My husband and I went to City Winery for a 10,000 Maniacs show last night. After a comedy of errors in our dinner plans, we decided to eat at the venue. We did not want to be the first people at the show, so first, we enjoyed dinner in the adjoining restaurant. We got a cute little table right next to the big, roaring fireplace. We had fun ordering a bunch of little plates and sharing. Truffle fries and burrata. Lox flatbread and kale Caesar salad. I had an NA sangria to drink. It was a bunch of tart fruit juices. It looked like an aperol spritz, and it came in a pretty glass. My husband had an Athletic Brew beer. We ended with chocolate mousse and coffee.

Then we headed to the concert room. The seats and tables are really close together at this venue, making for an intimate concert experience. As the name implies, wine is obviously a big theme. The space is full of bottles and barrels as decor. The establishment gives away a signed bottle from the band. Right down the...

One thing that prevented me from addressing my complicated relationship with alcohol for so long was the fear of social stigma. I was also afraid to fail, but I was more afraid of success. If I quit drinking, then what? Then, actually, what? 

I would no longer fit into my social circles. I risked rejection and losing friendships. I would feel ostracized and excluded. I would be left out, alone, misunderstood, and judged. I would not fit into my 20-year marriage anymore. 

My husband and I met at a bar. We were party people. It’s part of what attracted us to each other. It wasn’t fair to him that I was considering changing the game for us without warning. This wasn’t what he signed up for. I was so ashamed. 

I was scared that I would not fit into my neighborhood, my friend group, my happy hour work crew, or any other group or activity I have ever done or ever wanted to do because I would no longer be drinking. I would lose the nearly four decades of...

Hi, I'm Heather, an award-winning sober life coach with five years of experience working with high-achieving women. I am also an Enneagram 3 Achiever. I have had the privilege to support executives in top leadership positions, recognized political figures, busy mothers, teachers, artists, doctors, and even a few celebrities or people in the public eye. For many high-achieving women, the pressure to maintain a demanding lifestyle can sometimes lead to unhealthy habits, including excessive drinking. 

High-achieving women often find themselves juggling multiple responsibilities, whether it be excelling in their careers, managing households, or pursuing personal passions. While ambition and dedication are commendable traits, they can also contribute to stress and a desire to unwind, often through the consumption of alcohol. Many of my clients use alcohol as a way to turn off their active brains, give themselves permission to stop working, dial down the pressure, and take a...

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...

Since the day I was born, beer has been an omnipresent staple in my life.

Before I tasted wine, which would become my drink of choice and also the nail in my coffin, so to speak, before mommy wine culture was an even thing, before my relationship with alcohol would be labeled as problematic, before my recovery, if you call it that, or my discovery, if you don’t, before my sober coach training or expertise in the alcohol free space, before I became the person I am today, before I knew anything about alcohol, there was beer. Beer was my first sip. Beer was tightly woven into the tapestry of my identity. It still is. In short, I love beer.

In some ways, falling in love with beer was my destiny.

My parents were both beer drinkers and beer lovers who met in a local beer tent. I was born in a small town that was home to more bars than churches. The local taverns had more worshippers than the parishes. My hometown is located in a state whose Major League Baseball team is named after...

As the new year begins, I’ve been thinking a lot (almost obsessively) about goals. As a perfectionist, it’s killing me that I set out to read 40 books in 2023 and I ended the year reading 39. Nevermind one of those books was about 700 pages long, it’s still just bothering me to no end feeling like I didn’t meet my goal. Should I just be happy with the 39 books I read? Was 40 books too lofty of a goal for me? Did my goal change and I failed to update my app with the challenge? There were years past when I surpassed this goal by double digits. Should every year be more books, a bigger challenge than the year before? Am I the biggest failure? Please don’t answer that, I am having a hard enough time here. 

As a Coach, I think about goal setting all the time, on every client call. I am specifically trained to help other people achieve their goals. Thoughts on goals are not new to me, but I have a few new thoughts to share. I personally want to...

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...

If you are like me and most of my clients you want to quit drinking but you want to wait and get through the holidays first. If you are thinking about addressing your relationship with alcohol, but putting it aside for now, and planning on doing something about it in the new year, I hear you. Are you feeling defeated almost daily by staying in the drinking cycle and continuing to not take action on a bad habit that is starting to take more than it gives? It doesn’t feel good to worry about your drinking incessantly and then do nothing about it. I know, I’ve been there. 

You might feel like you don’t have the capacity to completely abstain from alcohol this holiday season. You want to delay the endeavor for another better time in the future. A fresh start so to speak. I understand this. It is natural to resist change, especially such a big one like drinking. 

I personally think right now is always the best time to address and evaluate...

Something has been brewing inside me and it bubbled over this weekend. 

It started with listening to a song really loud in the car by myself. It struck a chord, almost literally.

I felt something in the music and started singing along. My singing took a turn and morphed into screaming which ended up with full on sobbing. Sing/scream/sobbing. Release. I spent the next two hours hiking in the woods talking to the trees, crying at the sky, and trying to make sense of my complex emotions. 

I didn't realize that I had been avoiding this meltdown for weeks. I ignored the signals and was now at the boiling over point. Looking back, there were some clues but I didn’t see them at the time. As a sober person, I have worked really hard to “check myself before I wreck myself”, but this one snuck up on me. 

In hindsight, I could see that my recent behavior in hustle, avoidance, distraction, and achievement was my own protection...

I have been doing cold exposure therapy for a few years now. I will share my experience and research in this article. I am not a professional cold therapy practitioner in any way. I am a person seeking new experiences and modalities to manage and regulate my nervous system, and feel good. I find it to be invigorating and that feeling seems to last for days. This seems to be a very positive outcome for my overall health and wellbeing.   

The Ways I Experience Cold Exposure Therapy

There are many ways to experience cold exposure. One method is an ice bath, made popular by the breathing technique introduced by Wim Hoff. To experience this you sit in a tub filled with ice. Remember the ALS ice bucket challenge of 2014? Imagine sitting in the bucket either alone or with others for a period of time, usually about two full minutes. That’s the ice bath. I have experienced two group ice bath experiences. One in a pool of people and another in a tub or trough by myself. In...