues as well that I just didn't know about. And so since then, I've been seeing a therapist. I have really been figuring out who I am, like getting back to the core of who who would I be without others' opinions? Who would I be if I'd been raised out in the wild without influences from outside sources, right? I, you know, long story short, I am bipolar and I've got extreme anxiety. I think that I could have a borderline personality disorder or that something of that nature. Now, if you and we'll get into this at some point, because I know the story needs to be heard, and it'll help you get to know me better, but it'll also help people out there who are struggling to talk about neglect or emotional neglect that they experienced in their childhoods. I know that it'll help us all start to heal as adults from these things that were, you know, bestowed upon us and our nervous systems in a sense. So that's coming, that's coming later. But doing all this inner work has gotten me to the spot where I can now, I can now reflect back and really do know that I was showing up for everybody else. I was showing up for my clients, I was showing up for my family, for my community. But when? When was the last time that I'd really shown up for me? Right. So I remember like several mornings just sitting in my car. It got to where I would just sit in my car after dropping the kids off, holding my coffee in silence, and I would just sit there, have a million thoughts racing through my head, you know, thinking about how death seemed more inviting than living. And that was just nonsense to me because I have so much to live for. I got my rainbow baby, my daughter is beautiful and thriving. I have three beautiful bonus sons, I have an amazing husband. I live in a nicer house than I ever could have imagined I'd live in, you know, when I was a kid, now I was an adult. I've got the perfect little family and the perfect little life that I little Jacqueline begged for, right? And so, how? How how was I feeling blank inside? That's what I had to figure out. Like, if someone had asked me what I wanted when I was feeling this way, I I don't know that I'd be able to say what was lighting me up. You know, the clients were starting to drain me. My podcast was starting to drain me. It felt like more work than it was worth. You know, I don't get a shit ton of downloads. Like, I I don't know much about SEO, all these things, right? And so it was real easy to like just let things go instead of grow through it. And so I really, I really don't know what I would have answered if or if I would have had an answer. You know, like my answer is typically always just like, I just really want to make a difference and I want to help people. But you know, that that scared me, to be honest, because I realized that no one was coming back to hand me my identity, right? Getting married, being a mom, being a podcast host, leading retreats, doing all these things, they're great. But if you are lacking personal identity and trying to create it through creating other experiences and illusions like busyness versus feeling good in your own body and being able to sit with your own stillness in the company of yourself and know that even if a flock of yappy bitches walks by, or even if the mean mom group talks about you, like that has nothing to do with you. Being able to tap into that level of security within yourself and your identity takes a lot of work. Takes a lot of questions, it takes a lot of just yucky stuff, yucky questions, whether it be writing or you know, going and beating the shit out of a pillow or screaming into a pillow or signing up for one of my Women Who Wonder experiences and getting out of your comfort zone, traveling to a new city, meeting new women, like whatever that looks like for you to be able to put yourself back out there and figuring out what is it that you like, what is it that you don't like, what are your non-negotiables? What are your boundaries? What are the things you want to accomplish in this lifetime? How do you want to make people feel, you know, after you have gone on to whatever comes after life? Like all these things are your identity. So I want you to think about identity versus roles. Your roles are not your identity, your labels are not your identity. Whatever it is you call yourself mom, wife, host, business owner, that's not your identity, right? So I found myself just really wanting to feel like myself again. Like I wanted to reclaim her piece by piece, you know. I I might have said it earlier, but like, who would I have been without others' opinions? Who would I have been if I was raised in the wild? Who would I have been without other people's influences, without society, you know, making me feel shame, really being able to fall in love with myself whole, you know, fully, truthfully, without beating myself up all the time. Like, who would she be? I'm just curious. And and it kind of, for me at least, it helped me start reclaiming myself. So I have three steps for you. Three steps for you to really be able to reclaim you or get back in touch with you, get back in touch with you know, the woman you've been wanting to become, right? Whether that be the woman you were, the woman you are, or the woman you want to be. That's gonna be totally up to you. And y'all know my stance on I feel like that we are forever evolving. You are always going to personally evolve. So, like, you can't really say that who you were when you were 16 is exactly who you are now that you're 36. We, I mean, I don't want to be held accountable for 16-year-old douchebag me. I don't know about you. Like, she was she there's a lot she didn't know. But I know that 36-year-old Jacqueline probably won't be the same exact person at 50 once she's had more life experiences and has had more time to evolve. So, three steps. Let's start with step number one. Remember who the fuck you were before all the noise. Seriously, let's start simple. Like, who were you before you started shrinking yourself to fit other people's expectations? I can literally think back to whenever I was a little girl. And for whatever reason, I wanted to sing, I wanted to dance, I was definitely that kid who was kind of labeled, you know, theatric and too much. Oh, I just got full-bodied chills saying this because the woman that I became, or the adolescent that later on became a woman, totally opposite, shy, too scared to get up in front of the class to to present my project, didn't have very many friends, got picked on a lot. I was a huge victim of bullying. You know, I I was just not an outspoken individual. I did not go out to do social things with friends. I was scared to socialize. I stayed home a majority of my life. I was scared of the world, needless to say. But when I was little, I can look back and I can see how spunky I was. I can see how I pranced around wanting to be a gymnast. And you know, before I started being told who I was, um is who I've actually turned out to be more like the older I get. So approaching 40, I'm more like five-year-old me. Like my my energy and my funness and my spirit, because you know, I think that fundamentally as a child, when you know, you are just so curious and fun and you know, asking all the questions and just life is magical that we don't necessarily lose that. We just we we we kind of hide it because you know, we're told to grow up or that's not real life, you know. And we're taught to diminish like this this mystery and this magnetism and this magicalness of life that we all we all start out with. It's just we are taught to to dim that shine, right? And so I find it so interesting. And that's why I just want to ask you again like who were you before you started shrinking yourself to fit other people's expectations? Like, what did that version of you love to do? What made her laugh until she cried? I think back being like you know, younger and hanging out with my cousins, like we had so much fun doing absolutely nothing because we were just the most authentic kids. We picked on each other, yeah, we would fight, but we made up, we'd wrestle, we we'd had adventures, we'd go to our picnics, we play games outside, we'd have Kool-Aid stands and the best memories of my life before life started getting like really tough and forcing us to be somebody else to grow up too quickly. But what did she dream about before someone told her to be realistic? Now, when you have time today, I want you to spend just five minutes, okay? Literally set a timer on your phone, or if if you're old school, you know, maybe you got one of those little kitchen timers. I don't know. I think that they're awesome. Actually, I want to get one of those because I think it's a really fun way to do tours and stuff around the house with kids. Side note, somebody mark that down, but or even like a you know, the timer uh on your microwave or stove or something like that that works too. Set that timer and voice note or journal this. The question is, and this is what you're gonna write on. Who was I before life got so loud? And just intuitively let yourself feel and talk about that, you know, feel it and speak on it through a voice note for five minutes, or feel it and write it on paper or on your your laptop, you know, for those straight five minutes. Don't stop until you hear the timer. And that's where you're gonna start to reconnect with yourself because she's still in there, she's still in there and she is just dying to get out. Moving along to number two, start auditing the voices that you're listening to. You repeating things that you've heard in the past or that you heard today, or just those not nice, self-inflicted judgments that you keep repeating in your head because you're anxious or overwhelmed or maybe just a little bit insecure. So audit those voices that you're listening to, uh, both internally and externally. Because here's the truth: most of us are living by voices that aren't even ours. The friend who means well, just an example, like the influencer you compare yourself to, or um even the parent still living rent-free in your head, those are the voices that we need to be limiting and need to replace with goodness. So, in order for your brain to feel good, in order for you to be able to think clearly, you've got to be able to take inventory and keep putting good stuff into that brain. For me, you know, I like podcasts, I like books, I like comedy, I like writing my own stuff, writing jokes, trying to work on a book, right? And it forces me personally to use the creativity, which is sometimes those voices are just like if you were being creative and tuning into what makes you happy, doing more things you love, then you wouldn't have time to think about that. So just pause and ask yourself, you know, whose voice is driving my decisions right now? Is it mine or is it someone else's? And then for the next 24 hours, I really challenge you to do like an input detox almost. Meaning like no comparing, no mindless scrolling, no overthinking what other people might think, right? No sending that text and then sitting on it like for you know five minutes going, oh my god, why'd I send that? I was so stupid. She's not gonna respond. They don't care, they don't want to talk to you. Did I wait too long? What did they think? Have they read it? None of that. No sitting there for five minutes before you send a text overanalyzing, just send the fucking text and then go put the phone away. Just listen to your voice again. Quit letting your judgment get clouded by all these people with their own opinions that you didn't ask for, most likely, living rent-free in that beautiful fucking brain of yours. That is where clarity starts to return. Step three, take one brave, tiny action. Okay? We're overthinking it. Once you've remembered who you were and you have started to quiet the noise, that's when it's time to move. Okay. Take Mel Robin's five-second rule, for instance. Don't give your time to yourself time to talk yourself out of it, because that's the way the brain is wired, is to protect you from, you know, scary, unfamiliar new things. The brain feels safe with repetition, with what it knows, with its comfort zone. So once you've remembered who you are and once you've quieted the noise, it really is. It's time to move. Take her five-second rule and say five, four, three, two, one. Launch, baby. Go for it. Get up, go for the walk. Don't give yourself time to think about it. Five, four, three, two, one. Walk up to that person and say hello that you've been wanting to talk to. 5-4-3-2-1. Start recording that first voice note for your first podcast episode. 5-4-3-2-1. Hit post. Don't think twice about it. And just know, like you know, it's going to reach the right people. So send the email. It doesn't have to be some big lap massive leap, right? Like it can be one brave tiny action that reminds you who the hell you are. Um, if you're not gonna send the email, say no. If you usually are always saying yes or like uh people pleasing, knowing that it doesn't, you know, it's not something you want to do or you'd really like to say no, start saying no. Sign up for the thing, go for a walk alone. Speak the truth before you allow yourself to come up with what somebody wants to hear. If I say no, is it gonna upset them? No, speak your truth before you even allow yourself to talk yourself out of it. Speak the truth that you've been swallowing, simply put. Because confidence does not come first, action does. Is you know, just like going to the gym, like the motivation comes afterwards. At first, you're not your healthiest, you're not used to this new routine. So you have to do it for a little while. You'll see some results, you'll start to notice momentum picking up. Oh my gosh, I'm walking faster. Oh my gosh, I went from a five-pound dumbbell to a 10-pound dumbbell. Like you can see the progress, and so therefore, you're motivated to keep going. So, confidence and motivation does not come first, action does. And that's how you start to rebuild your trust within yourself is just by one tiny promise at a time. You don't have to make all these big promises to yourself and then get bummed out when things don't happen quickly. Let's recap all these steps real quick, okay? Remember who you were before the noise. That's number one. Number two, audit the voices you're listening to. Number three, take one brave tiny action. But here's like your real challenge for the week, okay? Like, Jacqueline, you already have us three things to do. I promise, it's not gonna be that bad. I want you to do one thing that reminds you of who you are, okay? This doesn't have to cost money. For some of us, it might be. You know, I haven't gotten my nails done in like a year and a half. Mama, if you got the money and you got your bills paid and you feel good about it, go treat yourself. Okay. What one, you know, thing that reminds you of who you are could be picking up the guitar. Like I've got to do that every once in a while. And when I do, I feel so good. I feel so good playing guitar, singing my music, and just strumming to my heart's content or until my fingers fall off. Okay. Could be going for the walk. We mentioned walks a few times, could be just cooking a meal with your kids or with your partner, or really just, you know, taking time to be present with your puppy, with your dog. Could be getting back out in the garden. Like, I don't know what it looks like for you, but there is something that you can do this week that is going to remind you of who you are. And when you do that, I want you to take a picture of what you're doing, bonus points if I get to see your beautiful face, and I want you to tag Jacqueline Cotton and just women talking shit on Instagram so that I can celebrate you. I will repost it in my stories, and we will all celebrate you because you deserve. You deserve to feel celebrated just as you are, authentically, imperfect, unapologetically, okay, messy bun and all, mama. You really might just inspire somebody else to start reclaiming themselves too. That's what's so beautiful about this podcast. That's what's so beautiful about sisterhood in general and just spreading light and positivity is that when you show up and shine your light, you're inspiring other people to do the same thing. Man. 125 episodes, though. I like, I don't know. I don't know what it is about 125. You know, when I when I reached 50, I was like, oh my God. And then I reached 100. I'm like, holy shit. And now I'm at 125. And I feel like my next one is gonna be 150, and and then we'll jump to 200. And I don't know, it's just someone who that, someone who that, what was that? Someone like myself who has had commitment issues through being taught inconsistent um behaviors and patterns throughout my life. It just it's been so good to, even though I'm not always consistently posting, to know that consistency can just look like showing up, you know, in the good spurts, and then knowing that it's not, it's not a plateau, you know, it's not downhill, it's just we took a little break and and now we're picking back up. It's kind of like on a roller coaster, you know, when they go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and then they level out for a minute. And then they go up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Yeah, I just leveled out for a minute, right? So it's I I just have to give myself a little pat on the back that um that this thing is still fucking going. To be honest, part of it not always being super consistent is that I have self-funded this podcast since 2021. I've never asked anybody for support. I've looked into Patreon, I've looked into some other things, but I've never just put it out there that maybe people want to help. Maybe people want to be part of this. And so there have been months where when I'm not, you know, making money because my mental health and my chronic illnesses get the best of me sometimes. There are just numerous things that that play into to me not having the fun. So I am, I'm gonna put it out there that people want to help, that people want to give three or five dollars. And if you do, I will give you uh a really personal shout out and let everybody know how how freaking grateful I am for you. But I'm gonna open the floor up. I'm gonna open the floor up for what I preach all the time, is and that's that that we can all come together and make beautiful things. And so if you really enjoy this show and you want to support the show, you can just donate. There'll be a link below or you can look up top. But I also want to remind you that if you don't want to support the show or you don't have you know three dollars to to throw around right now, three dollars a month, that's okay too. There are other things you can do. You can totally leave a review on Apple Podcasts, you can send this episode to your friends, you can um rate this show and give it all the stars on Spotify. You can tag us in your stories so that other people can see our content so that they can listen to the podcast. You can write the show whether you want to do it through uh Buzz Sprout where there's like a fan mail option, or you want to send an email directly to us at JWTS podcast at gmail.com, you can send in your questions, whether it's for me, whether it is for an upcoming expert, you have like a love and relationships question. If you have a question about women's health, if you have a question about hypnotherapy, if you have a question about diets, nutrition, sex, like mental health, anything to do with personally evolving as a woman, send the questions in or send your stories in. Maybe you have a really beautiful story of how this amazing thing happened in your life, or um, you could inspire someone. Um, or maybe you just need a little pep in your step and you need, you know, to share, share what you're going through right now and just receive love from the community. Send us, send us some mail. We would love. And by we, I refer to we because I'm just manifesting this giant team one day. But right now it's just me. Not even gonna trip on y'all. It's just me. But I say we because I'm speaking it into existence. So we would love to receive your mail, your questions, if you need advice, if you want to give a tip or actionable step um to others, if you want to, you know, recommend a subject that we should cover, if you want to send a guest our way. These are all ways that you can help the show, okay? Because the goal is to take this on the road. Would have done it a bunch, I mean, a lot sooner. A bunch. Would have done it a bunch sooner. But, you know, like I told you, uh, I went on hiatus and I was just feeling real sorry for myself and being a little fucking bitch. But I'm back and I'm done feeling sorry for myself because I felt stupid. Once I came to, I was like, bitch, you just wasted so much time. I'm glad you felt like you got a good break, but we're not going to just like self-retreat like we've always done when we know that's not working, right? So the podcast started as me, you know, just like trying to get a sense of my own life, but it's really turning this whole community of women who show up, share the hard stuff, and grow anyway. And if this episode spoke to you, I just I ask that you know, you share it with a friend, someone who might need that reminder today. And if you crave a deeper connection and transformation, I really incentivize you to check out the weird women who wonder experience, which is going to be down in the show notes. It's my annual self discovery and sisterhood retreat where we take these conversations offline and do the real work together in person. So you can find all those details in the show notes. And until next time, my kids are about to walk in, so we gotta we gotta cut this short. Keep talking your shit, keep growing, and keep remembering who the fuck you are.