Journey Back To Sobriety

Do you ever feel like you're out growing alcohol, that you are longing for a deeper connection to life? If alcohol is keeping you playing small and feels like the one area you just can't figure out, you are in the right place. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff. I'm a holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20-year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help powerful women just like you eliminate their desire to drink on their own terms. In this podcast, we will explore the revolutionary approach of my proven five-shifts process that gets alcohol out of your way by breaking all of the rules, and the profound experience that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening what is going on. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, thank you so much for being here for another episode of Stop Drinking and Start Living. I am just beyond thrilled to not only be here and be healthy and be happy, but be expanding in my offerings. Be expanding in a way that I feel like I can definitely reach more people through the Stop Drinking and Start Living course, the portal of empowerment. I truly believe it is such a game changer in the industry for many reasons. Of course, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably listened to other sober podcasts and read a lot of Quitlet and so on and so forth. You know that my approach is different. It is driven through the lens of the feminine and spirituality and what we're going to talk about today the journey back to sobriety. But the reason the Stop Drinking and Start Living portal of empowerment really sets itself apart from other sobriety programs or quit drinking programs, whatever you want to call it, whatever makes you feel the best in your body. Right, like words are so powerful, but call it what makes you feel the best is that it centers change around you. We don't keep the addict alive. We understand that alcohol is addictive, but you as the addicted person, don't always have to be addicted, right, and then, if you keep drinking alcohol again, like you would probably get addicted again, but you don't always have to be addicted to alcohol. So we center change around you and your life so that you this is the second reason. This is holistic support, right, where we clean up everything in your life the people pleasing, the negative thinking, the victim mentality. We clean all of those things up so that we can center change around you. But we do it from a holistic support so that you can do what you think alcohol does for you on your own, and obviously way better, because alcohol is not really doing anything, it's just lowering your inhibition so you don't think about it or feel your emotions right until they come crashing back at you the next day. The third reason that the portal of empowerment is such a game changer in the industry is because it is done through a feminine lens. It recognizes you as a spiritual being and your spiritual self and your unique experience as a woman. It really helps you mine for your own genius. It is a portal of cycles and rhythms and how we go through seasonal changes, at what any stage that you are in your life, and it really honors the archetypal energy of the feminine that alcohol has buried right, like we have used the masculine lens of achievement to find our seat at the table. Great, we're there. Awesome, I'm so glad we made it and all the hard work that came to get there. But we lost something in the process, right, and we didn't know we were losing it. Right, and this is like many, many centuries coming. But we lost something in the process and that what we lost was being in deep communion with other women and with the nature of who we are as women, as feminine, and that we live life in a much different way. We have many, much more different needs. I just got off of a one of my class an online embodiment class that I was taking and my teacher, who I'm very good friends with, just told us that she was pregnant and we were all like in tears, right. I mean, I know this person very well and I will even cry thinking about it, but that kind of experience is, you know, not every single woman is going to react in the same way, but it is a different experience than you know. My male counterpart is going to have 100% right and there is a requirement for a deeper honoring and reverence to life. If you want to go be on alcohol, I really do, truly believe that If the wonder and awe of life itself and the miraculousness of this earth and the wow factor of our bodies and evolution, like if there is no sentiment or if wholesomeness doesn't turn you on at all and there's not a like, the romance of life and the seasons, the colors of the season, you know that's it's not going to work for you, right? Because to go beyond alcohol is to create a deeper meaning and connection to life, and we start with the simple goal of wanting to believe something different about alcohol and wanting to believe something different about ourselves in relationship to it. We want to, we have to want to change the story of what we've made it mean, what you've made it mean about you, because in reality, it's not personal. It, alcohol, being an addictive substance, has nothing to do with you, right, and changing your relationship to alcohol has nothing to do with you. So I had this amazing, amazing aha moment this morning, and I'm going to kind of weave in some other things that I wanted to talk about too, but I was. I posted on Instagram about this. I was writing interview questions for a guest I'm going to have on, which I'm very excited to offer you this interview because it is like a wow factor for me, so get excited. But I had wrote how was this piece crucial in your journey back to so bright, like the specific practice that this person has? How did this part of you know the way you show up in the world, how did it relate to your journey back to sobriety. And when I said that out loud, I literally threw my arms up in the air. I was by myself in my bed still and I said, yes, oh my God, that is it. That is it your journey back to sobriety, back to it. You were once there and so this, this stigma of like oh, now I'm a sober person is so fucking stupid it doesn't even make sense. Of course you're a sober person. You were meant to be sober, like that's how we were born. Right Now, it's kind of this back to the future moment, because you're not obviously going back to being like a toddler, but the beauty about it is it's like you have the wisdom to do this work intentionally and consciously, where, when you learned alcohol, you learned the behavior and the reward system of alcohol and the other ways and tools that you've used to cope and, you know, manage life and all the belief systems you have. It was unintentional, right, like you just were born and started believing stuff. You were taught things and you just believed it. You never really looked around to question whether or not that was true, like you may have. You know, when kids say no or why, right, kids are always asking the question why, and then that very quickly gets like diminished in our experience. And so if you have children and they ask, why, get curious with them. Because to belittle that question is what really has dulled our imagination and our ability to question the golden standard and authority and is institutional, institutional systems that oppress. Right, we have got to stay curious or else we stop evolving, we stop growing. So I want you to ask the question all the time of why is sobriety a negative thing in some forms, in some ways right, and none of it makes sense when you really start to boil it down. So you're how does that make you feel? How does that make you feel just that alone, knowing my return to sobriety, and this is what I talk about reclaiming your naturally sober self. Right, you are not becoming sober. This is a story of reclamation, a story of remembering who you are, not in light of alcohol, but in light of being a human, in light of being, of a spiritual being. Right, walk on this earth, walk and then wow, everything I was talking about before. We open up and we awake into all of these ways of being that were just never mirrored to us, and there's just layers and layers and layers, and it can be really, really exciting and fun and like, holy crap, I can't believe I didn't know that this existed. But the chances are, if you're here, you have an inkling that you know who you want to be, to an extent, like you can feel this version of you in there, but you don't necessarily know how to be that person, how to be more connected. Like there's just this thing that that's almost like it's intangible, of course, but it's like a felt sense that you can't quite articulate, that is wanting to come through you. And what I want you to know is that is the feminine, that is the divine feminine that is wanting to burst through you. Now you may have parts of your life that are already in alignment with that. I want you to know is that is the thread, it is the, it is the root to reclaiming your naturally sober self. Continue to follow the wisdom of the divine feminine and you will find yourself back to your naturally sober state. And the reason that you continue to tolerate alcohol. This was one of the other points I wanted to bring forth, because it's like, yes, you have a tolerance for alcohol, right, like you can drink a certain amount, but you tolerate its presence in your life and you keep just saying, yeah, sure, fine, I guess I'll do this thing, even though it's not really creating the results I want. Like I see people all the time. I don't know how to be social without it. It feels like there's something missing. But when I drink I'm still not getting the result that I want. It's not really doing what I want. So you keep reaching for this thing because it's the only solution that you know, but it's still not creating it. So it's like keeping a boyfriend around just because he might be attractive or maybe he's not even attractive, but you just feel kind of bored and lonely. But he's not that smart, he's not that interesting, he doesn't open the door for you or take you out, and he can't last that long in bed, right, like we've all been there where we've hung out with people for way too long that we should not have been hanging out with, right? That is what alcohol is like. It is the guy or the person, the person that you're dating, that you shouldn't be hanging out with anymore, but you're tolerating it. Why? Why do we tolerate it? And this is what the portal of empowerment teaches you. It teaches you how to have your own back and create a relationship for yourself. So you don't tolerate anything unless it's moving through resistance for a result that you want right, like we can feel. This isn't about not feeling hard stuff, but if it's not, a hell yes, and if you're not having fun, I'm over it. I've even been questioning my own like intuition lately. There's been a couple of things in my life that I was like should I do this? Do I want and like? And then I go forward and start to make the plans to do it and then I'm questioning, I'm like I don't want to, though you know, if you're so hesitant about something and there's always this thing in the back of your head saying you shouldn't do that, right, and so there's a few reasons why we tolerate things. But when you recognize that and you reclaim that and you have a little bit of conviction, which is one of the strong emotions that we use working with the five shifts and the ETA practice and the portal of empowerment Is conviction, is your sword of discernment to say no more. You draw a line in the sand and you firmly place your sword down and you say no more To alcohol. I don't care what it takes, this is enough right, and sometimes that is that fierce motherly love coming through. And so the portal of empowerment was designed for you to experience all of your archetypal energy into touch base and get in touch with parts of you that have been wanting to come out and that have been shamed and hidden and buried and ignored by alcohol. And this is such a crucial point. We do not leave anyone behind. No parts of you get left behind in this program and this work. We want to go and retrieve every single part of you. There is no shaming, there is. No. This version of me doesn't serve me anymore. No, she needs your wisdom. We bring all parts of you into the present timeline. She needs you. She's scared. That version of you who is addicted to alcohol, that version of you who has that habit with alcohol, is scared. She is a younger version of yourself. She may be a 13-year-old version of yourself. She may be just scared to fit in, to be alone, to be in the dark. I'm afraid of the dark. Sometimes, when I'm all by myself, it's okay. I don't belittle that part of me. So we do this through the feminine lens and that's why this program is so powerful. So you need to know the how, how do I do this work? Well, the reasons that you're struggling with alcohol. You need to know those first, that you're still struggling and you're still tolerating alcohol. And there might be some of you out there that are like, yeah, but I enjoy it, I like the taste of it and all those things, but it doesn't matter, because you're still tolerating it. It's just like finding excuses for that dude Like, oh, he's kind of cute, he's sweet, he's innocent, right, like it's okay. No, when you take up space in your life for something, with something that you don't really want, you don't make space for the thing to come in that you really do want. Right, and this is you, this is like the alcohol is all of you. Like they say, you know to make space in your closet if you want to attract a new partner, you know, or whatever it is like live. Let your life this is like a feng shui concept. It's like let your life reflect the life you want to create, right, like a peaceful, calm existence that's full of love and beauty. Don't have clutter all around your house, right, that is not going to create that energy for you. So you want to. When you tolerate something, you are also not in your naturally sober state, right, like our naturally sober self, is the part of you that gets to be authentic, and when we tolerate something, we are not in our authentic alignment, we are not living in alignment with our values, which is one of the very first things that you'll do in the client portal of empowerment is create a life intention, and it is your guidebook. So this is the how. This is your guidebook to making decisions. So I just wanted to read you the definition of to tolerate something that one does not necessarily like or agree with without interference. So it's like it's not this hard, no, but you just kind of let it happen, right? So what signal is that sending to you, to your inner child, to yourself concept? And there's a couple of reasons that you're struggling with this. One is that it's reinforced everywhere around you that you should want alcohol at every turn, right, and that to become sober is mean. Something else about you other than the fact that I don't drink because alcohol is addictive and I really like who I am naturally, and one of the other kind of myths that we bust in the Five Shifts process inside of the Port of Empowerment is how you are relating to alcohol. This part of your identity that has become a story is so deeply ingrained in you that it's really hard for you to see past it. So that's why we give you access to other ways of being with yourself. Just by signaling to your brain, when people come to work with me one-on-one, there is a shift in their self-concept right away, because now they have become the woman who invests her time, money and energy into taking personal responsibility for herself, right away that your self-concept gets shifted. So just by being in the program and being part of it and knowing that there are women that come before you and will come after you, you are already shifting your self-concept. And the third reason that it's you know you're struggling still and tolerating alcohol is because it's addictive. Like I just said, your physical body still thinks it's a reward, even when your higher self is done. So what we need to do is build and strengthen that pathway. It's very simple right, like nothing has gone wrong. Your brain is working totally normal. You imagine a field like a big, giant field, and when you turn off the main road to go on this field, you have taken a right every single time. You've always taken a right onto this field. Well, you look to the left and there's not even a track marks right. And when you look to the right with alcohol, you can see the way very easily all the way to as far as you can see. And not only that, but there are lights and banners and music and people and advertisements and there are so many things pointing you to turn right in your brain. But left exists, right. You just have to make the conscious choice to turn left and you will probably want some tools because you have to navigate it right. It is a you know it's a little bit dark and you're not quite sure. You're not even sure where you're going, and so that's why you haven't stayed in that left lane, you haven't turned left, because you're just not sure. But once you get on that path, you start to realize like oh yeah, there are parts of this I have done before. You see some landmarkers. It's not so far out of the realm of existence, like it's still here on earth, you're still a body, you still have to, like go to the bathroom and eat food and drink and sleep and talk to your family. So it's like it's not that much different. But when you see it from the perspective of, like all the lights and the flashing lights on this one side that looks like Vegas, and then something that looks like, you know, the desert to the other side. It seems scary and that is why you need support. That is why you commit to a proven system that's going to support you, and this is the journey back to your naturally sober self. So one of the ways to get back there is to stop tolerating alcohol and to wield your sword of discernment through conviction and say enough, there is nothing that you can do. That will be a better gift to you and your family than making yourself a priority. Because I will tell you, what you can expect from being inside of this work is to feel more peaceful, more in control and know how to make decisions. You are gonna feel less overwhelmed because this program centers you around at the center of your life. Right, we don't put alcohol at the center, although that's the subject matter that gets you in the door but we have to look at every other area of how you're showing up, because you have to be able to manage those two so that you can eliminate really some of the triggers in your life, right, and then the ones that you can't work on. Then you learn how to go down that left path, enough that then it turns into your whatever you want it to be a little country road, cute little quaint town, maybe it's a big city, the beach. You get to decide intentionally and consciously and I know I've talked about this before earlier, about not choosing your beliefs, not even knowing you had beliefs, not even knowing they were optional, not even knowing you had thoughts, not even knowing what your emotions were. So the where you are right now isn't a problem. You just didn't know, right, it's not a problem. But now you know. And the reason that alcohol is such a fabulous teacher, you know, I mean, unfortunately it's so addictive, but it's because it creates such a dissonance from your naturally sober state that it is impossible not to notice. But the best part is that it's waking you up. It has woken you up, right, and it's not a problem to see that you can't, you're not tolerating alcohol anymore, and that's the whole point. And the reason that you're not able to tolerate it to the extent that you used to and this is more like on a spiritual level, right is because you are awakening. It's not, it doesn't, it can't hold its weight anymore because you've seen too much, you know too much, you want something different, it's falling flat. And when you start to shift your vibration and your frequency to a different state of being, through different awareness, through different intention, things that are not of the same frequency will not be in alignment, there will be a disconnect, there will be a dissonance, and you want to resonate with the things in your life so that you can be more harmonious, more peaceful and enjoy yourself right. So that is the gift really of alcohol is that it has shown you that there are things in your life that need to be addressed and that there is a dissonance with not only alcohol, but how I want to show up in the world, how do I want to be social. Well, if it's not alcohol, then what is it right? And that takes some time. It takes learning a new way, just like you spent the last 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years learning the way that you've learned right. But it doesn't have to take that long when you're doing it intentionally, in fact, it only has to take a few short months. You will see such a shift showing up for this work in the first 30 days. Hands down, all of my clients do. It is an unbelievable transformation. So recognize that you're really not able to tolerate alcohol anymore and that's okay. You don't have to keep liking something just because you once liked it, like you don't owe anything to alcohol or anyone else that wants to keep drinking. And, frankly, your thoughts about what other people want for you and your drinking that is one of the other big things that we shift. So think about how other things in your life, too, have become less tolerable Maybe sugar, maybe gluten, maybe caffeine, maybe processed foods, people, media, all sorts of stuff. That's just like you feel exhausted afterwards. You just don't feel good. Now. This doesn't mean you have to avoid everything, but it's an awareness of like how do I want to intentionally engage with this thing from a grounded distance. Right, I know that that's true for me and I know that that happens with my clients as well. Where they stop like watching as much TV, they stop eating processed foods, they start being outside and wanting to be outside in nature more, they start being more creative. Their cognitive abilities come online. It is beyond, it is mind-blowing, not to mention, right now it really is at the price of a lifetime $249 for lifetime access for all updates of everything that will happen inside for the lifetime of that portal. There's no renewals. You get to keep the material, and the reason that I made it this way is because I've been in programs before that I invested in and that were membership programs and then, once I was done with the membership like the coaching part of it is like all the materials went away, and I didn't want to do that. I want you to have access to this being the sanctuary where you can go to whenever you need a shift in perspective, whenever you need to connect with your naturally sober self, whenever you need your wisdom to come online, whenever you need to regulate your nervous system and your emotion, whenever you just want to drop in. This is there for you. I can't wait to see you on the inside. Have an amazing week. What I want you to know more than anything is that you don't have a drinking problem, that your relationship to alcohol is all about your thinking. It is true that you can drink less and desire alcohol less and then, in turn, make new choices by becoming aware of your thoughts and shifting your perspective. I have discovered the five myths of quitting drinking the same thing that keeps us stuck, that we keep doing again, and, again and again. And then the five shifts in your thinking that you will need to finally get the relief that you've been waiting for and that you deserve on your own. This process is available to you right now in a free on-demand training, and all you need to do is click the link in this description of this podcast episode or on my website, marywagstaffcoachcom.