When I began my sober-curious journey over three years ago, I had no intention of breaking up with alcohol. I figured I just needed a few tools to reign it in so I could get back to being a so-called “normal” drinker. The problem is, once I began really exploring what my life looked like without alcohol, I discovered that, like many of us, I was literally sucking down the Kool-Aid of pro-drinking messages. I realized I hadn’t been able to see that the messages all around me in our drinking culture were convincing me that my gray area drinking was “normal.”

As women and mothers, we’re conditioned to believe that we should put everyone else’s needs before our own. Often, this means there’s little time left for ourselves. We’ve bought into the story that going to the grocery store is a “break” when in reality we’re just checking another item off our endless to-do lists. It often feels like we have a news ticker streaming an endless list of tasks in our heads. We manage all the details of the day­­—booking doctor appointments, buying birthday gifts, researching and scheduling after-school activities, and putting out fires—finding a missing uniform, delivering a required form—slaying each one as it pops up. At the end of the day, when our fight is won and everyone’s needs are met, we are taught that the way to recover from all the madness is with alcohol.