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What will staying stuck in the drinking cycle ultimately cost you?

Feb 01, 2021

I have an idea of what it will cost you because I hear it every day and experienced the cost myself.

The cost of missing precious moments with your kids
The cost of your mental health
The cost of your physical health
The cost of your relationships
The cost of your dreams
The cost of finding what truly lights you up from within

Yes, 1:1 Coaching and the Alcohol-Free Challenges are an investment for a few reasons.

When you put money behind something, you are more likely to follow through with the commitment. Yes, I've joined free challenges and webinars before but guess what? I had a hard time focusing and sticking with it because I had no skin in the game.

I deserve to be paid for 60 days of daily content with audio lessons, daily accountability check-ins and support, group coaching calls, and a 1:1 call. There was a time in my life where I thought I didn't deserve anything good that came my way, but that is not the case anymore. I am worthy of compensation for pouring my heart and soul...

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Sobriety may suck in the beginning, and that's OK.

Jan 29, 2021

I was on a 1:1 call with a client last week, and she said, "I just want to know this isn't going to be easy. That it might suck." I was taken aback by it because I assumed that everyone knows it isn't easy in the beginning stages.

In the days of people posting how glamorous and cool going alcohol-free is (which is amazing, by the way). And a trend that I'm on board with 100%. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in all the good going alcohol-free does for us physically and mentally that we forget or play down that yes, it will suck in the beginning. You may have some rough moments where you want to throw in the towel.

Even if you're not physically dependent on alcohol, you will most likely still feel crummy initially. Irritable. Foggy. Sad. Less energy. More anxious. It's like you and your best friend who have drifted apart because they're not good for you anymore. It will be an adjustment, but once you get past the initial stages of "this sucks", there is a reward for you.

The reward is...

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Sober beliefs.

Jan 28, 2021

We have these preconceived notions of what a person is like who doesn't drink. These beliefs are largely based on what society has labeled a sober person. You know the usual - they're boring, something is wrong with them, they must have lost everything, why can't they just drink like a normal person, and the list could go on and on.

But those thoughts are beliefs, not facts. While SOME may lose everything. While SOME may be labeled as developing alcohol use disorder. Many will fall more in the gray area drinker category. Their life isn't falling to shambles, but they don't feel good. They're ashamed of their actions under the influence. They realize they're wasting precious time with their kids that they can't get back. And they recognize that maybe drinking isn't it's all cracked up to be.

The way we've been conditioned to believe that anyone who doesn't drink has a problem is absolute nonsense. If someone doesn't want to drink, let's stop making it mean something. It may mean a...

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What if you invested in yourself as much as you invest in alcohol?

Jan 27, 2021

And I'm not just talking about money. The time and energy we put into keeping alcohol in our lives is ridiculous.

Think about it.

How much ENERGY does it take to go back and forth about whether you're going to drink or not?

How much TIME have we lost with our kids due to hangovers?

How much TIME have we wasted by focusing on wine instead of focusing on being present with our kids?

How much MONEY has been thrown away on a poison that only provides a moment of quick relief?

All that time and energy lost can't be taken back either. Once it's gone, it's gone. What you can do, though, is from this day forward, make a commitment to yourself that you're done making excuses.

I used excuses all day long, and what it always came back to was, I was afraid.

Afraid of failure.
Afraid that people would look at me differently.
Afraid of my potential.

Sounds weird, right? I was sabotaging myself. Who could little Alyson be without alcohol? She could be a leader, that's who. She could be a better...

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"You are the goddamn cheetah!"

Jan 26, 2021

I'm a goddamn cheetah, and so are YOU.

If you haven't read Untamed by Glennon Doyle, put it at the top of your must-reads list. At the beginning of the book, she talks about a cheetah born and raised at the zoo. Essentially the cheetah doesn't know any better it's grateful to be safe. But it's living the same day on repeat within a confined space. And cheetahs aren't meant to be tamed. They are meant to roam free in the wild. Read her book for the story and the words she beautifully writes.

Like the cheetah, we as mothers have been tamed. Conditioned to live a certain way. Act a certain way. Follow the "traditional" path of life. Stay confined to a monotonous life that doesn't allow us to truly be free.

What's one of those things that we've been conditioned to do? That is taming us and holding us back from leading a fulfilling life? Alcohol. Think about it. When we're drinking, we're stagnant. We're in a haze. We're not able to be our best selves for us, for our kids, for our...

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Does your mind go to the worst-case scenario in early sobriety?

Jan 25, 2021

Our minds tend to go to the worst-case scenario in early sobriety.

That we'll lose all our friends, never have fun again, and hate our lives.
This thinking is absolutely false! Don't feed the fears!

If you read my post on @sobermomtribe this morning, you know that my car wouldn't start this morning. My mind went to the worst-case scenario first. What was that? That I needed a new battery. Guess what? I just needed a jump, and he said the battery was still good just to keep it running for a half hour to an hour.

I thought I would have to pay for a whole new battery ($166 plus tax), but I didn't even have to pay 1 cent. Funny how for a lot of us, our mind goes to the worst-case scenario first. At the same time, the worst-case scenario isn't even that bad in the grand scheme of things. At least in this case with my car. So what? I had to pay a little extra money. Was it in my budget for this month? No, but that just gives me extra motivation to keep showing up on here and providing...

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Either you accept that alcohol isn't serving you, or you keep living in denial.

Jan 22, 2021

Either you accept that alcohol isn't serving you, or you keep living in denial that you'll be able to moderate one day.

Coming in hot with the truth this morning.

I know what I would choose based on my own experience and hearing thousands of other mothers' experiences on trying to moderate or just drink on special occasions. It NEVER works out the way you want it to.

Maybe you're the 1% of people that can go back to having just one, but those are some pretty bleak odds that you're the unicorn among us. And there's actual science behind why you can't. In short, your prefrontal cortex gets damaged and makes your reward system go all haywire.

It's hard to outrun science, right?

So what's it going to be? Are you ready to accept that alcohol isn't doing you any favors so that you can experience a life with less anxiety, more patience with your kids, and endless benefits? Or are you going to keep wasting time and energy going back and forth about how you will moderate one day?

The choice...

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What if we're the "normal" ones for NOT drinking?

Jan 21, 2021

Have you ever thought the people who don't drink are the normal ones for not wanting to ingest a poison that kills your mind, body, and soul?

I hear this a lot from 1:1 clients and mothers in the challenges and here on social media. That they just want to be "normal". What does that even mean? Honestly, what does normal mean? Normal to me means following the crowd, doing things that don't fulfill your purpose because you're scared of what others will think, having a 9-5, and getting stuck in the monotony of life.

F*ck normal!! I don't want to be normal. I want to be ME.

I want to do what lights me up no matter what other people think.
I want to live with my life with no regrets.
I want to live my life unapologetic for who I am.
I want to be on my death bed satisfied and proud of how I lived this one life we have on Earth.

I know now that alcohol wasn't helping me fulfill what I'm here to do. It was slowly killing me.

It was killing my dreams.
It was killing my relationships.
It was...

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Don’t punish yourself. Don’t judge yourself. Just keep going.

Jan 20, 2021

Slip-ups are part of the process of this alcohol-free journey. Many of you are in that gray area drinking category, which in my opinion, makes it harder to stop entirely after just one try.

No immediate negative consequences are staring back at you, so you may say you're going to quit, and then a week later or 30 days later, you'll talk yourself back into having a drink.

I mean, how many times have we said...

"I'm never drinking again, only to drink again 2 days later."

"I'll only drink on Saturdays, but then that creeps into the whole weekend."

"i'll only drink for special occasions, but then you're back to your nightly glass of wine."

I think we've all done it. We try so hard to stop but then fall back into old patterns. And that is OK. This is all part of the process of when it finally clicks. And you start telling yourself you don't want to drink instead of you can't drink.

My goal in sharing and for 1:1 Coaching and the Alcohol-Free Challenges is to plant the seed so you can...

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We spend our drinking days missing the little moments that one day we realize aren't so little.

Jan 19, 2021

This morning I woke up, turned on the TV to catch a few minutes of the news and weather. I was blown away by the sunrise on the television screen. I immediately put on a sweater and Uggs and walked out the door to look at the beauty of the sunrise over Long Island Sound.

Maybe some of you are saying to yourself, ok, Alyson, you saw a sunrise. What's the big deal?

The big deal is these are the moments I was drinking away. There are the moments of LIFE that I was missing because all I cared about was when my next drink was going to be. I used to wake up a hot mess in the morning with barely any time to spare to take in the beauty around me.

In early sobriety, I didn't care about taking in the world around me either. So if you're in the beginning stages and don't feel the gratitude yet for an alcohol-free life, then I see you because I felt that way too. I was angry at the world for taking away my security blanket, but as time passed, my anger subsided, and day by day, I started to...

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4 Simple Tips To Ditch The Booze and The Excuses For Good

Have you been trying to get out of the toxic drinking cycle, but then after 4 or 5 days, you say, "screw it!"?

Download these 4 simple tips on how to conquer that wine witch once and for all, so you can actually ENJOY an alcohol-free life.