Feeling lost in a battle against alcohol while grappling with not genuinely understanding my Catholic faith, I faced a reckoning that many women endure in silence. My transformation from that point of solitude to becoming a Catholic sobriety coach is a journey I hold close to my heart, one that I'm eager to share with you.
As I peel back the layers of my story, from selling fine jewelry to navigating the digital marketing landscape, the thread of divine purpose weaves throughout. I extend this same sense of purpose to Catholic women striving to reconcile their drinking habits with their spirituality. Together, we'll confront the shadows of shame and pride, finding solace in the Church's open arms and reassurance in our inherent worth.
The journey to discover the level of sobriety that works for you consists of becoming comfortable with discomfort, but in this space, we are enveloped by a community of understanding and support.
I invite you to subscribe and walk this path of sacred sobriety with us, where continuous guidance and fellowship await at every turn.
I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!
Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!
Feeling lost in a battle against alcohol while grappling with not genuinely understanding my Catholic faith, I faced a reckoning that many women endure in silence. My transformation from that point of solitude to becoming a Catholic sobriety coach is a journey I hold close to my heart, one that I'm eager to share with you.
As I peel back the layers of my story, from selling fine jewelry to navigating the digital marketing landscape, the thread of divine purpose weaves throughout. I extend this same sense of purpose to Catholic women striving to reconcile their drinking habits with their spirituality. Together, we'll confront the shadows of shame and pride, finding solace in the Church's open arms and reassurance in our inherent worth.
The journey to discover the level of sobriety that works for you consists of becoming comfortable with discomfort, but in this space, we are enveloped by a community of understanding and support.
I invite you to subscribe and walk this path of sacred sobriety with us, where continuous guidance and fellowship await at every turn.
I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!
Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!
Welcome to the Catholic sobriety podcast mini-soad. These shorter episodes provide quick tips and information that you can refer back to when you need it most so you can achieve and maintain your desired level of sobriety. I am your sobriety coach and host of this podcast, kristi Walker. Let's get started. I am sometimes asked why I am the Catholic sobriety coach, why don't I help all women or why don't I help all people? Well, the fact of the matter is, when I got sober and I was in recovery many, many years ago, for years and years and years, I thought I was the only one Like. I looked around the rooms and events and you know mom's nights out, park dates and I just felt like I was the only one. This went on for decades. It wasn't until I stepped out and gave God my yes to working with women in recovery and those looking to reduce or eliminate alcohol for any reason, that he started putting the most amazing women into my life.
Speaker 1:
When God placed this on my heart to be a Catholic sobriety coach it was first. You know, my background is in digital marketing, so actually my background goes even further than that. It was in jewelry, fine jewelry, diamonds, retail, selling and buying, and then I wanted to stay home with my kids and eventually I was able to develop my own digital marketing company. I did a lot of work for jewelers and funeral homes, which I know sounds kind of like a odd combination, but it works for me. I have other clients in other areas, but those were my two main niches. And then I just kept feeling called to more, like God kept saying I need you to do something for me. I have a mission that I need you to do, and for years I would say it probably was four years of trying things and my digital marketing business kind of being stagnant, which was completely my fault, because I didn't really try to get clients. I wasn't trying to put myself out there in any way. Quite honestly, clients just came to me by the grace of God. That's how I got into the funeral home marketing business, but that's a whole another story.
Speaker 1:
But then I started working with a Catholic business coach and we were trying some things and it wasn't working. And it wasn't because it wouldn't work If I kept going. It was because that is not what God was calling me to. He was calling me to something else. So I told my coach I think God's calling me to coaching and she said well, okay, that's great, but who are you going to serve? I thought that was a decent question, like who was I going to serve? Was I going to serve Catholic moms? Was I going to serve like middle-aged Catholic moms?
Speaker 1:
I didn't really know, like I kept thinking about it and praying about it and then one day it hit me I'm a woman in recovery, so I should probably serve other Catholic women in recovery because it's lonely, because nobody talks about it. Well, I'm sure there are lots of people that talk about it, but I wasn't aware of any other Catholic women in recovery in my sphere of people until I started telling my story and then people would come out and say, oh yeah, I've been sober for seven years, or I have, you know, been in recovery for this, or I don't drink for health reasons, or you know, it all started to come together, but for so long I felt like just this different person. The other thing that happened and I've said this before if you've listened to my podcast and you've listened to my earlier episodes on my journey back to the Catholic Church in my sobriety journey, you'll hear me say that my sobriety journey and my faith journey are very, very intertwined and that is so true. And I know a lot of women who are looking to reduce or eliminate their alcohol consumption who are very, very faithful and very like. Their faith is the thing that they are clinging to in times of trouble and, quite honestly, that is what got me through and what kept me sober and keeps me sober like every day. It's God's grace that he's given me to do this, to resist my urges and to manage my mind and now to help other women.
Speaker 1:
But as Catholic women it's complex because we have to not just get sober, stop drinking, whatever it is like, there's also the faith component in it. I tell a story and I'll tell it some other time on the podcast of when I came back to the Catholic Church and it wasn't like the super easiest thing for me. It wasn't nobody's fault but mine, but sometimes we need a little guidance of someone who has been there because and I'm not saying that the Catholic Church is so hard to get back into it you just knocking down the doors. It's much, much easier than we think and we are generally the obstacle. Or our mindset or our shame or our pride is what is keeping us from coming back into full communion of the faith. Sometimes there are some other little things that need to be taken care of, but I will say that often it's our own obstacles that are keeping us from the church, and so we go and we seek faith outside of the Catholic Church or in other things, or we just feel bad about ourselves. So that's something that I want to help Catholic women with, because I've walked that path. I was a cradle Catholic. I fell away from the faith. I am what you would call a revert and I want to just let women know like you are so loved and the Catholic Church is the best place for you to be. It is the only place for you to be, and that is part of my work as a Catholic sobriety coach not just to walk them through protocols, preparation mindsets and getting to the root of why they are turning to alcohol to cope or to relax or reward themselves or whatever it is. There's also that faith component.
Speaker 1:
I do have clients that are women in recovery, looking to clean up the mental mess, because anyone who has been sober for any length of time, especially if you've had alcoholism or alcohol use disorder, you know that once you quit drinking, that is a big, important step, huge. But afterwards you still kind of have the aftermath. The first year is really difficult because you have to learn how to develop protocols and manage your mind around all these different situations where you used to always drink, and that's you know something that happens within that first year of recovery. But even after that there's still other things that come up, other roadblocks, other obstacles, and again it's just this mental mess that we have to work through. So I am so grateful to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:
The other thing which was unexpected for me was that God was asking me to work with women who were looking to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption for any reason. But working with that group of women was not my plan because, as I've said before, I never drink like a normal person, like from the first time I had alcohol. I misused alcohol, so I really didn't think that I could help that group of women. But God is so good and he has just given me the courage and the confidence and let me know that I really do understand, and how I understand is because I have been sober all these years. But I've been able to see this increase in drinking among moms, wives, women who have it all together, who seemingly have it all together but are just. They just have so much chaos and anxiety and shame and self-loathing at times because of the way that they are misusing alcohol. And these are the women who are not going to seek treatment from like outpatient treatment. These aren't the women who are going to step foot in a 12-step program.
Speaker 1:
So I actually heard. I am a student of Encounter School of Supernatural Ministry in Portland and I heard our director, kevin Monette, say something, and he was talking about Portland and why he opened the school and all of that. But something he said resonated so strongly with me that I haven't been able to shake it. And he was saying that the reason why he and his family have stayed in this very un-churched area and is really adverse to religion in general and God specifically, why they are staying there. And he said that it is to stand in the gap. Like he's here to stand in the gap. And I started thinking about that and I'm like that is exactly what God is calling me to do. And it was probably the Holy Spirit I know it was who was saying this Christy, this is who I need you to serve, because you are standing in the gap. You're standing in the gap between the women who are able to choose to consume alcohol or not, consume alcohol from a place of peace. And then there's the women who are like you. They're in recovery or seeking recovery. They may identify someone having alcoholism or alcohol use disorder. But then there's this group of women who are not being served, who are not being helped, who are not being encouraged, supported and given the resources they need. Women who are noticing that they are relying on alcohol more and more.
Speaker 1:
Maybe you never used to drink in front of your kids, but now you're realizing that you will have a glass or two, or sometimes even more, in the evenings. Maybe, before you go out with your friends, you have a quick glass of your favorite alcoholic beverage to relieve some of the societal anxiety that you might encounter when you go out. Or maybe you just don't want them to know how much you're drinking. Maybe you're noticing a tendency to want to hide how much you drink, even from your husband, and maybe he's never even expressed a concern about your consumption, but you're feeling just not right about the amount that you're consuming and you just don't want him to know. Maybe you are a woman who's tried to cut back on your drinking and you've tried a lot of things that haven't worked and you're struggling because you don't know who to talk to. You don't know where to turn and you certainly don't want anyone to think that you have a drinking problem. Yet you feel controlled by alcohol. You feel like you're undoing all of your other healthy habits when you drink. You're drinking so that you don't feel as anxious. Yet when you wake up in the morning, you feel even more anxious, and then you have difficulty shaking the feelings of guilt and shame from the night before.
Speaker 1:
But as a Catholic woman, you also have this strong desire to throw yourself into spending time with your family and you want to understand more about your identity as a beloved daughter of God. You just want to curl up at the feet of Jesus, but you're having trouble approaching him because you just maybe feel unworthy. Maybe you don't want to appear weak or incapable. You might be saying things like I have no willpower. I'm never going to figure things out. Why can't I drink normally? I'd hate for my kids to have to see me like this. There's so much more to life. I know that God has a purpose for me. Why do, I feel so stuck. Maybe you're starting to realize that you need help to figure it out and you're open to new possibilities, and maybe just maybe, you're ready to face the discomfort of whatever is going to happen when you really take a look at the way that you drink.
Speaker 1:
As a Catholic sobriety coach, my job is to help my clients gain clarity around their drinking habits, decide to drink or not, drink from a place of peace, learn how to hear the Lord's voice more clearly. I want to help you embrace not just who you are, but who's you are. I help my clients develop protocols that help them navigate social situations and remove those obstacles that are keeping them stuck, and we do it as she's growing in faith and trust. My job is to provide tools and resources that support my clients on their journey to discover and maintain the level of sobriety that is right for them in growing faith. And all of this isn't just for my clients, ladies, it's for you too. It's for you, the woman right there, who is listening to my voice right now. That is why I do what I do. That is why I have this podcast, why I invite guests on, because I want you to have the tools and resources you need. And most of all, most importantly, I want you to know that you are not alone, and it is okay if you are struggling, and it is okay to admit that you are. Don't forget. You can always sign up for my free five day sacred sobriety kickstart. You can find the link in my show notes.
Speaker 1:
I also have my sacred sobriety lab, which is a unique self guided journey towards freedom and spiritual growth for Catholic women who are seeking to reduce or eliminate their alcohol consumption. It reveals a transformative approach that will change your relationship with alcohol. In this lab, you will learn that it isn't about willpower, but I teach you how to tap into divine determination and harness the power of the Holy Spirit. This lab is not just a program. It's a lifestyle focusing on nurturing both your physical and spiritual well being, and the link for that is also in my show notes. So that wraps up today's episode of the Catholic sobriety mini-sode. Thank you so much for joining me and please be sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss a thing. And remember I am here for you, I am praying for you. You are not alone.