How to Take a Look at Your Drinking

This week I’m excited to share my interview with Jenn Krautsch on women and drinking. Jen is the founder of SoberSis, an organization that helps women look at or change their relationship with alcohol. 

1. Please briefly introduce yourself to those that don’t know you.

Thank you for having me, and it’s fun to have this conversation. I feel it’s relevant and a conversation that I needed along the way, myself.

I’m Jenn. I’m a married mother of two living in Texas. I’ve been married for about 25 years. I’m almost fifty years old, with two adult children ages 22 and 20. I’ve recently entered an empty nest phase and think I’ve found my next calling and my purpose in life.

2. What has been your relationship with alcohol and what made you decide that you needed to make a change?

I grew up in a conservative Christian home in good ‘ole Bible Belt Texas with parents that didn’t drink. I’m an 80s kid and grew up when drinking was not as prevalent as it is today. There were undoubtedly people drinking all around me, kind of the party crowd. Other people in high school and college didn’t drink. That made my decision not to drink actually not that big of a deal. I was one of those rule-following kids, which is ironic when you hear more of my story and how I was called to the work I’m doing now.

I think it is important for a lot of parents to hear that I grew up with parents that didn’t drink. My parents led the way by example and yet in our society today, it can still be very confusing and very hard to talk about. Alcohol use, alcohol dependency, or alcohol, in general, is a real grey area topic because it’s so socially acceptable.

I was a later in life drinker, late to the party if you will. It was in my early 30s when I started social drinking. Being a young working mom, I had young kiddos and had been married for almost a decade. I was doing some network marketing and found myself at Happy Hours in a hotel lobby a lot. That’s when I found myself leaning into this social drinking norm. I spent my 30s catching up to my peers, who, like many people, started drinking in high school or college or did binge drinking or even had an unhealthy relationship with drinking. Then they settled down a little bit.

For me, I started that whole process in my 30s as a working mom. It was very tricky. I couldn’t let on how difficult it was to navigate at times. I should have known more than I did, but I’m very thankful for my upbringing because it offered protection and provision through those years.

Everyone’s story is unique, but there is a common thread too.

I turned 40 the year my daughter turned 13. It was the perfect storm of hormones, all the fear, and anxiety that can come with raising a teenager.

My social drinking, which I was still navigating, turned into an ingrained habit. What started as a treat and a way to connect with my husband on a date night or when meeting friends, in my early 40s turned into a coping mechanism to deal with anxiety from raising teenagers that were very different than I was at their age.

It can throw a parent when you’ve grown up a certain way, and your personality clashes with your child’s’.  I honestly didn’t know how to handle that. I didn’t know what to do. There were a lot of times from age 40 to 45 when she was between 13 and 18 years old when I felt very helpless and very lonely. My husband and I were doing our best to partner in parenting. I found myself very isolated with a lot of the things that I was fearing and worried about. That is when I noticed my drinking turned into self-medicating a lot of my emotions.

Because I didn’t want to in any way cause my daughter or my son to struggle with substances, I didn’t even know how to talk about my beginning stages of struggling with alcohol dependency.

Drinking is so socially normal, acceptable, really glorified in our society.

I looked like everybody else on the outside. My drinking habits and how I was operating in the world were like everyone else.

My struggle was more internal. It was more mental and emotional than it was physical. I wasn’t physically addicted to alcohol, although I do think if I had continued down the path I was on, my drinking was only going to increase. That is the nature of the drug. Drinking increases as you build a tolerance. You build dependency. I was heading in that direction.

Fortunately, I chose to take an early exit off the alcohol highway before I had to. I decided to look at my relationship with drinking and admit that it wasn’t serving me. It was increasing my anxiety. It was increasing my depression. It was increasing my disconnection from my kids and my husband, the very people that I desperately wanted to connect with.

It was an increasing disconnection because I felt shame. I felt uncertain about how I was affecting my family.

Meanwhile, I’m just trying to be the best possible mom and wife. Leaning into that evening glass of wine, which started out as a treat, then a reward, then a routine. It turned into my time, me time, mom time. It turned into needing a drink before going to dinner with my family because there would be conflict and difficulty relating to their teenage lives. I drank to numb the edges a little bit. I found myself doing that, and I didn’t like it.

3. What is different for you personally now that you have decided to stop drinking?

I’m 49 now, and after I turned 45, I thought, wow, I’m at a crossroads. My daughter just graduated from high school. I’m going to be 50 before I know it. I wanted to show up differently at 50, then I did at 40. At 40, I was overwhelmed, exhausted mentally, and physically. I was pretty spent.

I knew I needed to start making tangible changes to feel more like that vibrant, sober-minded self that I was in my 20s.

I wanted to get back to that girl. Where is she? I know that she is in there somewhere. Raising kids was a challenge. Now that they have grown and flown, I wanted to work towards entering this next season of life.

What made a difference was learning a lot about the science behind drinking alcohol.

I grew up with three rules which summed up the information I got from adults about drinking.

• Don’t drink until you are twenty-one.
• Don’t drink until you get drunk.
• Never drink and drive.

By the time I was an adult, I had realized the conversation was different. Adults aren’t talking about their hangovers or their regret. Adults are talking about the shame of how easy it is to pour another glass. Or how easy it is to open a bottle when you are cooking, and then realize, oh my gosh the bottle is gone.

No one is talking about that. Now I’m trying to start a conversation where women can talk about their relationship with alcohol without labels, without shame, judgment, or rules. I wanted to explore the tools, the science that made it less about being flawed or broken, but more about the substance itself and its effects on the body.

With all that I was managing as a mother, I thought that alcohol was just a little sleep aid. I didn’t know that 20 percent of people who drink regularly felt the same way.

A lot of people use it to get to sleep because there is so much anxiety, so much on our minds. No one was talking about how it affected the sleeping routine.

I thought a lot of things that I was dealing with were not universal. I thought I was unique. Because I was so isolated, I didn’t realize that there are millions of women who feel this way. It is almost epidemic proportions, especially for women in their mid-40s and beyond. I primarily work with women who are empty nesters or just finishing up raising teenagers because they are often bored, lonely, and their anxiety has just skyrocketed.

That is where the wine o’clock culture comes in.

All the marketing and messaging match right up. Before we know it, it seems to go hand in hand.

I work with a lot of women who feel the same way. I think we all feel so alone until the conversation feels safe because we don’t talk about forever and always. I say I drink what I want when I want. It’s just that my desires have changed.

So, I’m not working a 12-step program, but that is certainly a great tool and resource.

I’m trying to introduce the idea that there is a spectrum with drinking. There is this grey area. The label alcoholic didn’t fit me. It didn’t resonate, and I wasn’t physically addicted. I hadn’t gotten that far down the drinking highway yet. I wanted to have a conversation while I was on the road and be able to pull over and talk about it and then make the decision to get back on the drinking highway or not.

I work with women who want to cut down, moderate, or be more mindful of their drinking. I also work with women who wish to pursue an alcohol-free lifestyle, just like people who seek a lifestyle of being a vegan or gluten-free.

Some people say, “I think I want to be alcohol-free. I want to be sober because it is healthy for me.” And they are motivated for that reason. 

4. Do you have any tips or advice for people trying to moderate or stop their drinking, especially when many people feel pressure from peers and society as a whole to drink alcohol?

My biggest tip or recommendation is taking a mindful break, to give yourself some space between the habit or the substance. You almost have to get a little out of balance by abstaining or refraining to know where your balance spot is.

I’ve taken many breaks before with my drinking, always alone and never with new information. So every time I took a break, I was using will power and depriving myself just to prove that I really didn’t have that big of a drinking problem. I could go for a month without it. I wasn’t physically dependent. I wasn’t drinking in the morning or having the shakes. I didn’t fit those checkboxes.

I just needed to create a little bit of distance, so I could see, if I apply some new tools, then I can create a new mindset. This is different than just white-knuckling and will power. In that grey area zone, it is important to get new information and new tools for drinking.

I challenged my beliefs about alcohol. I know what society is telling me and what all the Super Bowl commercials are telling me. I know the marketing in the stores, and what rosé all day means. All that input is affecting our subconscious. Challenging our beliefs can help us align with who and what we want to be.

For me, that was the biggest driver, the biggest motivation.

I knew I was living a divided life.

I’m so mindful during the day being into yoga, and a green-juicer. I would juice my kale and then have my Pinot Grigio at night.

I was almost like two different people. Super-healthy and super mindful by day and then I would want to be mindless at night. Mindless sipping. Mindless activity. Chill out and veg at night.  I wanted to take a break from my life because I’d been so good all day. 

A lot of my beliefs around drinking alcohol were misguided. They were wrong. I didn’t know that. I didn’t have anywhere to challenge those beliefs without challenging my whole identity.

I knew who I was, but felt very divided. I just wanted to be in alignment. My biggest goal is being whole-hearted.

I had to challenge my beliefs. To do that, I had to take a break. Not just a break using willpower, but time out to learn. Not just trying to quit, but using that time to learn and then decide where alcohol fit for me. It is such a personal journey and a personal decision. Everyone has a unique “relationship with alcohol”.

For some people, it is a casual acquaintance. For other people, it becomes a best friend. Almost like a person, an entity they lean into and rely on for comfort and support through social anxiety or pressures. It is negotiating that relationship. Just like any relationship that is unhealthy, you need time away. You need space to see it more clearly. I recommend not to be afraid of that space, but to utilize it. Use that space wisely.

5. Tell us about the SoberSis 21 Day Challenge? What is the program about, who is it for, and why did you decide to create it?

I created it because it is what I wished for myself. Necessity is the mother of invention; we create what we wanted or needed. That is exactly what SoberSis is. It’s a place to take that break and have the tools and the support from other women that get it. It is SoberSis because it is for women only. I do have some great recommendations for groups that involve men as well. They’re similar in their mindset and the language that we use.

This 21-day challenge is a reset. It’s a way to realign, reset, and reignite your personal growth and your personal relationship with alcohol. Every day during the 21 days, we talk about a topic that is relevant to belief systems around alcohol.

We have a closed Facebook group that is highly interactive, with women from all over the country, really all over the world. There are women in their twenties all the way through their seventies. They are willing, ready, and vulnerable to have a conversation about their relationship with drinking without having to fit a category, without having to say forever or always, or be labeled.

It’s really been awesome to have that conversation, with so much understanding and empathy and be able to say, “Me too. I did that too.” Talk about the “Me too” movement. This is a whole separate conversation – women, and wine and drinking.

We’re finding each other and what is so fascinating is I thought I would just start it locally. I live in Fort Worth, Texas. I asked a few friends to read some emails I put together, combining the best information I found.

I’ve read so many books on mindset, habits, addiction, alcohol, women, and marketing. Also, a lot of autobiographies about women and their experiences with alcohol.

There were elements of their stories that resonated.

I started sharing locally. Then I shared on Instagram, some women started finding me from all over the country and all over the world by taking this challenge. What started with sending some emails and has catapulted into this movement.

We call ourselves, the tribe. It’s this sisterhood. It’s this movement of women who are waking up in their own lives, becoming more present for themselves, and their families. Everything that was dulled and dimmed by alcohol is releasing and they are becoming bright again.

They are getting clarity and getting sober-minded, which is different than being sober or sobriety, which is typically complete abstinence for an addict or an alcoholic, a physical addiction. I’m introducing this new term. It’s a Biblical term, a scriptural term where God calls us believers to be sober-minded.

That means being alert, awake and aware of our lives. Who doesn’t want to be sober-minded? I think we all do. How alcohol fits into that is unique and personal. Sober mindedness allows people to be at different points and have the same common goal of being awake, aware and present in our own lives. So how can we encourage each other to do that? We are renegotiating our relationship with alcohol along the way.

It’s been so rewarding, encouraging and humbling to realize how many other women this resonates with. I had no idea. SoberSis started out with dozens of members and now has thousands. It continues to grow each and every month because there are so many women who say “Me too… Things in my life are looking good. I’m happily married or I’m killing it in my career. Things are good”.

But they are not great. There is this one thing that is holding them back.

I’m flipping the conversation around. Is your life good enough? Are you feeling good enough about your own life? Are you present? Do you have the physical energy you want? Are you sleeping well? Are you able to really connect with others?

Is your life great? If not, let’s make it great. Let’s work on that instead of keeping it status quo good enough.

What does that look like? Usually, the relationship with alcohol doesn’t line up. It’s the one piece that’s out of balance.

6. I have several clients who have daughters with alcohol use issues. What advice do you have for parents who are concerned about their daughter’s drinking? Was there any support from family and friends that you found particularly helpful?

I desperately wanted to talk about my conflicting feelings around alcohol. I liked it, but I didn’t like it. Sometimes it was working for me and then other times it wasn’t.

My drinking wasn’t black and white. It wasn’t an all hate relationship, or an all love relationship. It truly was a love-hate relationship.

For parents, just having the freedom to say, “You know what, I’m by no means perfect,” and trying to find common ground. You can connect with your children on an emotional level. Think back to a time when you felt conflicted. Think back to a time when you struggled because you wanted to do both the right thing and the wrong thing. Even as adults we can suffer from anxiety or loneliness or wanting to fit in with the crowd.

Finding common ground by saying, “You know what, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way”, and sharing a personal story makes it safe for other people to expose their vulnerabilities and feelings too.

That is a conversation starter.

The goal is to keep people talking openly, honestly and get the ball rolling with real conversations where people can be known and still loved, known and still accepted, not have to posture, not have to perform or say the right thing.

As parents, it’s easy to have a relationship with our kids where they just want to get us off their back or give us the right answer. Instead, taking the time to slow down and say, “I know it sounds weird, but I’ve really struggled with this.”

When an adult shares a challenge with a child or a young person, the respect level goes way up. Oh my gosh, she gets it. She struggles, too. She is not trying to be the perfect parent.

They’re human too, so maybe if they’re human, I can be human. If they’ll share, maybe I can share. Maybe they’re not going to judge me if I say I went to a party and I was trying not to drink, but I did drink and didn’t know what to do. Have you ever felt that way?

Yes, I have. I have felt that way as an adult. Let’s find that common ground, that humanness, that emotion. I started doing that with my kids toward the end of their high school years. I was able to honestly connect with my own children once I was honest with myself.

For several years I was hiding. I was hiding because I felt helpless while raising my kids and dealing with some of the issues they were facing. I didn’t know how to have that conversation, and didn’t know what to do.

That was actually a springboard for starting the conversation. To say, you know what, “I don’t even know what to say right now, but I really want to connect with you. I really want to hear what’s in your heart. I’m nervous and I don’t want to push you away, but I really want to start a conversation. I want you to know you will still be loved no matter what. It is my hope that you want to be known.”

Just let yourself be vulnerable and let it get messy. Kids pick up on your vulnerability when you say you want to have the difficult conversations while admitting you probably won’t do it perfectly. I want to start a conversation with you, and I may not get it just right. Is that okay? I think that makes a child or an adolescent, who is still trying to figure out if they trust you with knowing who they are. I know you love me unconditionally. You say that. You believe that, but I need you to show me. It’s an opportunity to say, let’s practice.

I want to show you, unconditional love. I’m not sure how this is going to work. This is messy, tricky. Let’s get into it together. My intentions are good. That’s a good place to start.

Check out Jenn’s FREE “wine o’clock survival guide” for women and her 21 Day Reset/Challenge.

About Jenn: I’m Jenn (aka SoberSis). I’m a new empty-nester and people ask me all the time what I’m going to do in this next season of my life. Well, you’re looking at it. I feel passionate about making it safe for women to have a conversation about alcohol without judgment, labels or rules. I’m a retired “grey area” drinker.

Around the middle of my 40’s, I was tired, feeling stuck on auto-pilot, and ready for a change. I didn’t want to enter the big 5-0 the way I did 40. I took a closer look at my life. My health…mental, physical and spiritual. I began to find out ways to have more energy, better sleep and really stay present in my own life. I began to realize wine wasn’t doing me any real favors. In fact, it was undoing a lot of my hard work during the day (I call it the detox just to retox loop). It had also become like an emotional crutch to lean on during times of anxiety or even boredom!

So, I started the 21-day reset for women because I wanted to share what I have learned and experienced first hand. Currently, over 2,000 women from all over the world have participated. We’re more of a sisterhood and a real community of women pursuing being present and sober-minded. Each person has the opportunity and space to renegotiate their relationship with alcohol. We are not a sobriety club although many of us do choose to enjoy an alcohol-free lifestyle.

 I’ve spent time taking a break from drinking without having to use willpower or feeling deprived. In fact, I’d say it has turned into more of a mindful lifestyle. Learning the science behind what my body/mind was experiencing has empowered me to make different choices. It’s like I was living a somewhat divided life, constantly feeling in conflict and stuck in an internal tug-of-war. God really brought me freedom by bringing together the mind-body-spirit connection so I could live a more wholehearted life. That’s how I want to live as I get closer to my 50’s and beyond.

What are your thoughts on drinking? If you have tips that have helped you, please share it in the comments.

What has been your experience with drinking? Do you feel you have a. healthy relationship with alcohol, or do you feel it has become too good of a friend? Let us know in the comments. What has helped you remain healthy?

If you liked this article and want to learn more, join the email list.  You will receive free tips on how to help your child overcome substance use.