Restoration Beyond the Couch

Alcohol and Identity: A Path to Self-Love and A Sober Mind

• Dr. Lee Long • Season 2 • Episode 1

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What happens when the "mommy wine culture" sneaks its way into your life and transforms your nightly routine into a bittersweet conflict with your values? Jenn Kautsch, AKA Sober Sis, shares her journey from discovering the habit of wine o'clock in her 30s, far removed from her younger, alcohol-free years to enlightening others to what it means to truly become sober minded. As a working mom, she found herself entangled in the glamorization of alcohol, experiencing a dissonance that led her to reassess her relationship with drinking. Emphasizing a compassionate, no-shame approach, she dismantles the myth that addiction is a character flaw, advocating instead for self-love and true alignment.

Together, we unpack the emotional complexities of using alcohol to numb life's challenges, and explore how curiosity can be a powerful tool in evaluating one's drinking habits. Sobersis offers a refreshing perspective on embracing an alcohol-free lifestyle and the holistic well-being that accompanies it. We also dive into the supportive and judgment-free community she created with Sober Sis, fostering an environment where individuals can explore their paths with openness and courage. This conversation is a vital listen for anyone seeking personal growth and a deeper connection with their true self.

www.SoberSis.com

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Join The Sober Sis 21 Day Reset Here: https://www.sobersis.com/21-day-reset-20241704734162895

Speaker 1:

Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, absolutely so. Could you kind of give us a little bit of background on how you became sober sis?

Speaker 2:

I can. We'll have to rewind. Rewind life a little bit. But how I became sober sis is a very unlikely story, because I, as a young adult, wasn't even really a drinker. I wasn't really a drinker until my 30s. So the fact that I'm in my 50s now and known as AKA your sober-minded sis is pretty ironic really, and I think it just goes to show that anyone can begin a relationship with alcohol and change it at any time, for any reason.

Speaker 1:

It is a very fluid experience, right? Yeah, I mean pun intended, I guess, but with the fluid part, but there is, these types of things can change, they can alter, so it's never, I guess. Is it ever too late, is it ever too soon? Is it ever?

Speaker 2:

No, and I think that's what's interesting is that there really is a drinking highway, if you will kind of like, you can get on and exit off at any time. And that's kind of where I found myself in my 30s. I was a young, working married mom and just really started kind of finding myself in the networking happy hours and already had kids on the ground at that point, had been married to my awesome husband, craig, for almost a decade at that point and drinking was just kind of you know, it was all around me my whole life. But I didn't really have a cautionary tale around drinking. It was just kind of one of those social things that either kind of liked or you didn't like and for whatever reason, it just never really appealed to me as something that I was drawn towards or really enjoyed or even had friends that. It just wasn't a big part of my growing up years.

Speaker 2:

And the culture changed a lot too, changed a lot too. I've done a lot of study on just our cultural changes around drinking and kind of the mommy wine, juice culture and wine o'clock these were words that were just starting to really get on the scene the rosé all day, you know t-shirts, and that was just starting to converge about the time that I was starting to become a working mom with my kids Almost, I think they just started school. So I was like, okay, I can be at home during the day, kind of do my thing at night, and then that's when I got into the happy hour scene. Before I know it it's book club, then it's date night, and then I'm just cooking in my kitchen and I was effectively drinking almost every night somewhere for some reason.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And that's okay. I'm not here as, like you know, the alcohol police are saying that that's necessarily a bad thing. But what I noticed in me was already a lot of cognitive dissonance off the top, right out of the gate, because I really liked the way it made me feel. Almost instantly I was really like, oh okay, I'm 32. Now I get why people really love to unwind with this at the end of the day. And if you're saying that this is encouraged, glamorized and and I can do this too at the end of the day, well, it's certainly my reward and something I'm going to be looking forward to. So I'm all in.

Speaker 1:

Which is so interesting. First of all, one of the things I love about Sobersis and your philosophy is that there is no shame involved.

Speaker 2:

No, Like you said, it just won't serve the conversation really.

Speaker 1:

It won't Shame doesn't serve anything other than shackles and binding. But the other thing that popped out to me that I love that you say is you're not the alcohol police. I'm not here to police anybody, right, and to to say that this is right or wrong. Right, it's. It's more of a conversation about, because a lot of times people look at addiction as a means of like. Oh well, it's a character defect, right, and I am here to say, let me say it loud and clear it is not a character defect, it's not a character defect Agreed, agreed.

Speaker 1:

And I love what you're saying is that your process with becoming sober sis was really. I mean, what I think I'm hearing you say, was you learning to love yourself well and to see, wait a minute, something slipped out of my purview that I don't like it there.

Speaker 2:

That's right. That's right, it was just misaligning for me.

Speaker 1:

I love that phrase.

Speaker 2:

It just didn't align with with me, mind, body, spirit, who I wanted to be as a wife and a mother and a friend, the way I was showing up in the world. It didn't align with my wine o'clock habit, which that's how it started. It all started just as a social pleasantry wine o'clock habit which that's how it started. It all started just as a social pleasantry Yay, that's fun on a Friday night. Then it turned into a kind of a routine where it's kind of like, well, that's what we do.

Speaker 2:

And then it became something that I felt just again, not the physical addiction, but the mental, the emotional repetitiveness of it became just such a routine that I felt like, okay, now it's having more control over me than I have over it, from a mental, emotional, like I'm really looking forward to this wine o'clock, like, is it five o'clock yet? So I would do everything, mindful, responsible, very, giving, very, you know, just on it I'm an Enneagram one, one, nine. So I was getting it done, keeping the peace, making peace, you know, making list. I was doing it all and then by five o'clock it just it had really entered into my life. It's like, okay, now I can transition from day to night. Now I can transition from you know mom to wife. Maybe it's just me time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's, it's. It almost sounds like you're saying it was a form of you being able to check out.

Speaker 2:

Right, right, check out from the over responsibility, the overthinking, all the overs.

Speaker 1:

I was kind of over it, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And um and the. The thing about drinking in our very alcohol-centric culture is I could get a girl's night out any night. I wanted just text a few friends and pick our favorite margarita spot or a place to just kind of hang out, and again, that was great.

Speaker 2:

I think what we were doing was really wanting to connect great point and I think that that's what I've learned is that connection really is the antidote to addiction. And addiction, in my case, doesn't have to mean a physical addiction. It can mean anything that you're doing repetitively but still getting negative consequences or a negative response. And for me, the duplicity that I felt inside was what was tearing me up internally. But here's the deal Externally I looked like everybody else. I didn't lose anything, I didn't get a DUI, I don't have a big rock bottom story. It just was misaligning for me, and that was enough to look at it to look at it.

Speaker 1:

That is so well said. That is so well said. You used a phrase show up, yeah. That is one of my favorite phrases right now is are we aware of how we show up? Are we aware? Are we showing up for ourselves?

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and you're saying I felt like I wasn't showing up for me is what I'm me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, because it it really became about my relationship with myself.

Speaker 2:

Um, because what was happening was I woke up with all of these good intentions, um, you know, the detox to retox loop I talk about it all the time where it's just this loop of like doing all these things. But I was doing all these things for myself. But then in the evening, that unwinding, that retox, that undoing, it was almost like a form of abandoning myself, because what would happen is, from five o'clock on, I started getting smaller. I started getting much smaller in my own life and I started to minimize my presence, my own presence in my family and in my own life. And before I know it, I'm the woman at the kitchen sink who's on my third glass of wine thinking how did I get here? This was not my goal this morning. It's not really even my goal in life how I want to show up, but one thing's led to another, and now I've just kind of shrieked back into the corners of my life and I just, I'm just playing small, I'm showing up that way and I don't like that.

Speaker 1:

That's one of the greatest gifts you've been given is that sense of you. We're created in the image of the creator and it's it's bearing that image out well that gives us that sense of peace. And you, coming to that place of I just don't like. I love the cognitive dissonance. Yeah, it didn't settle well with your soul and out of that came this desire to give away what you're learning.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because really I'm the girl next door, I'm the mom next door, I'm the wife next door, I'm the carpool gal in your line. I am that person. And yet I thought, well, how can I be struggling with this? And for me it was really humbling to realize oh, wait a minute. Anything that we make bigger than our own presence, or even listening to the Holy Spirit's whisper inside of us, can take that place and something and something's taken that place, and now it's. It's got me by the hook a little bit. And how can I break free without it being about legalism, performance, love, that my Enneagram one is just trying to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons. I want to do the right thing for the right reasons. I want to feel aligned, and that's where the journey's taking me I love that, yeah, because I think that alignment is that place.

Speaker 2:

It's where we're like humming along like a well-tuned uh car well, and even even with drinking I can honestly say now I drink what I want, when I want, and that feels freedom to me. My goal was never to want to drink and learn how to not drink.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Or whatever substance or choice that people are making. To me, it's more about being sober minded.

Speaker 1:

That's one of the things I love about Sober Sis. I just wish you had Sober Bro too.

Speaker 2:

I know sober sis, I just wish you had sober bro too. But I love.

Speaker 1:

The fact that it's not about this isn't about like abstinence for the sake of abstinence. It's all about understanding your relationship to whatever.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. I think a lot of the principles and mindset tools that I've used apply to so many areas of life because it is about you know having a strong why, why you're doing what you're doing, how to create small wins, how to live in your own presence and not numb out or check out and and feel all of the feels. I know a fan favorite of you and I both is Renee Brown, and you know she talks so much about. You can't selectively numb and that's what I was trying to do was numb the anxiety that I had from raising teenagers, numb the loneliness Sometimes I felt in my marriage right Numb the boredom right.

Speaker 2:

All the things, but I wanted to keep my joy and my resilience and I wanted to keep those things, my resilience, and I wanted to keep those things. But when I was drinking, I was, I was numbing it all.

Speaker 1:

And it's it. What I hear you saying is is you were trying to show up for everybody else, but you weren't able to show up for you.

Speaker 2:

It's like I you don't have to worry about Jim couch, she's not going to drop a ball. Oh, meanwhile, I'm dropping the biggest ball of all which is I'm dropping my relationship with myself.

Speaker 2:

That's it. And that's where I really started working out of the gate, was rebuilding trust with myself, right, so that when no one was around. You know, I grew up in a really strong, solid home and I always learned that you know character is who you are when no one's looking, when no one's around, who you are when no one's looking, when no one's around, even when it's just you and your desires and your longings and aligning with you. It's got to match. It's got to match. I wanted to match the inside and the outside.

Speaker 1:

Which is exactly what you were describing with cognitive dissonance. Yeah, it has to match, it has to match, it has to line up. That sense of dissonance is when something is, like you said earlier, misaligned and when it doesn't feel like it goes together.

Speaker 2:

Right and that was yeah, it was miserable, it was exhausting, and I think one of the things that I've learned along the trail is that we're not broken, just our pattern is broken. That is so right and that can be fixed. That's so right.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I always thought I was broken, like something had gone wrong and I needed to like. Like you said, it wasn't a moral defect, that I wanted something that took away my negative reality.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

That's a human thing, right? That's a human desire to want to bend or change reality when it is difficult, unpleasant or painful, sure, and yet it's also human to be able to stay.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. It's like when we get hot. I mean, here we are at the time of this recording we're cresting into summer yeah. Boy, we are slamming into summer. Yeah, boy, we are slamming into summer?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we are, and it's heating up outside.

Speaker 1:

And what do we want? After we've been outside for a while, we want to come into a cool space. Sometimes we don't have that at our disposal and we have to find a way to find shade or cool ourselves in that moment. And that's the physical realm. And sometimes we have the ability to step away and to distract in a way that doesn't isn't harmful to us. But then in other times we distract through harmful ways and so, yeah, I, I, I think what you've done is brilliant. I've always been a huge fan, Always.

Speaker 2:

You really have a huge fan.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, always, you really have. Yes, I have, you have. So, so walk us through. If somebody's contemplating this, if, if there's a, if there's a lady out there that's listening and who's contemplating, I want to check more out. I want to check this. Sober sis, deal out when, where does one typically start with sober sis?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know I, I really created sober, sis, um, in an effort to create what I wished I could have found, which is a safe place to wrestle, talk about out loud your relationship with alcohol without having to slap on a label, say you're never drinking again. Maybe that's too extreme, maybe you can be a mindful drinker, maybe that works for you. You know, like I want to encourage women to be curious. I think curiosity is the key and so just to be curious about your relationship with alcohol.

Speaker 2:

You know, the wrong question is the one I was asking myself for many years which kept me really stuck. And the wrong question is is it bad enough, jen? Is it really bad enough? I mean, come on, you can take it or leave it. I mean, granted, you're going to take it more than you leave it, but is it bad enough? I just would look around A little bit of a comparison trap there, because I could always look around and find somebody who was drinking more or more often, or had a more negative relationship with drinking than I sure did, and so that kept me stuck.

Speaker 2:

But the right question is is it good enough? Is it good enough for me Wait a minute Is this good enough for the way I want to show up? Is it serving me in my life Again, taking away the external, internally? Is it serving me or is it taking a lot of bandwidth?

Speaker 2:

And so if you're starting to feel like, you know, I just like to pull off the drinking highway to a rest stop, go with my analogy here, pop the hood, check out. You've got some warning lights, some gauges are saying you know, low fuel, or or some lights blinking. You're like, what does that mean? Well, I don't know. Let's pull over and talk about it, let's look at it, and then you may get back on the drinking highway.

Speaker 2:

You may get on a different highway and decide you know what I think I want to pursue, what it would be like to maybe explore an alcohol-free lifestyle. It's an option, but I'm options, girl. I lifestyle it's an option, but I'm options, girl. I'm all about the freedom to choose, because you take away the freedom to choose and you take away freedom, and so I think the freedom to choose starts with curiosity, and so that's where I invite women into a just a normal conversation where you can talk about alcohol and drinking, and again in an alcohol centric society where I would say most people have a relationship with alcohol of some kind right, and you just want to renegotiate yours.

Speaker 1:

God, there's so much freedom there, as you said. And the thing that I love about that is curiosity. Yeah, that's. One of my favorite favorite ideas is let's look at this instead of being judgmental.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so binary and so linear, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. What can we learn from this? How do we walk through this curiosity rather than certainty and judgment? Love that.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Because if we go for just behavior modification, you can even start to identify too much as, even say, a sober person. I don't even say I'm sober. I know AKA, I'm sober sis, but it's really short for sober minded sisters. And so for me, my identity is more in who Christ says I am and in the truth of my Ness, my gen Ness, that is one of a kind.

Speaker 1:

You've said that for a long time. Your.

Speaker 1:

Ness and I've always loved that because it is that sense of true identity, that rock solid who were you uniquely made to be? And really owning that and seeing that. And I love the idea of sober mindedness because it expands. We can be very myopic and bring in one view of one thing, of one topic, and really make that the focal point. But what I've always, what I've always when I was, when I was learning to drive, one of my siblings who they're all much older than I am, one of my siblings who they're all much older than I am, one of my siblings said to me hey, I really want you to think about when you're driving down the road and you're on a two lane highway. I don't want you to look at the oncoming lights of a, of a truck, you know, big Mac truck, so to speak. I want you to be looking over at the right hand side of where you're trying to go.

Speaker 2:

I love that.

Speaker 1:

And I just remember thinking as a, as a teenager to me everything was analogous. It's always been that way my whole life, and I was like, oh, I think that's probably true in life that we stare at the things, that what we stare at will tend to drift toward, and that's what my sibling was trying to tell me is, when you stare at something, you drift toward it.

Speaker 1:

So stare at the aim that you want to be, and what you're saying is you're trying, you're, you're imparting to these women is, rather than looking at alcohol and saying, let's look at alcohol, let's examine alcohol, no, let's look at our Ness, your Jen Ness, your Lee Ness your Sally. Ness, your Ralph Ness, your Jen-ness, your Lee-ness, your Sally-ness, your Ralph-ness.

Speaker 2:

I know you don't deal with guys, but yeah, but that's my dad's name, so that'll work.

Speaker 1:

Oh, who knew? I didn't know that that's really cool. So there's that space of us moving through this to find more of us, and when we focus on that, the curiosity brings forth.

Speaker 2:

Well, it becomes really positive and empowering instead of fear-based and oh. I'm walking this straight line. I'm trying not to fall off. No, I'm walking free and direction matters a lot more than speed. So if I have, the right it, done it, thank God. And so, yeah, that direction, and I've learned, and what I teach is to focus more on what you're gaining, not what you're losing.

Speaker 1:

You said something a moment ago about because you can become overly I forget how you said it, but that we can be too focused. We can be like the sober police and when you think about that, alcohol is still ruling your life Exactly, it's still there.

Speaker 2:

And it's like let's let it go Versus it being shrunken down to it being so small and losing its value. Love that. That was a big part of my relationship with alcohol. It had a high value to me. Like I can do hard things if I can have a glass of wine before we go. I can show up and be super fun, Jen, if I'm a little tipsy, a little buzzing at the party, and what I've learned is no, actually, if we focus on what we're gaining, not what we're losing, and we can be all there, all there, then alcohol, just it starts to lose its value and it just falls off instead of you dragging it around constantly Like a ball and chain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like arguing with it, right, just like we argue with reality. What if we just leaned into reality instead of resisted? It got curious and then we didn't numb out or check out when things got hard.

Speaker 1:

And that is my whole piece about curiosity is that it can show us where the shackle begins. We can let go of it, we can drop it, and it's there. Alcohol we still have to navigate alcohol because, like you said, it's in our society like it or not. It's there, yeah yeah, but then our relationship to it changes and we can dance with it in a different way, where we are more free.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I, just I just. If anything, I just have gratitude. Now and when I'm around you know people drinking I just I, just my desire, my goal is to stay in my own lane, just stay in my own lane and, um, you know, people are going to make their choices, just like I made mine. And if anybody would have tried to have changed me? Well, we all know that doesn't work you can't change other people.

Speaker 2:

So you know people. It's just like any other personal choice. You've got to be driven to want to do it for yourself.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and there has to be something like you're saying driven to want to do it for yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and there has to be something, like you're saying driven to want to do it yourself because it comes from inside. Yeah, something pulling you forward instead of just something external or a person pushing you. I'd rather be pulled towards something than pushed.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, Because the push there's always, the resistance right.

Speaker 2:

But if I'm being pulled, I'm just, I'm moving forward.

Speaker 1:

It's on my terms, yeah, but if I'm being pulled, I'm just, I'm moving forward. It's on my terms, right On your terms, and curiosity is how you learn what your terms are, because if we're unaware of ourself, like you said, you were losing that sense of you. If you don't know who you are, if you can't show up as Jen, as wonderfully, fully, all things that that our creator made Jen to be, then how do you know what you're being pulled toward? And to me, that's where curiosity is is key is that you're curious and you get to show up more, to use your phrase, with your nest.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that makes the journey ongoing. It's not a destination, right? We always have heard that little cliche. You know, it's not the journey. I mean, it's not the destination, it's the journey. And so same here. Just because I'm now choosing to live an alcohol-free lifestyle, because that just fits, it fits me better, it fits my nest better, quite honestly, it's just more aligned and I just feel better. I feel better physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and I think it's part of my God calling as well. I think he's given me a unique assignment in life.

Speaker 1:

And you are answering that call so beautifully. I will say, from my perspective, watching you develop Sober Sis and all of that. You are answering that beautifully and I want to say thank you because it is so nice to have a place where I know that curiosity, that the sense of judgment and certainty is not going to be there, judgment and certainty is not going to be there, but curiosity and openness and conversation, but that there's a solid foundation and a ground from which people can stand. That is a really wonderful thing to be able to encourage people to check that out. So thank you for that.

Speaker 2:

Well, you're welcome. It's been fought with a lot of challenge and a lot of growth that I wouldn't want to change or have any other way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Cool.

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Dr. Lee Long

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Lila Pond

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