Stop Drinking and Start Living- The Feminine Way
What kind of Woman do you want to be? The answer holds the key to releasing alcohol and reclaiming what you’ve lost on the road to empowerment.
Stop Drinking and Start Living – The Feminine Way helps women effortlessly release alcohol by reconnecting with their feminine energy and stepping fully into leadership.
Hosted by Mary Wagstaff, holistic alcohol coach and embodiment facilitator, this show goes beyond sobriety to explore how feminine wisdom and embodied practices make you a more intuitive, empowered, and magnetic leader—in your work, family, and life.
Mary knows firsthand what it takes to outgrow alcohol and reclaim the energy, clarity, and confidence to lead with ease. Because you’re not quitting drinking—you’ve simply outgrown it.
Each week, you’ll uncover what’s keeping you disconnected and stuck in cycles of numbing—and learn to replace it with pleasure, presence, and purpose.
The feminine way is an invitation to lead differently. Tune in every Wednesday and step into the woman you were meant to be.
Want to drink less without deprivation? Learn the six cheat phrases to calm your urges and end the inner battle. Grab your free guide here: https://marywagstaffcoach.com/urgetracking
Background Music Savannah Sultana Graciously Provided by The Exceptional Talent of Scott Nice : https://www.scottnice.com
Stop Drinking and Start Living- The Feminine Way
Your Basic Needs Have Changed-Releasing the Need to Belong
Ever wonder why quitting alcohol feels like a full-on identity shift? It’s because sobriety isn’t just about abstaining—it’s about reclaiming the parts of you that got buried under performance, people-pleasing, and perfectionism.
In this episode, we explore why alcohol is often just a placeholder for authenticity, and how perimenopause marks a powerful rite of passage—not a crisis, but a coronation.
You’ll walk away with:
- A deeper understanding of why your nervous system craves authenticity over belonging
- How midlife and sobriety unlock your next level of leadership, pleasure, and personal power
- The sneaky ways achievement can become the “new numbing”
- What it actually means to access your feminine essence—without a drink in your hand
This is your sacred invitation to come home to yourself.
✨ Your next evolution of awakened empowerment starts now.
DISCLAIMER: This podcast and its contents are not a substitute for rehabilitation, medical treatment or advice. It is for educational and inspirational purposes. I am not a therapist or doctor. The views here are expressed a personal opinion and based on first hand experience. Please consult a doctor if your mental or physical health is at risk.
Welcome to Stop Drinking and Start Living the Feminine Way. I'm your hostess, mary Wagstaff. Holistic Alcohol Coach and Feminine Embodiment Guide, here to help you effortlessly release alcohol by reclaiming your feminine essence. Sobriety isn't just about quitting drinking. It's about removing the distortions that keep you disconnected, overwhelmed and stuck in cycles of numbing. Each week, I'll share powerful tools, new perspectives that transform, and deeply relatable stories to help you step into the power, pleasure and purpose that it is to be a woman. This is your next evolution of awakened empowerment. Welcome to the Feminine Way. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners. This is Mary Wagstaff. If you're here, welcome, you're in good company.
Speaker 1:The reason I do this show is a couple things. I am a holistic life coach for women. I specialize in alcohol and sobriety and really what I think I specialize in most is normalizing being human. I help women at a next phase in their life, usually a bigger transition moment. Typically women in middle age and beyond and in a perimenopause or postmenopausal moment, take a sacred pause, and that's why my method, formerly known as the five shifts, the sacred pause method, is an opportunity to come back to yourself and if you're here because of alcohol, alcohol is this bell that's ringing that you can't not hear anymore. Right? It is the sign that there's a way that you've been living a story that you've been living to, a way that you've been functioning as a woman in life that's just not working anymore. And what I know to be true is that sometimes we don't really even know what we want, but we know we want something different. Right that the way that we once did things wasn't wrong or bad, but it's just not in alignment with who we are anymore. And when I come and sit here, I really truly feel like I'm sitting in a circle of women, because I'm going through the same thing too, you know coaching, human development, self-help, embodiment, work and mindset and mindfulness. These are all just passions that I've had. These are where I thrive in the world holding space, being disarming, making people feel comfortable around me. Right, we all have our own skill set.
Speaker 1:So I'm here because this is very interesting to me, because I think about it and talk about it all the time and I'm not always wanting to improve myself, because I think the way that I am is there's anything wrong with it, and I can step back and reflect and be in the present moment of everything I've done and have access to joy and happiness and peace that I think maybe some future version of me will have. I mean, that's how we manifest is we have to be in those expressions now. But you know, as a sober person, I you know, I really have fully healed and I'm on the other side of that. I feel like 110%. There is really, and it's amazing, and there's many, many layers of, you know, deconditioning I've had to do and using the sacred pause method and unwinding other stories in my life, but through my own humanity and aging like I didn't stop aging right, there's still life and you learn so many tools and skills through the process of sobriety and I think with the sacred pause method that I teach.
Speaker 1:The thing that my clients take away the most is that it's not about the alcohol, it's not about the external circumstance, it's about your beliefs, your brain and how you want to show up to be an ally, first and foremost to yourself. There's the willingness to take a step back and question your beliefs without righteousness and without shame, because the opposite of that is psychosis or narcissism. No, not really, but sometimes it takes us a while to get there, and so for me it's like oh my gosh, everything's better. I have access. This is the best thing about sobriety is you actually have access now to all of you. You have access to your cognition, to your body functioning optimally Right now. There's other things that could get in the way of that, but there's no distortions anymore because a lot of times you don't.
Speaker 1:Most of the time it's like oh well, if I have one drink, it's not that big of a deal, I'm not over drinking, but you have no clue what's going on. If you've been drinking for many years, you don't remember, and especially as the woman you are today, what it feels like to be fully on the other side of sobriety, what real sobriety in the body and the woman that you are today, with a life that you have feels like, and what it feels like to actually have, you know, eliminated and have a completely new framework of a mindset about what alcohol means in your life. And that's what I'm here to inspire you to know that there is this other side where alcohol can become 110%, completely irrelevant, and there's not even. I mean, I think about it only in the fact that I can't even fathom the fact of the way that I used to engage in it. It seems completely like how did I? Was I living, how was I functioning and alive? Because, you guys, I drank a lot and I also engaged in other recreational drug use. I mean, I had been engaging in recreational drug use since I was very young, since I was 13. I also smoked, which is like, really like doesn't make you feel good. So I'm here to normalize the human experience for you because, if I can say it unapologetically, then I want you to know that it's okay, things happen and we kind of are going through the motions of life and right now in my life and I've shared this, if you've been here for a while, you know that we were on the road we sold our farmhouse.
Speaker 1:I actually took a break from the podcast and there's something that I feel like I'm still kind of catching up to, like catching my breath, and of course, I'm 44 years old, I'm going through my own hormonal shifts and I haven't really there's not a lot of the perimenopause symptoms that I hear about traditionally that I've been experiencing. I sleep really well, I don't really have brain fog, but I have been having what I would probably consider kind of a dysregulated nervous system where I feel like I'm just going from one thing to the next, and what I was I was talking to Matthew, my spouse, about was that, just like with alcohol, you don't really know what normal feels like. I kind of feel like I've been over functioning in a cortisol zone for a while now that I'm not really sure what it feels like to be in a real relaxed state, because there's been and this is to no fault of anyone else's but my own because I keep adding things and changing things and not grounding, and you know there's part of this. This is my personality and I'm showing up, taking action. I'm not, you know, not making commitments that I'm not following through with, but it's there's like too many balls in the air and then things do get brushed to the side. Projects that I started that I really want to finish my book is one of them and I'm giving myself grace to know that I'm in whatever season I'm in right now and it's totally, totally fine. And part of the feminine way that addition that I made to the show when I restarted the show was. I know that I have been functioning primarily in my masculine most of my life and I believe that when I became sober and this is something that I help people integrate as well. We work on integrating. What is it like to live a sober life? Because now it's 100% you. You're not reaching for this thing outside of yourself as a tool anymore. You have to utilize other tools. But that doesn't mean you still don't go through change. You just have a new awareness now, and one of the things I think that I did was I got so excited about the success of my coaching business and my cognitive abilities that came online and being able to function in the world the way I've always wanted to function in the world, by sharing content, teaching, creating, being confident and brave enough to go out there and do things that I kind of was like I'm making up for lost time in some way.
Speaker 1:And you know, I was doing other things before. I was always a go-getter, but I was a bit of a wanderlust. I was looking really more outside of myself, like, oh, if I, you know, go on this retreat. Or I was, and I don't know if I've shared this in the show, but I always wanted to go be a yoga teacher, like internationally, I thought, oh, my gosh, like I just need to live in Mexico and be a yoga teacher and that's the life that I need, right, and I've done that, and I did it in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1:Turns out that, you know, I brought my mind with me and I was drinking there and all of the things. So now I really have access to creating fulfillment inside of myself and the thing that I'm working on, and I really want to take you on this journey with me, because had I, you know, I didn't have this awareness when I was going through the sacred pause, my own personal sacred pause. I mean, I had the work of the feminine mysteries and starting to look at my cyclical nature and really stepping into the role of the woman that I want to be and I coach my clients on this all the time how their cycle and how the feminine shows up different than the masculine. And this hyper fixation on doing and this idea of getting ahead of yourself is what causes so much drinking. So I see for myself and this is just like full vulnerability and transparency that finding, you know, maybe a sense of worthiness or, you know, achievement externally. I didn't even really have that before, but that in some ways, I think, maybe became a bit of a substitution for alcohol. I wouldn't say a substitution, but it was like I put all of my energy, started putting a lot of my energy into achievement, something I didn't have access to before.
Speaker 1:But what I see with a lot of women is that who are overachievers, overfunctioning. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's amazing, that you have passion and desire and motivation, but it's like what is the result that it's getting you and can you do it both from a relaxed nervous system that doesn't cause you to want to drink. And so I'm having this perspective now to help my overachievers, because I would say I actually have access to more of the type A personality that I was potentially born with than I did when I was drinking, and there's something about the access that I have to my cognitive abilities that kind of like kicked that in. So, the feminine way is this opportunity to ask the question what kind of woman do I want to be? And in a perimenopausal phase and in a postmenopause phase, I believe that this isn't a crisis, but it's a coronation. It's an opportunity to take ourselves through the sacred rite of passage.
Speaker 1:As this threshold and it is a liminal space. It's kind of neither here nor there of really getting to decide, and authenticity being more of a requirement for as like a basic need than belonging, because one of the things that we don't talk about a lot in our basic needs as humans is we have this need to belong. We need to know we're part of a tribe, of a community. When children don't feel safe with their people, with their people didn't attend to them or attend to their crying or their abandonment or whatever it was, and so a lot of times people mold to what they think someone else wants. This is where people pleasing comes from so that they can be long, so they can be accepted, and then they do it in relationships in other areas long so they can be accepted, and then they do it in relationships in other areas.
Speaker 1:But there comes a point in your life right now and this is why you're here so much. Is that the story about alcohol and maybe belonging or even the ways that you're using it as a break to people pleasing or as a break to being that overachiever and trying to prove something. Alcoholism is no longer a requirement for your life and you know this, but you're not 100% sure because you know maybe a lot of I mean a lot of our lives are performative, so many. It's like we project and we don't even know we're doing it. But it's like what does everyone want to hear, right? And I'm kind of in this phase too, right now, where there's a lot of things that I want to say that aren't necessarily directly related to alcohol, but I know that they are a cause of why middle-aged women and beyond are drinking and why it's a requirement for them to stop is because their authenticity is now a requirement for safety, where belonging was more of the requirement for safety before. So why is authenticity a requirement for safety where belonging was more of the requirement for safety before? So why is authenticity a requirement for safety? It's just a great question.
Speaker 1:Well, for me, authenticity is a requirement for safety because I need to know what I want, so that I can express my needs to my partner and to myself right, so that I'm not living in this hamster wheel of these old stories. And so my authentic expression allows me to create boundaries for myself. It allows me to show up, to be the woman that I want to be as a mother, as a coach, as a sister, as a daughter, as a spouse, right. And then this is how I'm going to maintain those relationships. This, now, is how I'm going to belong because if my insecure attachment style which is very different with different people, but with Matthew it's an insecure attachment style based on the past of betrayal and abandonment and stuff, so with him I'm always like we can fix it, let's fix it, and then I smother him and then he wants to run away. So if I am not in my own secure attachment style, in my own authentic understanding of my belonging or my authenticity, my desires, my needs, which are very different right now than they were 12 years ago, so I need to do a reassessment for myself first and see is that insecure attachment warranted? Or if I'm coming from a different place of a more securely attached woman, do I show up differently?
Speaker 1:So what I would love for you to take away from this episode today is really looking at for yourself this need for authenticity and just questioning how is being a more authentic version of myself now required for my safety? And safety means a lot of things Now required for my belonging, required for me to show up in the world in the way that is going to be the most beneficial to me and to my loved ones and to, potentially, the world at large. Right, and how do I already belong. Because I think when we're coaching, one of the things that happens is we uncover the ways that you already belong and you already know that. But sometimes there's this old story that oh, if I'm not drinking I'll be an outcast. But most of the time when I unpack that with people, with my clients, they don't actually believe it. And so this is the really one of. I'll just say this, and this could be a whole other episode but a really crucial piece of coaching is that we finish the conversation. We actually finish the conversation.
Speaker 1:So if you say the word screw it or the thought screw it, it doesn't matter, we ask what does it matter? What does that mean? Or if it's like I'm not going to belong, I won't fit in, I won't be part of the group, how is that not true? How are you already part of the group when no one's drinking? What does alcohol have to do with being part of the group? So we interrupt the conversation, that knee-jerk reaction, and not play devil's advocate, but a little bit. It's like well, tell me more about that. What does that mean? We do it from a compassionate and loving place.
Speaker 1:This is where I'm going right now is I'm wanting to step more into my secure attachment into my feminine, because I know I'm deeply needing and desiring this right now, and I know what that looks like. I know what it means to soften and to have a somatic experience of pleasure without anything happening. Right, this isn't about sex. This isn't about anything. I know how to relax in my body and this is what I teach. I teach people how to relax in their bodies without any external thing, right? But sometimes old patterns can show up in different ways just depending on the circumstances of our life. There's things that can re-trigger things If we're feeling ungrounded, if there's changes. We know about all the stressful things that can happen Moving. We know about all the stressful things that can happen moving, divorce, money all of these things can be stressful. So for me, if I fill my plate too much, I don't have that space. The exquisite self-care of the feminine way takes a backseat, even though the reason I think I can't is the reason I need to.
Speaker 1:I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful week. There is time in my schedule next week for a private coaching consultation. And what happens in that call is I get to really understand and meet you where you're at, because every single person starts this journey differently. So follow the link right here in the show notes and I would absolutely love to meet you in person and I'll talk to you soon. The days of white knuckling your way through an urge are over. No more distracting yourself, no more avoiding alcohol, no more resisting, and I am not exaggerating when I say that doing this one thing for five minutes will change not only how successful you are in drinking less, but how much you will love your alcohol-free life. You are going to feel so good. So come on over to my website or follow the link right here in the show notes to grab the free urge guide that gives you the exact cheat codes to use to find relief without a drink. And the best part is no deprivation, no missing out required. I'll see you over marywagstaffcoachcom.