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
"Can't you just have one?" And Other People's Advice You Should Avoid
Ever wonder why “just have one” never actually works?
In this no-fluff episode, we unpack the deeper truth behind that tiny phrase—and why your body already knows alcohol doesn’t feel good anymore. If you're tired of the start-stop cycle and craving a way of living that actually supports your goals, your energy, and your feminine power… this one’s for you.
Sobriety isn't just about saying no to alcohol—it’s about saying yes to yourself. To living fully expressed, in your truth, and from a place of deep connection and intuition. We’re flipping the script on outdated advice and taking back our authority.
Inside, we dive into:
- Why your body’s wisdom always wins over external opinions
- How sobriety becomes the path to so much more than not drinking
- What to do when others question your choice to quit
- The sneaky ways alcohol dulls your potential
- Why not knowing what's possible is more painful than failure
- The #1 rule: don’t take advice from people who don’t have the results you want
- How feminine leadership begins by trusting yourself—fully
✨ You don’t need to justify your sobriety. You just need to embody it.
🌿 Ready to handle urges without willpower or deprivation?
Download the free Urge Guide at marywagstaffcoach.com
Five minutes. Total shift. Deep relief.
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. I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1:It is such a thrill, such an honor to do this work because it continues to evolve and in my life in this way that I didn't even really realize it. So it seems so crazy to look back. I'm like you know, like early sobriety is, you know, is long gone for me, and of course, my coaching practice is, is and always has been and always will be such a joy, um to connect with women and be, you know, emotional support to navigate the mind, to navigate goals and everything like that, but to really see the impact of sobriety play out, not just in my authentic expression but in light of it, right, I've always said this, but in light of it, right, I've always said this that I don't really know. I mean, there's just no way for me to know if I would be doing what I'm doing had I not had to go through addiction. And then sobriety, like if I had just never drank. Right, if I never like, who would I be? And the process of sobriety in which I teach empowered sobriety, um is really the game changer for women who have goals, women who really want to take personal responsibility for their lives, want to be in their fullest authentic expression, want to optimize their energy and their output, because they're already putting in so much effort for their health and their wellness, and they're you know, they're they're taking responsibility for their life and they've created really beautiful lives for themselves, but they're just not enjoying it right now because alcohol is not working. It's not an alignment anymore, Um, so it's the skills, though, that you have to learn, and the examination that you have to do to remove alcohol and to be willing to expand your threshold for discomfort or expand your threshold for resistance, right, and it's not like we just hold the resistance and it feels terrible, like no, you let it drive you, you let it move through you or you're like, oh, I want to change because I don't want to feel this anymore, but it's not. But you know the solution isn't going to be alcohol and then it goes away. But when you set out to do new things, you also you know that you're going to go through that again as well, Like every time we do something and it's so interesting and maybe, you know, I don't really remember as a kid and maybe I just I did.
Speaker 1:I I was, I was a quitter, you know, and I was allowed to quit. So consistency and commitment was something that I really had to work on as an adult. But I don't know how, if I was risk averse I don't believe that I was. You know, when we're younger, we don't know, like the consequences. We don't have the emotional baggage of the embarrassment of failure or the perceived embarrassment of failure, like what if it doesn't work? But what sobriety has taught me and I believe it does for my clients as well is the regret of not knowing what's possible is more painful than the failure, because then it's like you fail great. So what? Then you have more information.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I didn't drink for these many days and this is what worked. But I did drink this time. So let's examine it and see why that didn't work. And you can't do that when you're just like doing it on your own. So you're like, oh, forget about that, move on. Starting over right, you're always starting over Like I just think, don't start over, it doesn't even make sense. Just keep going and gathering more information and be willing to never give up. Be willing to see it through, and of course, there's varying levels of addiction. I get it. Other people's perspectives about your drinking is something that I find, and when I talked about the boredom episode, once it's examined, is not actually what it appears to be at first. It's a story that you've been telling yourself for a really long time, which most people, and with full disclosure.
Speaker 1:This was never a problem that I had. I didn't care what people thought about me not drinking. Now, sometimes I in as an adult and running other different things and having conversations. Sometimes I even still I'm like, oh, do I talk? You know, talk about like I was at. I had the.
Speaker 1:I had a group of women at the farm for this like private event kind of, and I was inviting them to ladies night and one of the ladies was like oh, like, do you do wine? And I actually wasn't. I was like, no, we can't, we don't, you know, we don't do alcohol here. And she kind of inferred that it was because of you know, like permitting and stuff like that. But it wasn't. And I said no, we are an alcohol free property. We really want to invite people to connect in their authentic expression, and I think part of me, you know maybe, would have been like oh, am I going to hurt her feelings? And I was like that's just my truth, like she can decide whatever her truth is too, you know. So we'll see if she comes back. But yeah, so the the what other people's opinions are what?
Speaker 1:The basic thing that I want to say about this is if you want to do anything in life, don't get advice from people that aren't doing it Right. So oftentimes I'll I hear this a lot from women and I don't know if it's because men have a different tolerance or a different threshold, or they're full of shit. I don't know if it's because men have a different tolerance or a different threshold or they're full of shit, I don't even know. But it's like well, can't you just cut back. Why can't you just drink less, can't you just have one? And then these women are like, but I can't, I can't do that, I can't just have one right. And I'm like it's not fucking about that, it is not even about that, of course. You can just have one. You absolutely can just have one. You, my sweet listener, can just have one.
Speaker 1:What happens after one?
Speaker 1:You feel like shit. You don't just want one, you don't want one. You want to not feel that because you just zapped all of the energy. You felt how excited you were to have that drink and now you feel down Right.
Speaker 1:So whether men don't have that experience, or some of them, or you know, there it's I'm not just talking about male counterparts that I work with a lot of different people, um, but I do hear this coming from men, and so it's like it's not about that. A, b, you don't need to understand and see, why am I getting advice from you when you're drinking and instead of supporting me, you're telling me to have one right, and we can go into that. It's like it's their own projection about themselves, like anyone, anytime anyone is questioning your drinking, they are projecting their own behavior on you. And if they don't drink, then they won't care, right. So the bottom line with other people's perspectives about your drinking is A one you have to understand for yourself why it is that you want what you want, why alcohol is no longer working for you, right, and it has to come from the truth. And it could be I can't handle it.
Speaker 1:But it's not that you can't handle drinking. And some of you might be saying, like Mary, for real I can't. I always overdo it, right, I always go overboard. I guarantee you that's not true. I guarantee you there are times where you have one or two drinks, right, and that might be fine. You can't handle alcohol because your body, the wisdom of your body, doesn't want it. It's not. You can't handle it because you can't handle it in your life, because it's not serving you, right. So finding the real reason, the real and there's probably multiple reasons, but like it doesn't work in my body anymore, it makes me feel like shit, right, and I don't ever talk about the poisonous effects of alcohol and why we give alcohol a pass when it's.
Speaker 1:There's, no, there's literally not one benefit from alcohol. Not one, except for you know, except to like, deal with your life Right, and that's just mindset, work and choice and decision. Like, why are you staying in a shitty life that you don't like? You either have to A change perspective or B get out of there. So, um, that is, that's what's happening.
Speaker 1:It's, it doesn't make me feel good. That's the only thing you need to know. It doesn't make me feel good and it's the whole picture, right. We can't be like, ah, the cake. Like it makes me gain weight, like the cake makes me gain weight. I mean, that's just the impact of it, right? So it's the whole kit and caboodle. You have to know, like I'm not eating the cake because I don't want to gain weight, I'm not going to eat the cake. Same with the alcohol I don't want to drink the alcohol because in the end it doesn't make me feel good and it probably doesn't make you feel good very shortly after you actually have the drink.
Speaker 1:And then two, why would you get a perspective? This is just like back to like a fitness example you wouldn't take fitness advice from someone who was out of shape for someone you know you wouldn't have, you wouldn't want. And not to say that there's not like coaches out there that say, train athletes that aren't Olympic athletes themselves Cause I know that that exists. But you want people to have had the embodied experience for the most part, right, you wouldn't take money advice or investing advice from someone who's broke. You wouldn't do that. And if you do, it's not going to be the right advice. It's going to be the wrong advice. So you don't want to get a perspective from someone about drinking who's a drinker. And the reason people do is because they want to let themselves off the hook. They want to feel better about their state and to feel validated. Right, like that they're not wrong or they're not broken. But that's what you have to do for you.
Speaker 1:So my suggestion and this is why people go to meetings and go to AA so they're in a community of people who have the same experience, right, but you're here listening to me in a community of people who have the same experience, right, but you're here listening to me. I coach people one-on-one, um, but I'm telling you like this is the experience is that it is very similar throughout. There are not very many. Everyone has their own story, but as far as variations, so if you're, you know if you're significant other, if you're a friend group, or if you're a significant other if you're a friend group, your thought is no one else needs to understand but me, because alcohol doesn't make me feel good anymore. It's not an alignment with where I want to go and also I'm not taking advice from the people that are doing the thing that I don't want to be doing that don't have the result that I have Right now.
Speaker 1:It is very, it is very possible that you would come across someone that identifies as an alcoholic and they would look at you and say you don't have a problem, right, because there is been such an indoctrination of shame and you know a mental disorder or a disease that people have. And now I'm not saying like those, those, those grooves in the brain are deep right and they do create somewhat of a disorder. It's. It's like when we go over the same thought again and again and again and the brain just goes back there. It is more challenging to get out of. I will absolutely 100% admit that. But it has to be for you.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter how much you drink, how often you drink, how wasted you get, how wasted you don't get. You're here listening to this right now because you don't like the results that alcohol is giving you, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, and especially doesn't matter from the people that don't already have the result that you want. And here's a caveat there is no way for you to know. So do not put your thoughts into other people's heads, right? I hear this all the time, even with your partner. Right, that person might be thinking that, but they don't like it either. And there's no way for you to know, even if they tell you up and down. I've been lied to. I don't know about you. Or you think, like Susie, she just has one drink. Susie, because I've worked with people like this and I've done this probably had a bottle of wine before she came to that meeting, or she's going to go home and have a bottle of wine.
Speaker 1:Do not compare yourself to other people. All you know in my body, this is how I feel. So you can Google search all you want. Am I an alcoholic? How much alcohol is too much? Right? You can find any information in this wild world. Just ask chat GPT. Chat GPT will validate you.
Speaker 1:So I just asked chat GPT and actually I'm very surprised by this answer. I'm going to read it to you and leave you with this, because it's actually pretty powerful, and it's probably because Chachi Pitti knows my brand. Oh gosh, I asked. I drink every day. Do I need help or am I okay? Thanks for being real. This is a powerful question. Whether or not you need help depends on how often you drink and more on how it's affecting you. Oh, my gosh, chat GPT knows me A few questions to reflect on. Do you feel like alcohol is controlling you more than you were controlling it? I'm not going to read all the questions.
Speaker 1:Even if you're functioning well on the outside, daily, drinking can take a toll on your energy, mood, hormones, especially in perimenopause, relationships and self-trust Cause. We've been talking about perimenopause. You don't need to hit a rock bottom to explore what life looks like without alcohol. You're not broken. You don't have to label yourself, but if part of you is wondering if you're okay, that part deserves your attention. Support doesn't mean something is wrong with you. It means you're ready for something better.
Speaker 1:Girl, if you want to talk more or explore this without pressure, I'm here. Would you like a free emotional support session, or can I send you a guide to help calm your urges more clearly? Okay, so clearly it's talking to you. I don't offer free emotional support sessions, but I offer free consultations for my coaching program, but I do offer one-on-one emotional support sessions, which is just a one-off session in 75 minutes, and it's an opportunity to, you know, kind of get over one of those humps where I just feel like no one understands and it's like, oh my gosh, I've been crying my face off and I just don't know what direction to go in. And those are the moments where we really need to find relief so that we can find the clarity that we need to take the next most informed and empowered step. Okay, I thought that that was really interesting, so I wanted to share with you. I hope you have a wonderful day, decide for yourself what that something better is. Okay, I love you and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: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.