How to Know When to Let Go (Part 1)

The Beginning of the End...

Dominic and I at The Telstra Business Awards, 2017.

Before my love and I created the Sexy Sobriety program back in 2014; and well before I ever got sober, I loved to write. Writing was my creative outlet; a way of connecting with myself and making sense of this wild and wondrous thing called life.

In 2011, I started my very first blog (on Tumblr!), wide-eyed at the technology and possibilities, while I was still firmly ensconced in the corporate world. That fun little, nonsense blog (let’s be real 😄) led me to create a bigger blog and website on Wordpress, which in turn, led to a bigger audience.

In 2013, this bigger online community inspired Dom and I to resign from our corporate careers (on the very same day!) and take a chance on pursuing our dreams. In the absence of even one single client (whaaat!), somehow we believed that my very recent Health Coaching qualifications, combined with Dom’s background in tech, would enable us to share our passions and help the world.

And, by some miracle, it did.

While this wild leap of faith scared the crap out of me and initially led to me drinking more often than ever, this path eventually led to me embracing sobriety, creating a digital sobriety program, and publishing my first book, A Happier Hour, in 2016.

A book, that by some lightning-in-a-bottle magic, went on to reach the hearts and minds of more than 100,000 readers around the world.

Even now, the thought still staggers me.

My first ever book signing, 2016.

From that moment on, I believed this was it. This was my life purpose. I fully imagined myself still writing at 80 years of age, still speaking on stages, still full of wonder that my passion was my full-time job.

Sharing from the stage, 2016.

Over the years that followed, this reality became deeply enmeshed in my identity. We welcomed more clients and readers, set up sophisticated tech programs to handle the complexity, enlisted bookkeeping, accounting, and legal teams, and grew a bigger business than we’d ever dared to imagine.

I loved being a CEO. I loved working for myself. I loved that I got to do work I truly believed in every single day; work that made a difference in people’s lives.

So in 2020, when it all started to crumble around me, I felt wounded, confused, scared, and oh-so salty at the Universe for not supporting me and my well-laid plans.

It started with Long-COVID.

I’ve written about this post-virus nightmare before, and quite frankly, I try to think about it as little as possible, but suffice to say, my health deteriorated to a point that I wasn’t able to work full-time for 3+ years.

In the midst of the shock of finding myself with a chronic illness, social media was having a moment. Facebook and Instagram algorithms and platform changes began limiting organic reach. Ads that had previously helped us to reach and support more women no longer worked.

At the same time, the market was becoming flooded with sobriety products. My dream that sobriety would someday become mainstream was finally coming true! I was deeply thrilled, but at the same time, confused about where that left me. If my clients (and the world) no longer needed me in the sobriety realm, what the heck would I do with myself?

On top of all of that (wait, there’s more?!), deep down, I had a sneaking suspicion that I’d already said almost everything I had to say about sobriety. By this point, I’d published 3 books on the topic, with another one underway. I’d written thousands of blog and social media posts, and recorded dozens of podcast episodes. Did I have anything new left in me?

In one final act of denial, I dove into playing with AI tools to help jolt my creativity back to life. It was no use. After years of constant pressure to feed the content machine, I was firmly in Burnout Land.

By early 2023, I fell well and truly into a pit of despair. Too burnt-out to come up with a plan to get us out of this ditch, and terrified about what that might mean.

It felt eerily similar to the final days of my drinking.

I knew I couldn’t go on like this, and yet I desperately wanted to cling to the very thing I believed made life worth living.

I’d been a creative entrepreneur for an entire decade by this point. If I was no longer this person, who would I be? What would I do? What would people think?

Gulp.

Sound familiar?

Just as the thought of sobriety had once made me want to barf, so too, did the thought of returning to the corporate world, or doing anything else with my life.

I really, really wanted to continue on this path. Just as with drinking, it was a path that was making me increasingly unhappy, and yet I truly believed I loved it. I couldn’t see a way forward, and I couldn’t see a way out.

I knew this whole situation wasn’t a Shakespearean-level tragedy, by any means. I’ve been through worse in this lifetime (and maybe you have, too). But it was a pivotal moment of reckoning. A moment where it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, and you go to bed every night with your head spinning, wishing with all your might that some random thing would swoop in and make it all okay again.

I cried almost every day for weeks. I sobbed in the safety of quiet chats with close friends. My heart ached at the thought of losing everything we’d worked so hard for. I even bargained with the Universe. Please make it all be okay, and I’ll come up with a ton of fresh new ideas, I promise! I’ll work even harder! I’ll make even more sacrifices! Just help us, for crying out loud!

It was no use. It was too late. The writing was already on the wall.