About Love Sober

I stopped drinking in my early 40s, when my children were small — one a toddler, one just starting school.

On the surface, everything looked normal. I drank much like the women around me: a few glasses in the week, more at the weekend. Not “rock bottom.” Not dramatic.

But inside, it was a different story.

My diaries were full of promises — I’ll stop today, just one glass, only weekends.
I couldn’t stick to them. There were the 3am anxieties, jaded mornings and low self confidence that came from knowing deep down something was off, despite hearing the message ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ every time I confided in anyone. Just cut down, try to moderate. I wanted to scream that I had been trying that for years. Trying to moderate was the problem NOT the solution, but surely I wasn’t bad enough to qualify for sobriety somehow.

I was tired, often overwhelmed, fed up, masked at the school gates, busy doing what so many women do — holding everything together, while quietly falling apart internally.

Wine had become the exhale at the end of the day, my reward and switch-off - a way to get through from teatime to bedtimes and push through, the thing that helped me cope… until it didn’t.

What I didn’t realise then was that I wasn’t failing — I was depleted.
And alcohol was making everything harder. It was an old habit, ingrained ver years of normative drinking and in peri menopause it had a much bigger impact. There was a sense of just about keeping control but an inkling it was going to get darker. In other words it was robbing me of peace of mind, taking, energy, making me feel ashamed if I drank too much, taking sleep - in other word, alcohol was costing me far more than money.

Stopping wasn’t easy. There was fear, resistance, and a lot of unlearning — about alcohol, about rest, about how to actually care for myself. There was the sheer muscle power of changing the habit of a lifetime. I had used it to dial down stress for decades and had no idea about how to really switch off or what I really needed. I knew what I should do but not actually what I really needed.

But slowly, something shifted. It became easier after a few weeks, then at some point sobriety stopped feeling like deprivation and started to feel like relief. There was a steadiness, a growing confidence that comes from doing what you say you will do, there was a steady baseline and a sober group cheering me on.

I began to build new ways of living — rooted in self-compassion, my true values, nervous system support, yoga, and real, sustainable care. Over time, everything changed.

I’m now over ten years sober.

Life is still life — full, complex, sometimes messy.
Midlife has brought its own waves: grief, loss, change, children growing up, a body transitioning.

But sobriety is my foundation. It’s what allows me to meet life - the belly laughs and joy and the resilience when things get tough.

And that’s the work I now share with other women — not just helping you stop drinking, but helping you build a life that feels truly your own as you want it and as you are now. And the reason I’m saying this is to reassure you, I get it and it’s going to be OK.

You don’t have to hit rock bottom to choose something different and I promise you, you won’t look back.

Kate x