ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start with my this training: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up

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Have you ever tried to fix your spouse? Push a little harder, remind a little more, explain it one more time, and eventually they will just get it?

Jackie Kelley did that for years. Then she realized the thing she kept trying to change was often just a brain that worked differently from hers.

Jackie is a neurodivergent content creator, illustrator, children’s book author, wife, mother, and founder of JK Illustrates. Diagnosed with ADHD at 30, after motherhood knocked down what she calls the “perfect house of cards” she had built around herself, she began sharing what she was learning about ADHD, marriage, and family life. Her viral “Marriage Rules” videos took off in 2024, and her book, So You Married a Human, comes out October 6.

She and her husband married two weeks after she graduated, having never spent more than 72 consecutive hours together. Two very different neurodivergent brains, each convinced the other person’s way was the problem, eventually built a set of rules to communicate better in the middle of conflict.

In this episode, Jackie and Tracy get into “Voted Off the Island,” “No Wrong Answer,” “Do It Yourself,” and “Love This Idea for Five Minutes.” They also talk about sensory overload, defensiveness, the “little man” screaming in everyone’s head, why the goal of a fight cannot be winning, and why laughter matters so much in an ADHD marriage.

If you have ever quietly resented your partner for not doing something the way your brain needs it done, this one is for you.

Resources:
Website: https://www.stayathomejackie.com
Website: https://www.jkillustrates.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Stayathomejackie
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stayathomejackie 
Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start with my this training: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up

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“Why can’t I just?” was the question Clare Edwin kept coming back to.

Why can’t I just answer that email? Why can’t I just leave the house on time? Why can’t I just do the ordinary things everyone else seems to manage?

Clare grew up in Nigeria, studied aeronautical engineering, earned a master’s in mathematical modelling, worked as a quality engineer, and became a secondary school maths teacher. She was rated a good teacher, but behind the scenes, she was struggling. The same pile of books came home to be marked night after night and went back untouched. Eventually, the demands of teaching contributed to repeated episodes of depression, and she left the profession.

While off work, Clare started making beaded bracelets on her coffee table, mostly to get herself off the sofa. That small beginning became Lollamac, the jewellery business she still runs fifteen years later.

Her ADHD diagnosis did not come until 2021, after a woman in her business group described her own experience and Clare found herself mentally ticking off the same traits.

If you have ever worked hard, looked capable from the outside, and still felt like you were falling short, you will recognise yourself in this one.

Resources
Website: https://www.lollamac.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lollamac_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lollamac
Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start with this training: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
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About one in nine adults is on a GLP-1 right now. And women with ADHD kept telling me the exact same thing after starting GLP-1 medications: they expected to lose weight, but they did not expect their brains to feel different.

The brain fog lifted. The food noise got quieter. Energy felt steadier. Emotional reactions became easier to interrupt. For some, inflammation, pain, bloating, cravings, and compulsive behaviors changed too.

So I brought back Dr. Kalin Johnson to tell us whether there is real science behind that or whether we are getting ahead of the evidence. Kalin is a licensed clinical pharmacist, functional medicine wellness coach, and patient advocate who runs a concierge whole-person care practice for high-achieving, high-masking neurodivergent adults. She is also queer, ADHD, autistic, and living with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and this is her fourth time on the show.

In this episode, Kalin and I get into how GLP-1 receptors communicate across the gut, brain, pancreas, immune system, and vagus nerve, and why that matters for ADHD women. They also talk about food noise, brain fog, inflammation, metabolic health, emotional regulation, microdosing, side effects, muscle loss, access, and what the research still cannot tell us.

Resources
Website: https://www.kalinjohnson.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kalinpharmd
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalin-johnsonpharmd
Ania Jastreboff, MD - Director of the Yale Obesity Research Center, principal investigator on many of the landmark trials for tirzepatide and retatrutide. If you watch only one thing, watch her Lincoln Center talk. https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/ania-jastreboff
Dr. Spencer Nadolsky - https://www.instagram.com/drnadolsky
Rocio Salas-Whalen MD - https://www.instagram.com/drsalaswhalen
Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start here: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
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Faye Lawrence got blackout drunk at 13. What she remembers is not the drinking. It is the relief.

She started drinking heavily as a teenager and kept going for decades. From the outside she looked successful and high functioning, right up until late 2017, when the wheels came off the cart and she found herself in inpatient detox.

She got sober. Then she waited five more years to find out why she had been drinking in the first place. Faye was diagnosed with ADHD at 48, and suddenly the chaos, the burnout, the emotional intensity, the boredom, and the constant need to switch her brain off all made sense. Alcohol had not come out of nowhere. It had been doing a job.
Faye is now a certified grey area drinking coach and ADDCA certified ADHD coach with degrees in psychology and counselling, and she has spoken at TEDx and SXSW. She founded Untoxicated, which grew into Australia's largest alcohol-free social community back when being sober was decidedly uncool.

In this episode, Tracy and Faye get into grey area drinking and why the all-or-nothing label keeps people stuck, what alcohol is actually doing in an ADHD brain, the mummy wine culture that was sold to women on purpose, and why the carrot works where the stick never will.

If you have ever needed a drink to get your brain to be quiet, this conversation is not here to shame you. It is here to give you clarity.

Resources
Website: https://fayelawrence.com.au
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_fayelawrence_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FayeLawrenceCoaching
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faye-lawrence-aus
Free Wine O'Clock reset guide: https://fayelawrence.com.au/tracyo
ADHD-alcohol small group coaching program also opens in mid-August: https://fayelawrence.com.au/loop

Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com

Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Start here: Stop Trying to “Fix” Your ADHD. You’re Not Broken: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
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Some brains cannot sit still long enough to be careful. Ella Fielding found a machine that runs on exactly that.

Ella has a BA in Fine Art Sculpture, a Masters in Fine Art, and a chainsaw operator's license, and she uses all three to turn whole trees into monumental sculpture. But she left school at 14 because it was too traumatic to stay. She was quick with her hands and slow to get anything out of her head onto paper, and for most of her life nobody named why. She was 38, running her own art business and drowning in the admin, when a work coach kept mentioning ADHD and she kept insisting she was just dyslexic. Turns out it was both.

Now she carves outside in full gear, running a machine most people won't touch and making it behave like a scalpel. Not despite the ADHD. Because of it. A chainsaw does not let you drift or second-guess or wait for the perfect plan. It demands you be right here, right now, which is the one place her brain has always worked best.

In this episode, Tracy and Ella get into the school years that nearly broke her, the "poof" moment where a thought vanishes the second she reaches for a pen, why immediate and physical beats slow and planned for a brain like hers, and how she reads her own overwhelm as a signal instead of a character flaw.

If you have ever been told you were too much, this one might reframe the whole thing.

Resources:
Website: https://ellafielding.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ella.fielding.sculptor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellafieldingsculptor
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-fielding-sculptor
Send a Message: Your Name | Email | Message
Explore more from me:
🧘 SHIFT: https://tracyotsuka.com/shift
📚 Free resources: https://tracyotsuka.com/learn
📖 Get the book, ADHD for Smart Ass Women: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
🧠 Join Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy: https://tracyotsuka.com/aok
🌐 Visit my website: https://tracyotsuka.com/
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick. They were not designed for how your brain actually works. If you’re ready to stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits, start here: https://programs.tracyotsuka.com/sign-up
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyotsuka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heytracyotsuka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyotsuka/
Are You Ready to Discover Your Brilliance? Order Now: https://tracyotsuka.com/adhd-book
Visit our website: https://tracyotsuka.com