Ready to kick the habit without kicking yourself?

Hello!

How's Dry July going?

I loved our kickoff call in the Insider Community. You better believe I kicked, like Molly Shannon, and stretched and kicked! 🦵🏽 There's a beautiful optimistic buzz as new members join in. Keep 'em coming! 

I feel so grateful for every hopeful woman who shows up working to drink less. The women are incredible! They have signed up for some guidance, community, connection, and accountability because they recognize it might not be something they can kick 🦵🏽 on their own. Even if they could, it's more efficient, effective, and fun to do it with a community.

I always say this, but honestly I would handpick each person, and I am so grateful for every woman who finds herself here. In my opinion, it's women that make the world go round. Women carry the children, run the homes and the communities, and care for the sick and the elders. Women typically gather, and many of us hunt too. We need our women to be strong, healthy, clear, and empowered now more than ever, and sobriety is the first domino in doing that.

It's hard to contribute to the greater good when you are suffering yourself. My path to healing began with ditching the drink. For our families and communities to be well, we need to be well, ladies. My community is full of mothers, nurses, and caregivers in many ways. I love nurturing and caring for them! 

My husband and I had a little getaway to Traverse City, Michigan, last week. It was lovely. It was also the National Cherry Festival. I was wondering how to spend our time when most of the recommendations we got were for wineries and breweries. On the drive up, the roads were full of billboards. The advertisements were for one of 3 things: fireworks, porn shops, or alcohol. Then the flashing highway signs reported, "28% of accidents in West Michigan are due to drunk drivers." There is such a disconnect here. It's the same alcohol!

The alcohol served out of wooden barrels with uniqueness, craft, passion, and complexity on the rolling countryside overlooking the lake is the same alcohol responsible for death and destruction on the roads (in homes and in hearts across America). I have personally lost a dear friend to a drunk driving accident. It is heartbreaking and preventable. 

Alcohol is not elegant. Soil is just dirt. Be for real. Wine Enthusiast won't even feature Michigan wines. I am a biased fan because they did feature me. You don't need alcohol for a delicious wine. Gruvi consistently wins awards and scores 95 and above. It's not the alcohol that is cool; it's you, babe.

It's the rolling countryside and the lake views. It's the chance to sit amongst friends under a beautiful sky. It's permission to relax and unwind. It's that vacation feeling. It's the live music. It's the cheese board. Duh. It is anything but alcohol. Please stop giving it credit. 

I used to think that I loved that vineyard life, the romantic, upscale version of drinking. If there was an alcohol-free version of tasting and sipping, I would be all in. There's not (yet), so we found other things to do with our time in Michigan as we passed up every winery on our country drives.

We reflected on how our life is a little less loud and less outward since I became sober and my husband now also drinks very little. Maybe some of it is age. I always think alcohol is a beautiful thing to outgrow. We are meant to grow, and we are meant to change. I think it's a sign of intelligence and evolution that we are not entertained by the same things in midlife as we were in our youth. Can you imagine if I was still going to the college bars every night of the week, being that guy?! Come on, Eileen, toora loora toora loo rye aye.

Paying attention to the simple things brings me so much joy. We listened to Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime" book on our drive. Loved it. We also read by the pool. I finished "The Frozen River" by Ariel Lawhon (also loved it). Now I am reading "Funny Story" by Emily Henry, which takes place in a Traverse City-inspired Northern Michigan spot. Next on the list is Wally Lamb's "The River Is Waiting." I am mentally preparing for this one. Likely to come undone, if you know what I mean.

What else did we do? We sat and watched the sunset. We enjoyed waterfront dining. I kayaked. We strolled lavender fields, beach fronts, and charming towns. I had a massage; he golfed. We went to a farmers' market. We were front row for a Plain White T's concert (also Bowling for Soup and Hoobastank). I wore my grandma's scarf full of stars. I felt cute, happy, alive, sober, connected, and present.

I am easily able to be with my husband without diluting myself. I let him be with the real me. I let myself be myself. I treasure him. I notice him. I have the capacity to pay attention to him. I don't need alcohol to punch that up. It's already magical with our own rhythm of love (this is my favorite Plain White T's song, as well as Hey There Delilah, of course). They graduated from my kid's high school, so I am a fan of them personally too.

Ready for an unexpected love story?

That's this week's 🔗 Peripeteia Podcast. A woman from Michigan, Stacy Figg, opens up about her extraordinary journey from a picture-perfect life to navigating the fallout of her husband's federal embezzlement charges. Stacy shares her story publicly for the first time, detailing her life in Detroit, her move to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and her family life before the incident. She recounts the shock and turmoil of discovering her husband's crime, his subsequent federal charges, and their impact on her mental health, family dynamics, and community relations. Stacy also discusses her husband's incarceration, the difficulty of single parenting, and the emotional and practical challenges of reentry after his release. Emphasizing themes of forgiveness, compassion, and resilience, Stacy's story is not only one of managing personal crisis but also of profound love and community support. Through therapy and mutual understanding, Stacy and her husband work to rebuild their lives, offering a powerful narrative of redemption and healing.

If you want to start Dry July now, it's available to you. Join us 🔗 here. 

We are supporting each other all summer long (that's a Kid Rock song, and he's from Northern Michigan, so I can't stop singing it). It does bring nostalgia for my drinking days of my youth, but with it comes gratitude that I no longer live in my youth. I am proud to be in my middle-age era. Gladly growing into that coastal grandma. 

XO!

-Heather

P.S. Perfect map for makeup for middle age and beyond 🔗 HERE.

P.P.S. You stopped drinking, but your husband hasn't? That's the Ask a Coach question of the week. Read my answer 🔗 HERE.