Keep No Secrets, Carry No Shame

[Jaunty Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome, everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Use Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: Alcohol is everywhere, on every television show, every movie, and in every personal social event that I've attended in the last, I don't know, lifetime?

Mike: We've discussed here several times about the difficulties recovering folks and non drinkers have finding accepting social atmospheres that doesn't include alcohol. Well, our guest today decided to do something about that. Kristi Tanner is a recovering single mother of four, a certified recovery coach, and the founder and driving force behind Sober Social, a non alcoholic bottle shop in Middleton, Wisconsin.

Mike: Throughout her recovery, Kristi recognized the need for inclusive spaces where individuals could feel empowered to choose sobriety without feeling excluded from social activities. Welcome, Kristi.

Kristi: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be here.

Mike: Well, it's, it's fun. We were talking before we started.

Mike: First of all, let me ask you, when I say bottle shop, layman's terms, a non liquor liquor store?

Kristi: Correct. Absolutely.

Mike: Okay. All right.

Kristi: Yep, so people walking by my store, if you weren't looking at the signage, which obviously it says Sober Social if you weren't looking at the signage and you just walked into my store, it looks like a really adorable bottle shop, right?

Kristi: Like a liquor store, it looks like alcohol, right? There's bottles of wine, there's spirit replacements, there's beer, there's mocktails, there's accoutrements to make cute things. And every single thing in there is non alcoholic and safe for pregnant people and safe for people on medicine and safe for your kids to have a sip.

Kristi: It's just a brand new way to elevate what you're drinking and feel a part of whatever you're doing.

Mike: Well, and we're both in the fine state of Wisconsin, right? And did I read this right? You were the first non alcoholic bottle shop?

Kristi: The first in the state. The only brick and mortar completely non alcoholic bottle shop.

Mike: I'm laughing because I have to imagine that occasionally you get the customer wandering in. Yeah. All right. Go ahead.

Mike: So how long does it take them before they realize that there's no alcohol?

Kristi: Not too long because they'll be like, wait, wait, what is it? Wait, non alcoholic, non alcoholic tequila. (laugh)

Kristi: That is right. What can I tell you about it? Do you like margaritas? Cause I have so many.

Mike: That's great. Well, you know, I it always helps to hear your story because you didn't start this out of the blue, right? And you readily share your story on your Instagram, which we'll put a link to but it's @mocktailmommy. What got you into recovery Kristi?

Kristi: Yeah, I think I probably have always been an alcoholic. I don't think I ever drank normally. I didn't drink in high school. I went to college and I was like, Woohoo! No parents! And it was socially acceptable to drink a lot. When I graduated, a lot of my friends probably curtailed their drinking, right?

Kristi: They didn't drink seven nights a week anymore, because they were working, and they were having kids, and they were getting married, and they have more responsibilities. And instead of that happening for me, I used all those new responsibilities as justifications for why I deserved some way to relax at night.

Kristi: And I think for a while I was sort of socially, you know, normal looking. I would go out, go to happy hour, whatever. But what people didn't know is once I went to happy hour, I would come home and continue drinking. Once I started, I really didn't ever have an off switch. And when I stopped working I stopped working when I had my second son.

Kristi: So I had two kids under 18 months old. Then I had a third son, 17 months later, and he was born with a cleft lip and palate. And his first year, we had multiple surgeries, lots of hospital stays. It was a really, really difficult year with three boys under three and a half. My husband at the time was traveling a lot, and I felt really alone.

Kristi: I didn't really know who my support system was. My friends were still working. Many of them were not yet moms and I didn't really find a good outlet or support system. Then I had one more child and so I had four kids under five and a half. And yes, it was bananas!

Kristi: No twins. Like there was just lots of little humans with lots of different needs. And it was so much fun, but I felt exhausted all the time. I felt like I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. It looked easier for other people. Why are their kids in matching clothes? How are they clean? Do they eat vegetables?

Kristi: Like, there's so much stuff going on. And during all of this, my marriage took, you know, we were not in a good place. He was really focused on business. I was really focused on home and we sort of did our own things. And as I got sort of angrier with my husband I drank more and more. So my last pregnancy was the first time during pregnancy where I was like, I, I want to be drinking.

Mike: So you would, you had stopped drinking during your pregnancies previous to that?

Kristi: Yes.

Mike: And then how soon after you gave birth did you go, I'm going right back to it?

Kristi: In the hospital.

Mike: Really?

Kristi: I mean, I brought champagne with me, multiple bottles, to the hospital, because I could not wait to get this baby out, meet her, hold her, and get back to my wine.

Mike: Wow. Wow.

Kristi: I really felt like it's not fair. I'm being left out. Nobody's including me. Everyone's doing happy hour and wine tastings and all this stuff. It's no fun. Like if you can't drink, you can't have fun. That is what I thought. And I'm like, I'm a fun person. I want to be having fun too. But after my daughter was born, I was extremely depressed.

Kristi: I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. We had just moved from Chicago to Wisconsin. I didn't really know anyone. And my drinking just skyrocketed. And I sort of I don't know what happened, but I stopped caring that people were worried. I stopped caring that people questioned if I was okay.

Kristi: And I was like, I don't know, like you come take care of four kids under five and a half and tell me how easy it is. You know, I felt like I had this like platform where it was like, I deserve, I deserve to be blacked out at the end of the day because I'm so tired. And that's how I knew how to get myself to sleep.

Mike: You look fit now and you're slight. How much were you consuming?

Kristi: Oh, oh my gosh. It's hard to say, you know, I wasn't always like a daily drinker. I mean, most nights I was having wine, but at the end. The time I would allow myself to start drinking was earlier and earlier.

Kristi: And at the end it was like, well, if I'm having a bad morning, a mimosa might help. And so I would start in the morning and sort of drink champagne and wine all day long, just all day, three bottles, four bottles. And I weigh 110 pounds at my heaviest, like the amount of alcohol that I was drinking, I wasn't even aware of it.

Kristi: Right. It was like, I had these at that point when I, you know, at the end of my addiction, I had bottles hidden, right. I had bottles hidden in my daughter's nursery so that when I was rocking her to bed, I had something to do that. I had bottles in the laundry room so that when I was, you know, I had bottles hidden behind the TV.

Kristi: I had them in the basement. Like, it was just, it was crazy. And I thought about it all day long and I just kept thinking, when is the alcohol going to take effect so that I don't feel this way, so I don't feel this way.

Mike: What finally precipitated you saying enough?

Kristi: Yeah, it was bad. I'm not one of those people that had a high bottom.

Kristi: I got my first DUI on July 2nd. And I don't really remember getting it. I was blacked out. I had a really tough conversation with my husband and we agreed we were going to be separating. I mean, he had already served me papers, but that conversation was like, this is it. And that's really not what I wanted because I was terrified.

Kristi: I couldn't raise these kids by myself as an addict, and I knew that and so I got this first DUI, and I came home and I was like, I'm never drinking again, it's so embarrassing, the whole neighborhood knows, this is so awful. And two days later, I got my second DUI.

Mike: Wow.

Kristi: And I blew a .24.

Mike: Oh my!

Kristi: Outside of Gary, Indiana. I decided I was just going to run away. It was just, you know, my husband was mad at me because I was an alcoholic. And he was like, I don't think we can leave the kids with you right now. And we're going to go to the lake for the 4th of July. And I was like, fine. I'll go find something to do too.

Kristi: And I was listening to the Bubble Hour podcast, which was by Jean McFadden. And it was one of the ones that I listened to, these stories of addiction and recovery. And I had a bottle of wine in the back of my car. I told myself I was just bringing it for my friend that I was staying with. I'm just, this is for her.

Kristi: I don't know what happened. I don't remember reaching back and grabbing it, but at some point during driving, running away from my life where I've now gotten a DUI and my kids are taken away from me from my husband, I decided drinking on the highway was probably the thing to do.

Mike: Well, listen to a podcast about recovery.

Kristi: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes! I mean, Mike, that is the craziest thing. Cause like I wanted so badly not to be this person.

Mike: Yeah, sure.

Kristi: I did not want to be making these choices. I hated that I thought about alcohol all day long, but I didn't know what to do about it. So I got the second DUI outside of Gary, Indiana, and I got put in jail in a high security prison on the fifth floor.

Kristi: And I was there for, I don't know, 28 hours. And that changed me.

Kristi: I saw, I saw people suffering so much in jail, and all I thought is, oh my god, I'm never gonna see my kids again, ever. And that's not what I want. I love them so much. All I want to do is be able to be a good mom. And I didn't know how to stop drinking. I had tried an IOP program, right? Like, you go at night three days a week or four days a week for three hours.

Kristi: I had tried therapy. I had tried AA. I had tried everything. And when I got out of jail, my parents picked me up, which was when I was 34. And my parents are picking me up from jail in Gary, Indiana, and they had to drive six hours to come get me. It was the most mortifying experience of my whole life.

Kristi: I've never seen this look in my parents eyes like, Oh no, like, what have you done? And so I, on that drive home, called rehab and multiple rehabs. And I had gone to a rehab for 30 days, two years prior, because my husband thought I had a drinking problem. And when I went, I was like, that's so cute. That's so cute that you think I have a drinking problem.

Kristi: That's fine. I would love to go to California. I'll get a tan, like take some classes, go horseback riding. Like, I did not take this seriously at all the first time I went because I hadn't had the consequences that I personally needed to stop. They weren't big enough for me. This, this scared the, this scared the shit out of me.

Kristi: I, I was terrified after this experience. What I had done, you know, how I ended up there. How did I end up in jail? Like, how did that happen? Like, what? So, I went to rehab. I found a rehab that could take me nine days later. And one of the problems that a lot of people have. Is rehabs, you can't get in right away, all the time.

Kristi: There are wait lists for months. And I didn't have months. I did not have months. I was hanging on by a thread. I was suicidal. I was depressed. I, I was not safe. And I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I had night sweats. I was having post acute withdrawal symptoms. It was just, it was really awful.

Kristi: And so I go to this rehab. We hired a full time nanny for my four kids and I went to rehab for two months.

Mike: Wow.

Kristi: My kids were six, four, two, and seven months old. And I left them for two months. And one of the things that I think holds a lot of people back is saying like, Oh my God, I'm never going to get that time back.

Kristi: And you won't. You won't get that time back. But it has given me a future.

Mike: Yup. Yup.

Kristi: I have a beautiful life with them now. And I had to do the work. So I go to rehab. The first month in rehab, I sort of was unwilling to look at changing my whole life. I thought perhaps if I fixed my marriage, that would fix my alcohol problem.

Kristi: And so my first month of rehab, I think that was, that was my focus. And one of my therapists had me do this exercise and he said, I want you to write a letter to your daughter, who's seven months old. And I want you to write a letter and say, Dear Sloan, this is the future partner I dream for you. This is how they treat you.

Kristi: This is the kind of support they give you. This is the things you do together. This is how they make you feel. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Okay. Love it. I wrote this beautiful letter. I read it to him and he's like, Kristi, that is, That is so beautiful. I'm like, I know he's like, perfect. Now I need you to change the name and it doesn't say dear, dear Sloan.

Kristi: It says dear Kristi. And I need you to read that letter to me and tell me what things that you dream of for your daughter that you personally have in your relationship. And I didn't have any of them.

Kristi: And that was a huge, very uncomfortable. I knew it deep down for probably two years that things were not good between my husband and I, but I didn't want to accept it. We had four kids, we had this big, beautiful home, like it looks so good on the Christmas cards, you know? But he had me do this assignment, and after that assignment, I just, everything changed.

Kristi: I got so honest about how I felt in my home. How it felt being a married mom but feeling single. And I realized that I would not be able to go back to the life that I had and have it again. I wouldn't be able to be recovered in the place I had gotten so incredibly sick. And when I got out of rehab, two months later, I moved home and I was there for one week and I moved out into an apartment.

Kristi: And I said, I can't be here.

Mike: How long have you been recovering now?

Kristi: Just over five years.

Mike: Congratulations.

Kristi: Thank you.

Mike: You know, there was a time where my mom was recovering and she would apologize and I'm sure you have thought about that with your kids. And finally I had to tell her, mom, stop it.

Mike: I've now known you longer sober than I ever did while drinking. And she just looked at me and she went, I didn't even think about that. You know, we carry that for a while, don't we?

Kristi: Absolutely, you know, my oldest was like, six, little over six, and I was at this private rehab, and it looks like a mansion, and it's this big house, and so, when people would ask my kids, where's your mom?

Kristi: They'd be like, oh, she's living at the White House.

Mike: (laugh)

Kristi: People were super confused about what was going on. (laugh)

Mike: Hey, whatever works, right?

Kristi: So, you know, and what I told my kids is I didn't say I'm going to rehab because I'm a bad person or I'm an alcoholic or anything. I said, I'm going to go and I'm going to learn how to be a healthy mom because that's what you deserve.

Mike: You know, you were saying about being honest before and we were talking before we started this. You're, you said you were in chapter six of Celeste Yvonne's book, right? Which I didn't know prior to this. But a lot of women, Celeste included, and men have told me that they kept their sobriety secret for a while because it was embarrassing because of how prevalent alcohol was.

Mike: Was that, did you come out and say nope, or what?

Kristi: I didn't. I mean, I blew my whole life up. I live in this fancy neighborhood where the cops don't come here, people don't go to jail, and this is not a normal occurrence. I blew my life up in a really big public way and then disappeared, right? So it wasn't like I had the option to be like, Oh, I don't know. I'm just like making some changes. That wasn't an option for me. And the truth about me is I have to be honest all the time. I don't know how to tell sort of the truth. I can't do it anymore because when I did that I was drinking.

Mike: Yep. It's great.

Kristi: It's to a fault, right? There are times when it's like, oh, perhaps I didn't need to tell them everything.

Kristi: The checkout lady at the Target line like, Guess what? I'm not buying 12 bottles of wine. Isn't that great? I was like, what? No, I came out and at 89 days sober. So I had been out of rehab for 20, 29 days. I, my best friend in Chicago was getting married and I was in her wedding. And I went down the night before my husband, who, we were very estranged, but he came to this wedding with me, but he couldn't come until the next day.

Kristi: And I was really nervous about being at a hotel. When I walk into the hotel, they give you two drink tickets because you're part of the wedding party. And I was really nervous about how I was going to stay sober since there were no walls protecting me. I had my ID on me, and who would know? And so I started an Instagram account called Mocktail Mommy, and I said, Hello world, my name is Kristi and I am an alcoholic.

Kristi: And if you see me drinking, you need to call 9 1 1. It's not okay. Like I can't drink alcohol ever again. And people are like, Huh? That's not cute. That's not a highlight reel on Instagram. There's nothing like cute about that. No, it wasn't cute. It was honest. It was the truth. But what the truth did is touch a lot of people because a lot of people can't or won't or don't want to talk about being sober.

Kristi: They don't want to talk about the hardest parts of their lives. They don't want to share the most shameful parts of themselves. They feel defined by these things that they've chosen to do or ended up doing, the situations they were in. The only way that I personally know how to release that shame is to share my story.

Kristi: And what I found is that I am not alone.

Mike: No!

Kristi: I am not the only young mom who felt like alcohol was going to be my solution. In fact, there were hundreds and thousands of women in my exact same situation, perhaps even in my neighborhood, going through the same thing behind closed doors. And so my Instagram account sort of started growing and I used, you know, I have, we had a terrible, messy divorce.

Kristi: It was awful. It's still awful. We don't co parent well, you know, some people don't. Um, And we have a really difficult relationship and it was messy. It was, I didn't get a good divorce settlement. I didn't win any of my court cases, but I told everyone what was going on. And when I lost, I'm like, and then I lost.

Kristi: And then I didn't get this, and I didn't get that thing, but you know what? I stayed sober. I stayed sober. And, so, I started this Instagram account. I was going to AA meetings, maybe twice a day, maybe three times a day. We still had a full time nanny watching my kids, and it was sort of like, where's my role in the family?

Kristi: Right, so like you have dad who's like working all the time, you had mom who then disappeared for a little bit to get better, and then you have a full time nanny who's actually in charge of the kids. No one trusted me to be alone with my children, and I didn't blame them. I didn't trust myself to be alone with my children at the beginning.

Kristi: I was scared. What if something happens and it makes me feel like the only way to get out is to go have a drink? I was scared. But I surrounded myself with people in recovery. And anytime I didn't know what to do with my hands, my feet, or my head, I found a meeting.

Kristi: Share or don't share, listen, take a nap. I don't care what you do in the meeting, but you won't be drinking. And it's going to give you an hour. It'll give you one hour to recalibrate your brain and remember why you're sober and why it's important. I didn't want to be sober. Mike, I thought sobriety was going to suck.

Kristi: I thought it would be stupid. I thought I was going to have no friends. I thought no one would ever talk to me. I mean, I was like, I don't have sober friends, you know, I don't even know sober people. Do people not drink? Is this a thing? And you know, what happened was I sort of, I lost a lot of friends from my old life, everything changed and I didn't like it, but it needed to happen.

Kristi: I didn't need to be at bars and happy hours. I could not be there at three months sober. That was not a place for me to go. I drove a different way home. I left my ID in my car when I would go shopping for groceries for nine months, because I didn't want to accidentally buy wine. It was so automatic in my brain of just like, what I get at the store, that one time I came up to the checkout line with a bottle of champagne.

Kristi: And I just like, didn't even, I just, I was six months sober, and I'm like, putting all my stuff up, and I'm like, oh my god. Oh my god! Oh my god! I don't even know how that got in my cart. I don't have my ID. Can't buy it. I had so many safeguards for myself because I had to learn to trust my sober self, which I hadn't been sober in such a long time.

Kristi: And it was really difficult. So I got this apartment. My kids did something called nesting, so they stayed in the home. And I would come back for my two days with them. My husband would be somewhere else. Then when he had his time with the kids in the home, I would be at my apartment. So we decided to separate.

Kristi: And so I said, I, I'll get a different house. And I closed on my home that I currently live in now, on March 16th of 2020, the day before the pandemic, shut the world down.

Mike: And now you're inside.

Kristi: And now I'm inside. It was such a wild ride to be, you know, I ended up going to Florida for five weeks with my children at the beginning of the pandemic where my parents live.

Kristi: My kids could like be outside and we could, I had a little bit of support. I could go to meetings. They still had meetings down there because they were outside. The rest of AA meetings shut down.

Mike: Uh huh.

Kristi: This had been how I was staying sober. What was I going to do? I was really worried. So I come back and move into this house with four kids under seven by myself.

Kristi: And the delivery people can't bring my couch inside. And none of my friends can come over because there's a pandemic. I had this vision of like, if I get divorced, I'll just like, I thought I'll either get sober and stay married, or get divorced and drink how I really want. Never in my wildest dreams. Did I think I would get divorced and stay sober?

Kristi: Ever. Never.

Mike: I'm dying to ask you this question, so let me just get to it. You at some point then open up this non alcoholic bottle shop, but you just, you've spent, how do you get over the taste and not having a craving for alcoholic beverages?

Kristi: Sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, when I first was in recovery, I wanted to be at the parties.

Kristi: I didn't want to be left out. And so I sort of forced myself to go, right? I would force myself to go to these places. And I didn't like it because then people would be like, well, why aren't you drinking?

Kristi: Mike, that's not the conversation that I want to open with. That's not my (chuckle) best side. And so I, I ended up sort of becoming a hermit (laugh) and for probably three years I didn't do any sort of non alcoholic anything.

Kristi: That would have been really triggering for me.

Mike: Ya, right.

Kristi: There are still people today that are not going to be interested in something that tastes like beer if beer was their thing. There are going to be people who never want something that tastes like an old fashioned because that will be really triggering for them.

Kristi: I found at about three years sober that I was looking for a way to be a part of with my friends and when we get together and they all have their cute glasses of whatever they order and I have a water glass,

Kristi: I felt othered. I didn't like it. And so it's like, is there something I can have that's not lemonade.

Kristi: Is there a way to have a sophisticated, interesting, cute, pretty drink with accoutrements and all the things? That was as important to me, the look and feel and glass and color and experience, that was as important to me as what was in the glass. I wanted that whole experience. And so I started looking around for these non alcoholic products, and mostly what I found were things that didn't taste good.

Kristi: I'm like, of course you wouldn't drink non alcoholic wine. It tastes terrible, you know? And five years ago, they didn't have good non alcoholic wine. But I found over time as this industry is changing and the more we know about alcohol there are so many people getting sober for so many reasons, so many reasons. The health reasons, the medicine, you're a athlete, you're a parent.

Kristi: You don't like being parenting hungover. It's it's hard and so these products started becoming available, right? Like these mocktails and these, like, you could have a lavender margarita without alcohol. I'm like, wait, I love lavender margaritas. That sounds amazing! Right. And can I really have that? Without the alcohol and have it feel like I'm a part of.

Kristi: And the truth is three years into sobriety, it did that for me. It wasn't a trigger. I was a huge champagne drinker. I drank champagne all day every day. The first rehab I went to, they were like, what are you here for? And it was like alcohol and it was like, oh, what's your thing? And I was like, champagne.

Kristi: And they were like, people don't come to rehab for champagne. And I was like, this girl does.

Mike: Mm hmm.

Kristi: But I was like, I thought champagne was fun. It's celebratory. It's it's got a pop up bottle. It's so pretty. I, I want fun. I want to celebrate. I like bubbly. I like happy. I want to do that, but I can't have alcohol.

Kristi: So what can I have instead? And these products started becoming available, but the only place that you could find them was in a gigantic liquor store.

Mike: Yeah, that's true, isn't it?

Kristi: All the non alcoholic beverages were first available and only available at places like Total Wine, a 5,000 square foot liquor store with free samples of whiskey and wine.

Kristi: They have a bar in the back and blah, blah, blah. And I'd be like, Hi, do you have any non alcoholic? And they're like, Oh, I don't know. Let me check the back. Right. And it'd be like, four bottles of, you know, terrible wine that's clearly been there for like 20 years. And, you know, I'm like, gosh, this is not the experience that I want. I don't like being in this parking lot because I used to live here. I don't want people to look at me and wondering if I'm drinking because I'm here. I don't want to have to think about saying no to 99 percent of the store to find the one thing that I can have. There has to be a better solution.

Kristi: And so you could find kind of options online, but then that was like, okay, great. You can order a case and hope that you like it for $300. But you couldn't order a bottle and you didn't have anyone helping you and nobody could tell you what it tasted like and I was like this, this has got to be, there's got to be something more.

Kristi: I knew I wanted to do work in the recovery space and so I became a certified recovery coach and so much of that was just intuitive because of how long and hard and how many programs I tried while getting sober, right? Like I hit every wrong on the way down. I've tried every single kind of program that is out there.

Kristi: The online programs, the in person programs, the inpatient, the outpatient, the detoxes. I've done them all. I've been in the places. I've been to jails. And institutions, and the only other place was death, right?

Kristi: And I knew that there had to be a way for sober people to feel good about their sobriety.

Kristi: Because I did start feeling good. I started feeling healthy. I started eating right, drinking water. I didn't drink water when I was an addict. I drank champagne. I drank champagne and coffee. That was it. No water. And I ended up taking a class at the beginning of this year called Sands Bar Academy.

Kristi: Chris Marshall was the first guy in all of the United States to open an all sober bar in 2017 in Austin, Texas. This is like before sobriety was even a thing people talked about. And he has this non alcoholic bar, and so he offered this class. I saw it on New Year's Eve, and I was like cool, like, I want to know more about this, because like, these are the drinks that I've been looking for, because I still want to socialize.

Kristi: I still want to have parties. I still want to have girls nights. I still want to do social events. That are fun and cute and all the things, cause that's who I am. And I wanted a way to do that. So I'm like, I'll just get to know a little bit about these brands and these beverages and just learn a little bit.

Kristi: Three weeks into the class. I was like, actually, what I'm going to do is open it. I'm going to open a bottle shop! This is a great idea! There's not one in Wisconsin. Why? I'm not the only sober person. Wisconsin is the number one drinking state per capita in the United States. And anywhere where there is a huge drinking culture, there's also a huge recovery population.

Kristi: Always. That is always true. But the problem is, there are so many programs where you go anonymously. How do we connect with people in recovery, if we're not supposed to talk about where we see them and who they are? I'm the most non anonymous person in the world. I, there's nothing anonymous about me. My, my license plate says Mocktail Mommy.

Kristi: If you want to know where I am, you can, you can watch my car. I don't keep secrets. I developed this motto probably like a year into sobriety, and it is keep no secrets, carry no shame. And it's, it's kept me sober. I have it up in a neon sign in my store, I have it tattooed on my ribcage, I have it on the front of journals.

Kristi: It's my, it's my reminder to myself that when we don't keep secrets, we don't have to carry the shame of our past. When we share our story, that stigma of like who you are and what you did is alleviated a little bit every time you talk about it. I could not talk about my DUIs at three months sober. I was a mess.

Kristi: I couldn't be as open as I am now, but now I've told my story so many times and I'm never met with, oh my god, you're such a terrible person. That's not what I met with and that's what I thought I would be met with. I thought I would be met with judgment. I thought I would be met with fear. I was met with acceptance, understanding, congratulations. You're working so hard. Keep going.

Kristi: I wanted to bring those messages from these recovery programs and these AA and Sober Mom Squad with Celeste Yvonne and The Luckiest Club with Laura McCowan and all of these recovery programs and give it a place, a physical place in the public space that anyone can go to.

Kristi: And you don't have to identify, you don't have to say I'm an alcoholic to walk into my store, you don't have to be anybody. Everybody's welcome because everything is safe for everyone. And that feels really, really good. And I realized that people in sobriety are looking for connection. The opposite of addiction is connection, and I needed to bring that to the public.

Kristi: I needed to bring this sort of, you can be proud of yourself, and you can find people that have done it too, and you can inspire somebody else, and and you can still be a part of. And it gets to be really cute, right? Like my store has hot pink tiger wallpaper and chandeliers and it's because that's who I am and I want to be in a beautiful space and I think sober people deserve a beautiful space.

Kristi: I do.

Mike: That's perfect. That's just, that's just a stop there. That's a perfect place to end that. And, and for those of you who are listening we, you know, we put the Kristi's socials as well as the website for Sober Social on the podcast, and I invite you to go to it. I was gonna end with this, but you just did. It exudes celebration and joy as you do.

Mike: And there's events there and all sorts of other stuff. Kristi, this is, your story is remarkable. Your energy is incredible. Thanks for sharing it today.

Kristi: Oh my gosh. I just, you know, I'm so grateful. I didn't know I would get to do this kind of work and it's so fulfilling.

Mike: Yeah, it is.

Kristi: I love it. So this has been, I appreciate it.

Kristi: I love what you're doing. And just thank you so much for having me.

Mike: Oh, you're welcome.

Mike: For those of you who are listening, you know how this goes. There are links to Kristi's stuff, and we invite you any time you're able to to listen in. Until then, please stay safe and celebrate.