Even as a trained sober coach and someone with almost six years of sobriety under her belt, there are still situations that feel awkward to me as a sober person, and last weekend I experienced one of them. 

I went to a birthday dinner for someone I adore. In addition to my husband and I, the birthday guy and wife, there were two additional couples that joined. I was only slightly acquainted with them. We went to a great place with a beer hall-type atmosphere and sat at a long table. It was restaurant week in Chicago, so our whole table shared the pre-fixe meal. The menu included two Gruvi NA beers and an amazing zero-proof old-fashioned made with alcohol-free cinnamon whiskey. All good. 

When the party guests arrived and saw my beautiful old fashioned, they asked, “Is that an old fashioned?”  "Yes, it is!” I replied proudly. “It’s delicious. I don’t drink alcohol, so it’s the zero proof version.” No one...

We all want to toast at midnight (or at 6 pm whathaveyou) but not everyone wants the booze. 

Here are nine of the best tried and true bubbly alternatives. I recommend each of these delicious drinks for filling up that champagne flute and toasting with elegance and confidence. You won’t be missing out on anything except a New Year's Day hangover. Join me for an Insider Dry January Challenge. Cheers to health and wealth in all the ways in 2024. 

My top picks for alcohol free champagne.

1 - Thomson & Scott Noughty Sparkling Chardonnay. An immediate favorite. Elegant, organic, and sustainably sourced from Spain.

Buy Here

2- Gruvi DrySecco. Made with white wine grapes and inspired by champagne. Dry, floral and tart. This one is my go to white for every occasion. Try it for New Years Eve and keep it all year through. Bottled in individual servings which is genius. 

Buy Here

3- Sutter Home Fre Brut. This is the one you that are...

I am a COUNTRY girl. 

Born in small town Wisconsin. 

My first drink was a cheap beer. 

Busch Lite. 

In my coming of age, I partied and chased boys in barns and fields.

I rode around in pickup trucks.

I love country music. I love to sing about getting day drunk with a cold beer in my hand, and needing my whiskey glasses to navigate my latest heartache. 

I have fond memories of you and me going fishing in the dark with friends in low places, if you know what I mean. Some of it makes me cringe and plenty of it makes me smile.

When I was visiting Savannah, Georgia a drag queen sang Reba McEntire’s Fancy, and I nearly lost my mind. All I wanna do is boot, scoot, boogie. 

When I first quit alcohol, I didn’t know how to reconcile my love for country music and drinking songs with my new found sobriety. 

My identity was shifting from rowdy party girl to healthy sober coach. 

What would I do with my...

The details are very foggy, but I have a drunken Easter story. 

For the life of me, I can’t think about why I would have been without plans or my family on Easter, but one year it happened. Maybe I chose it. I have no idea. I really can’t remember. My whole life at that time was a bit of a fog.  

What I do know is that I was grieving the loss of my good friend, who was diagnosed with cancer and passed away two months later, leaving his wife and 5 kids. My other friend, his wife, was now a widow. She asked me to do his eulogy. She said I was the only one who could speak her words. My heart and hers were completely broken. I stayed very close to her during this time. I wanted to be a real support person for her. 

We were both drinking a lot, which wasn’t necessarily new to us, but we had new meaning to do it with our freshly shattered hearts. I thought being in the depths of despair alongside her was the best support I could...

May is the busiest month of the year in my house.

I think this is true for many families, especially those with kids.

There are all the end of the year extras that completely fill our calendar. 

We have award ceremonies for academics, sports tournaments, and more. 

It's the final push for everything, when we’ve been running at high speed, since returning from Spring Break. Everything is due and all the deadlines are rapidly approaching. 

One more field trip to squeeze in. One more banquet. One more project. One more celebration. Not to mention the emotions of a season full of endings. 

In Chicagoland, it snows in April and the next day it’s 80 degrees. Summer seems to just appear when it wants and we are anything but prepared.

We’ve still got our winter coats hanging on hooks in our laundry room and our patio furniture stored in the garage, when the weather turns to the heat of the dog days of summer somewhere in mid May. 

This year...

I fell to my knees the morning of February 20th, 2018 and surrendered to my husband. 

I was crying, miserable, terrified. 

For the first time in my whole life I said the words that seemed impossible to me,  “I need help.” He held me and we cried together. 

I made a very wobbly decision that I was never going to drink again. I was somehow going to become the kind of person that doesn’t drink and in doing this we both knew our whole life would change. There was no other option. The path of alcohol led to complete destruction of me and our family and I wasn't having it. In order to save my life I would have to be sober for the rest of my life. I was so sad about it. I felt like a failure. Defective. Weak. I was scared. My life was clearly not working for me, but yet I was clinging to what I knew and I didn’t want anything to change.

I was mostly afraid of how this would affect my relationships. I wouldn’t want to...

I love St. Paddy’s Day! 

Leprechauns and rainbows. 

Parades and debauchery. 

Irish music, Irish dancers, and Irish pubs. 

Corned beef and cabbage. 

Bagpipes.

I am all into the festivities. 

I used to, of course, love green beer too.

I loved the excuse for daytime drinking, on a chilly but sunny, almost Spring afternoon, in the midwest.

I no longer love green beer, rude drunken folks in a bar, getting spilled on, or the darkness of a pub on a sunny day, but I still love St. Paddy’s Day.

Here are a few ideas for what to drink when you don’t drink green beer. 

You can enjoy “green” drinks and skip the hangover, drunken antics, and shame.

Beer

If beer is your beverage of choice, Gruvi Stout will give you a Guiness like feel. It’s dark and bold with a chocolate malt and tastes of coffee.  If dark beer is not your thing, then Gruvi IPA might be the gold at the end of the rainbow for you! The can is green so...