Hi, welcome to the You Can Quit Smoking podcast, where we go over stories of success with overcoming smoking addiction. Many people have moved through this radical transformation and use smoking as an opportunity for inner growth, with deeper self-awareness and a greater capacity for compassion. So many have done it and you can quit smoking, too. I'm your host, Jessi Hartnett, founder of Honor Your Heart.

Jessi:

Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm joined today by Jennifer. Jennifer, can you introduce yourself?


Jennifer:

Hi, I am Jennifer Schillaci. I have been a full-time traveller for the last thirteen years, but this story goes way beyond that. It's kind of a different dynamic. I was a stay-at-home mom for many, many years. And I call myself a homeschool mom gone rogue, mostly because we now own two businesses and a podcast. So it's kind of a crazy adventure, but you know, life is kind of that way.


Jessi:

That's an exciting life. I really enjoy your podcast, too. I took a listen to it, it’s just a different type of life. That's pretty cool.


Jennifer:

Absolutely. Yeah. So when we hit the road in 2013, nobody else was doing it. So we did it long before it was cool.


Jessi:

Trendsetters.


Jennifer:

Or something like that. But we didn't actually become like influencers or anything. We've seen lots of people come and go. But we're not here to talk about my travel life. That's just part of my life.


Jessi:

So let's jump into smoking. What's your story with smoking?


Jennifer:

I mean I smoked all through high school and into college. Then I quit for a little while when I got pregnant with my first child. And so that was easy. But then to take the weight back off, I jumped right back to smoking right after I had her. And so I don't know that I quit-quit at that point. And I think lots of us do that, right?


And I went on a medication back then–she's thirty, so it's been a couple days–but Depo-Provera was pretty dangerous stuff back then because you could get a fifty to eighty pound weight gain. And of course, I did. And so it's the same seventy pounds that I still have a hard time keeping off on a regular basis.


So I got pregnant with my second one five years later. So, I smoked for all five of those years and I found out I was pregnant with Justin and so I quit again. Back then there were nicotine patches and so I would do some of those just to take the edge off. But I got done and I was going to go back to smoking right after the baby was born.


It's kind of a funny dynamic. There's one thing I hate more than anything else and that's throwing up. And so, I picked up a cigarette shortly after he was six weeks old and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to start getting this baby weight off. I'll go back to smoking. I'll start working out. It'll be fine.” And I threw up. Every time I touched a cigarette, I threw up. And so it was kind of easy for me to decide to stop smoking because no matter what I did, I got sick every time I touched cigarettes.


Fast forward years and years later, I considered doing other things. I'm pretty healthy even though I'm overweight. I'm pretty active because of our lifestyle. We do a lot of hiking. I really want a shirt that says: “Fat girls hike, too.”


Jessi:

Yes!


Jennifer:

I think people far underestimate us. But sixteen years ago, my dad got diagnosed with lung cancer. And so that played a pivotal role in how I felt about smoking and being glad that I did quit when I did because my dad was stage four. And so I have a very different perspective.


And I don't judge people that smoke. I don't care if you do. But it's really hard for me to smell it now after my dad died from it because I guess looking back I think to myself, “It was preventable.” And maybe not always. You know, there's so much out there.


But my kids smoke today. I don't preach to the choir because the reality is, I wouldn't have listened back then. I think we're all on our own journey. And I think that that part of it is a pivotal moment for each and every one of us. You have to quit for you. And I wasn't willing to quit for my kids. I wasn't willing to quit for my husband. I wanted to lose weight. So, it made sense to me to keep smoking.


Looking back, like I said, I'm glad that it worked out the way it did. But it's kind of one of those things that you just don't think about until you're in the trenches. I partied and I went out and I did all sorts of things in college. But by the time I became a mom, it was just something to do to stop myself from hitting the refrigerator. So, yeah. And I think there's a lot of moms out there like that.


Jessi:

Definitely. So, when you started smoking early on, you said you started in high school.


Jennifer:

M’hmm. Yeah.


Jessi:

Were you using it for stress right away? Because you tied that to stress and motherhood. Was it always something that was around stress for you with smoking?


Jennifer:

So, I would say it was more that it was just cool in high school. I mean, I grew up in the ‘90s. So I graduated in 1990, so I'm a little bit older than you. But one of those things is that to my friends it was no big deal. I hung out with a pretty party crowd. I went to an all-girls private Catholic school. So, whatever bad girl image I could acquire was not a problem for me. I was okay with that.


Jessi:

Same.


Jennifer:

Yeah. So, it was fine back then. And then as I got married, I married a Marine. I was home for a semester because my dad had lost his job. So there was definitely some stress there, but I was living at home. He came home to visit one weekend. We weren't dating. I actually hadn't seen him in a couple years. I had actually broken up with him previously. And he came home. Within ninety days, I was married and moving to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.


I was driving by cotton fields that I thought were marshmallows. That's a true statement. I had no idea what those looked like at that time. And so he said, "Look, honey, there's marshmallow plants." And I was like, "Oh, where?" You know, we were knee deep in the area of North Carolina where smoking was so much cheaper than where we grew up. We both grew up in upstate New York. I mean, I was just up there a couple weeks ago and cigarettes are $17 a pack. It's insane. And so, it was one of those things that it was just part of my life.


Moving was definitely stressful. I had left everything behind. And so I'm now married to this guy that I’ve known for about a year and ninety days total. And we're gonna have a baby and we're making decisions that are crazy. And so [during] that period of time where I quit, I would sometimes sneak one, because, you know, you do. And he'd come home and say, "Well, you smell like smoke. Why do you smell like smoke? I thought you quit." You know, you have to hide it. And I think culturally as things have changed, I think that's still true today.


A lot of people don't want to talk about the fact that they're smokers because there's a stigma to it, right? I have friends and family that still smoke. I'm fifty-three and I know viewers can't see the camera, but I don't feel like I'm loaded in wrinkles. You know, I think that there's a lot of health effects that come long-term with long-term smoking that none of us actually considered way back then. The reality is if I hadn't thrown up that day and consecutively every time I touched a cigarette, I would have gone back just like a lot of people.


Jessi:

Wow. I wonder what was happening there because I kind of got an aversion to cigarette smoke when I was pregnant. It was harder for me to be around secondhand smoke. I'm just wondering if something like changed with the pregnancy, like, what would have made that difference? Or was it just the break that you had where your body was like, “No we're not going back to this.”


Jennifer:

Right, well and my first one was a girl and my second one was a boy so that's the only identifying mark that could say this is what made it happen. But I was nursing Justin. I nursed all my kids and you know what that does to your kids, even smoking. I knew the risks and I was still willing to take them. That being said it's one of those things you don't think about until much much later looking back.


We were a young military family. When I gave it up, my husband was maybe a sergeant in the Marine Corps. We were a single income family. So, I mean, part of it could have been financial if we were really looking at it. But what I started doing was every time I wanted to smoke a pack of cigarettes at that point, I grabbed a wine bottle and I filled it with money. So, every time I went to go buy a pack of cigarettes, I'd put four bucks in the jar or whatever. In like the first three months, we bought a zoo pass off of that. The thing that you don't think about is how much money you can save.


I know my son is like, "Well, I don't smoke cigarettes. I vape." And that kills me, too, because I know that's not any better. In fact, in a lot of cases, the studies are showing that it's far, far worse long term. You know, we've done all the studies. As a homeschool mom, I've studied smoking in ways that you go to health class in high school, but my kids get like deep dive in some of that stuff and so they almost know too much.


But my mom survived cancer five times now. My dad died of lung cancer. My mom's still around. She actually has half a lung and she lost it about two years ago. And she got lung cancer and she finally quit. And when I say finally quit, I mean after my dad died, she did not quit. She said she quit, but she didn't quit. She's lived with us for a little while and she'd walk in the house and you'd feel the waft of smoke coming with her. She finally quit six years ago. So by the time she quit, she got lung cancer. Hers could be removed with surgery. So she's been very fortunate and she's in her seventies. But it's a testament to the fact that if you do quit, your body can start healing, too.


Jessi:

Yes. And have you seen that in yourself?


Jennifer:

Oh, for sure.


Jessi:

What was your experience?


Jennifer:

We hike. We'll go hiking for miles. I couldn't do that if I was a smoker. And I mean, I'm overweight. So, the reality is if I was smoking, there's so many other things. I have no medical conditions at fifty-three that I worry about. I don't have a heart issue. I don't have high blood pressure. And so, all of those things are accentuated when you're smoking, too. And so those are things that I'm grateful that I don't have.


Because we have seven kids. And so our oldest is thirty but my youngest is thirteen. And so I'd like to be around for a long time for all of them, not just the oldest ones.


Jessi:

That's great. That's so much to be motivated by. And I want to talk more about that too with your pregnancies. When you were quitting at that time, what did that look like? Were you able to just stop cold turkey or you said that you had a few sneakies? Understandable, but I'm wondering what changed during that time that you were motivated? I mean, obviously you want your child to be healthy, but like when those patterns would come up, those stressful patterns, which a lot of women do experience in pregnancy. You might have more stress. And so, I'm wondering what tactics you developed during those times to handle stress, to not smoke?


Jennifer:

I actually chewed a bunch of pencils back when pencils were actually made out of wood.


Jessi:

Yep.


Jennifer:

No, you could easily find me with a zip tie that I would fidget with or something like that like a milk ring. It sounds crazy, but they didn't have fidget toys back then, so it wasn't easy to navigate some of that. Because I think one of the things you miss the most is having something in your hands and so just something to mess with. And so I would carry a pencil a lot of times and I stopped doing that when my daughter started eating erasers.


Just little things really. I started crocheting back then. It was something I'd learn. So instead of, you know, picking up a cigarette, I'd pick up the Afghan that I was working on that took me three years to make. But it was, “Do a row instead of smoke a cigarette.” It wasn't fast. The minute you have to sneak out to do something, you know, it's not something you should be doing.


But I also always stepped outside, even when I was a smoker, because I grew up in a household with two parents that smoked. I had strep throat all the time. I was sick all the time. And for years, I thought it was just because I lived in upstate New York growing up. And, you know, it was just cold and it was rainy. And then I got married and I stopped getting sick all the time after I quit smoking. And so I didn't get the ear infections. I didn't get strep throat. It was fascinating to me how much healthier I became. Not right away, probably within the first two years. How much it didn't hurt to breathe. How much you lost the cough. Because you do, you have residual effects of everything that you do.


I didn't get into heavy drinking or anything after. Like I drank when I smoked more than when I quit. So, I think I quit drinking a lot then, too. I still drink socially, but it's not a glass of wine every night with dinner. It's an occasional, when we're out at a campfire, that sort of thing. There's times that my husband will partake in a cigar with some friends, but I don't. I just have never had a desire to go back to that lifestyle where I was choosing that. And I don't know that I would because I like who I've become.


Jessi:

Yeah, that's beautiful. And it's just a blessing, too, with the sickness. I mean, you're forced to.


Jennifer:

You didn't realize that it was why you were getting sick. I mean, I remember years and years of just fighting strep throat. Everybody was like, "Oh no, it's just your immune system. It's whatever." And then so, Frank being a Marine, we were stationed in North Carolina for the first three years. And then he went to Okinawa for a year. So I stayed in North Carolina and then we went to Kentucky and that's when I had my son. And I was at the hospital like every couple of weeks between those pregnancies just for something, an ear infection. My throat hurt.


Strep throat, I probably got it seven or eight times a year. It's just unheard of to get it that much. So I'd have to take penicillin. I started being resistant to penicillin because I had to take it so much. It's one of those things that you just don't realize until you look back. And it wasn't until probably ten years ago that I went, “I don't think I've had strep throat in like… wow, like five years.” And I was just astonished at how different that looked in real life.


Jessi:

Yeah, there can be some really unexpected gains that it's hard to make that connection until you get to the other side. I think that's why quitting is so hard because you don't know how great it's going to be until you do it and you look back.


Jennifer:

And it's not easy. You know, it's probably one of the hardest things you'll ever do, honestly. Because it's not just a habit, it's an addiction. And so there's lots of sides to that.


But an addiction is one of those things where you think you have control of it, but you don't. You're sitting there going, "Yeah, I can stop whenever I want to." And then, “Just one more.” It's that kind of ideology that the cigarette companies count on for all of us. Finances were a big issue, but you always found a way to afford them because you had to. So, you stop buying something to make do for something else.


I think that my soda intake has decreased astronomically considering that I don't smoke anymore. Because they kind of went hand in hand. I still drink coffee just like a normal person. I don't drink it all day. I drink one cup in the morning and that's just a choice I made years ago. And four o’clock was my magic hour for my second cup if I was going to have one, to chase the kids around. And that's when I always wanted that cigarette was that four o’clock hour because that was the stressful time. It was an hour before he came home from work. We had to have the house cleaned up. And I think those are the moments you feel it in most, what are those pain points.


And so if you can shift what you do during those days, I think that helps too. So there were like two or three days a week we would go do story time at the library or a homeschool group or something. I was also not around people that were smoking as much. I think that I shifted everything at that point because I had to and so it just made sense for me.


Jessi:

Did that put strain with your family still smoking, with your parents?


Jennifer:

Well, I guess in some ways that was great that we were so far away from them as a Marine Corps family. So my parents were still in upstate New York and then they moved to North Carolina. But they were still an hour and a half from us. But yes, when we came home.


So after that station, we went to California and then came back to North Carolina. We were almost two hours from them and yes, my parents both still smoked. At that point, they smoked in the house and one hundred percent, that was stressful. Because of a lot of reasons actually. I hated bringing the kids around it. Now knowing that I was not smoking by then, I had already started seeing how much healthier I was, how less sick I was. I maybe didn't realize that it was such a big difference at that point, but I did know it, if that makes sense.


And then every Sunday night when we would come home, how much more work it was because I had to go clean all of the clothes I brought with me. Because they all smelled like smoke. And the problem with that for me by that time was the fact that I could not stand the smell of it. And so I think that once I got sick off of it, my whole mindset shifted.


And there's things I've done where I join support groups. I didn't do any of that with this one. I think it's just because my friendships changed. There wasn't the lure or the draw to go to the bar anymore. We would have friends over for dinner or meet up at the homeschool park day. We weren't drinking on our way there and we weren't, you know, hanging out at the club. I think that that helped, too.


Jessi:

Well, you have lots of advice weaved into your story, but do you have any final words to somebody that's wanting to quit? Maybe they have doubts about it, but they're struggling with it. What would you say to them?


Jennifer:

I would say it's worth it. It's worth it long term, and you might not see it now.


My dad lived with us for the last thirty days of his life. He lost his house in North Carolina and he ended up having to move in with us. And my mom did too, obviously. My dad died in my house and his last week, he didn't even know who he was. And so, even if I wasn't someone that had already quit, I would have quit at that point. Because I saw how it wrecked him and it one hundred percent wrecked him. He didn't know anything about who he was.


And I know that people don't look at that on the front side of things while they're smoking. While it feels good with that little bit of buzz you get from it. I know my dad regretted every moment he picked up a cigarette at that point and he smoked two packs a day. I think that that's the thing. I think you have to look at who you want to be. Do you want to live to be part of your family's life? I mean, my dad was sixty-one when he died.


Jessi:

Wow.


Jennifer:

So, he was so young. There's so much he didn't do. He didn't retire. He didn't live this lifestyle. And back then, I didn't want to be a full-time RVer. And so, like when I say that, I didn't want to live the life we live. But my dad never even got the chance to. Those things are really big things.


And I think people are getting younger and younger every year that die of cancer. And we just don't realize the impact that smoking has on our bodies and on our minds and on just everything. People die of heart conditions related to smoking.


And yeah, you could die from anything. I mean, that's the reality, right? But why take an extra risk at this point?


Jessi:

That's a very hard thing to go through.


Jennifer:

Yeah.


Jessi:

Thank you for sharing that with us. That's heavy. And you don't realize it because when we're young, we think we're invincible, but choices really do catch up with us sooner or later.


Jennifer:

Well, and my mom is living proof that you can survive breast cancer surgery. And then she had another cancer that she had and then she had lung cancer. And they cut out half of her lung. So now she's out in California still because she decided to stay there in the desert where she can breathe really easily. Because it's easier to breathe in less humid climates. But none of us are there now.


Three out of seven of my kids have settled in Texas. One is in North Carolina and then three still travel with us. But that means that we're not in California with her most of the time. We own a business in the RV industry. So we travel from rally to rally to rally. And the reality is right now we're not going to California because with the rallies we have to be in Tampa this winter for our business. That's three thousand miles from one side to the other.


So for my birthday, she said, "What do you want for your birthday?" And I said, "Let me come see you in October." And so just recently I got to go see my mom and it was a whirlwind. I flew in on a Tuesday morning at the crack of dawn. And then I flew back on a red-eye Friday night. And it was right before the government shutdown was kind of in full effect.


Jessi:

Oh…


Jennifer:

It was nuts. And so the air traffic controllers in California were saying they weren't coming to work on Tuesday and I'm like, “I have got to make that flight.”


But the reality is, with her not smoking, she actually started saving for that trip two years ago. She paid cash for it, but it's a birthday present. And so, the one thing you can never get back is time. And so, we live like that on a regular basis.


Smoking will shorten your time with the people you love the most. And so, whether that's your kids or your parents or your spouse or your partner or your dog. Even that, I can't tell you how many dogs we had die of cancer when I was a kid. And you don't even think about it until it's later.


Jessi:

Yeah. It really creates distance and strain on relationships. I felt that when I was smoking, I was like, “It only affects me. It's nobody else's business, right?” That wasn't true at all. I think it's important to consider what kind of distance it's going to make in your life.


Jennifer:

For sure. Absolutely.


Jessi:

I do want to talk more about your podcast and your work.


Jennifer:

We own a company called RV Roofing Solutions. We're a nationwide RV roofing company that has installers all over the country that go to the customer. We acquired the company. My business partner very unexpectedly passed away last summer. Most of the company had already been written over to me. It was supposed to actually transfer in January 2025 and it just happened a little sooner than we expected. We would have had 70% of the company and he would have retained 30%. We are a nationwide RV roofing company like I mentioned and so we do maintenance-free roofing systems.


And so as if that wasn't enough in my pocket, two and a half years ago, my friend Doug and I were at a campfire. Doug had a company called Learn to RV. Now it was just an old blog, basically a WordPress site with lots and lots and lots of ads but great information. And so I said to Doug, I said, "If you ever decide to part with that, can I buy it from you?" He waited two years to say yes, but in March of 2025, we became the owners of Learn to RV. And it's just a blog. It's not a WordPress site anymore. It's actually refaced and looks really pretty. And if you want to check it out, you can go to www.learntorv.com. And there's everything from dreamers to doers on that site. We put up a blog at least three or four times a week. And so there's constantly new content coming out.


And then as if my life wasn't busy enough this summer, I had a friend that came to me and said, "Hey, you should start a podcast." And I said, "No, we should not." Just a little prodding and I said, "Okay." We actually had a famous podcaster lined up to take over, but she only wanted to do it for like the first six months. And I was like, "Well, that's crazy. If we're going to do this, it's got to be like somebody that's going to be around.” That's what podcasts are. It's relational. And so everything we do is relational, right? So I was like, “Well, okay.”


So I'm driving through South Dakota [with] my friend Jen Aggio–she is one of my podcast co-hosts– so there's three of us. I had dinner with her and she said, “You know, in my previous life, I used to be a videographer.” And I was like, “What!?” And so a couple weeks later, I was with my friend Tasha. Tasha is actually a copywriter by trade. She works a regular nine to five, so when we record, it's off her hours. But she was a radio DJ for two and a half years. And I'm like, “You know what? We really could do this.” So, we banked five episodes and launched them all in Hershey out of the RV show. And so, Learn to RV the podcast was born. And that's the website title, too. It's www.learntorvpodcast.com.


We have a Patreon channel where some of the things drop free a week early and then you can pay for it to see the next episode a whole week early there. It's just been a lot of fun. It's definitely a lot of work. You know, anybody that doesn't podcast doesn't have any idea how much extra effort goes into that. I'm grateful there's three of us. You do it solo.


Jessi:

Yeah, you got a dream team. It's a great show. It shows; the amount of effort and attention that goes into it.


Jennifer:

Well, thanks. I appreciate that. We love doing it.


Jessi:

Well, right on. I just want to thank you so much for coming on here and sharing a piece of your story. There's a lot of great advice in there and just experience and wisdom. And I just appreciate you being vulnerable.


Jennifer:

Well, thanks. It's one of those things that I think that life's hard. Pick up the pieces and go on. But the reality is, if you don't have to make a bigger wake as you're going through it, it really makes for a nicer ride.


Jessi:

Yes. Wise words. Thank you. I just want to say I appreciate you coming on and take care everyone. I'll see you next week.


Jennifer:

Thanks so much.


End of interview.


Jessi:

Before we go, if you are a pregnant mom who is currently struggling with smoking I want you to know about a completely free, supportive resource I created just for you: The Heart Within Sponsorship. This community is a safe space to navigate the stress of pregnancy while maintaining a smoke-free journey. It offers emotional resources and connects you with other moms who understand what you're going through. You don't have to do this alone. Find out more and join this free community today at www.honoryourheart.net. I'll see you in the next episode.