01/16/2026
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2016: The Year Everything Changed
In April, I celebrated 500 days alcohol-free at London’s Redemption Bar, captured in the first photo.
That January, I’d read Annie Grace’s book, This Naked Mind. By February, we were meeting for lunch at a Denver Panera—two women independently discovering we had something important to say about alcohol. Around the same time, I discovered Lisa Smith’s book, Girl Walks Out of a Bar, and Aidan Donnelley Rowley’s blog. I reached out to Aidan. Our phone conversations about “taking the early exit from drinking” planted the seeds for what would become our Gray Area Drinking podcast a year later.
Annie connected me with Dawn Nickel from She Recovers, who invited me to write about “The Craving Brain and Alcohol” for her platform, my first published piece in this space. Meanwhile, I was deep in self-study on nervous system regulation and trauma, attending workshops with Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Maté in Colorado.
The podcast interviews began: first with Bex Weller on her Sexy Sobriety podcast in Australia, then with Andy Ramage and Ruari Fairbairns on their One Year No Beer podcast in London. But the real turning point came with my HOME Podcast interview in the US, it changed the trajectory of my career overnight. Suddenly, my coaching practice was fully booked with 35-55 year old women who resonated with the Gray Area Drinking conversation.
In December 2016, I was two years alcohol-free. What a year. Back then, questioning your relationship with alcohol was still taboo, but we did it anyway. We were a small but mighty crew, charting new territory together.
