What's Missing From Your Dry January

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On today’s episode, I’m talking about the one thing that’s usually missing from Dry January—and why that’s exactly why so many alcohol breaks don’t last.

If you’re participating in Dry January (or are already sober), congratulations. But if you’ve ever noticed that you just replace alcohol with mocktails, workouts, scrolling, or another “healthy” distraction—and still feel restless, disconnected, or off—this episode is for you.

What most people call “willpower” is actually a longing to go inward.

In this conversation, I share why a fast without devotion is just another project to manage, and how true change happens when you stop checking out and start tuning in. I talk about prayer—not as religion—but as presence. As listening. As learning to ask: What is the most loving choice right now?

I also share what I’ve seen again and again with my private clients: when women add spiritual connection, self-honesty, and present-moment awareness to sobriety, alcohol naturally loses its grip. Sobriety stops feeling forced—and starts feeling like home.

If you’re tired of starting over every January…
If you don’t want to be in the same place this time next year…
If you know there’s more depth, peace, and truth available to you…

This episode will change how you think about Dry January—and what comes next.
Want to get off the emotional merry-go-round of alcohol? Grab The Permission Protocol- https://tinyurl.com/pnfv4bae
My free mini training will help you see alcohol and sobriety from a new perspective, so you can focus on what really matters. 

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Questions? Please leave a comment below with any questions you have, and I'll create a video just for you!

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The 90-Day Life Renewal Challenge is an invitation into your year of clarity, self-trust, and embodied change. This is about knowing you can handle life without numbing, avoiding, or hiding. You can be sacred and do it anyway.

👉 Schedule your Clarity Call for your first breakthrough — and trust that it’s only the beginning.

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A Private Holistic Coaching Program to gracefully help you move through the resistance of change, stay accountable and honor the version of you that is done waiting. What if this year, you didn’t just set a goal…but created a living plan that actually fits your energy, your values, and your season of life? Apply & schedule your clarity call with Mary here.

Download The Permission Protocol — my free 5-part mini-course — and start practicing the skills that make alcohol irrelevant on your terms.

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.

Transcript

So on today's episode, I want to talk to you about the one thing that is probably missing from your dry January. Whether it's dry January and you're abstaining from alcohol, or you have already been abstaining from alcohol, congratulations. But chances are you probably have some goal that you have been focusing on something that you want to shift in your life. 



Welcome back to Wild Sobriety Warriors of Love. I'm recording this right at the beginning of 2026. It's Mary Wagstaff. If this is your first time here, welcome and if you have been here for a while, I hope that things are going really, really well for the you in the new year. On today's episode is going to be a game changer for whatever plans you have for the new year.

I am a holistic. Wellness and sobriety coach. I use a method of what I call empowered [00:01:00] feminine sobriety to help women really reclaim the truth of who they are. And this is one thing that I have talked about, on and off, but something that I am deepening into and you will hear more about. My process as a seven year sober holistic alcohol coach that is on, always on a spiritual quest since I was a very little girl and have many, many interests in life.

What is going on with me? What are the practices I'm doing? And what is happening for me in my life this year? 'cause there's a lot of things that. I think will be interesting and inspiring to you how I am using the work that I do as my life continues to go, and as I face my own challenges and struggles as a woman, as a mother, and as an entrepreneur, and a devotee of the divine.

So on today's episode, I want to talk to you about the one thing that is probably missing from your dry January. Whether it's dry January and you're abstaining from alcohol, or you have [00:02:00] already been abstaining from alcohol, congratulations. But chances are you probably have some goal that you have been focusing on something that you want to shift in your life.

And we have many, many reasons for wanting to make change, but usually it's because something doesn't feel right. It feels off. We don't feel good about a way that we're showing up and one and the way the results that we're getting in our life. So earlier this year I had been, or before the first of the year, I, had started a practice before the new year called the 13 Holy Nights, and I shared about some of that that was just deepening into.

Connecting to a more spiritual practice of celebrating the holiday season through the Yule tide. So starting at Christmas Eve and going actually until what's called the epiphany, on January 6th. So taking that whole time to. rest and contemplate and be with my family and be in the magic and the wonder and awe of what the dark [00:03:00] season can bring.

And something that I do like to preface is that I have been on a spiritual journey, like I said, since I was a very little girl. And what I know from that is that spirituality is deeply, deeply personal. But what I also know is that all of the women that come to work with me and that I have worked with and and gathered with over the many years.

Our longing to go deeper, and even women of faith that have faith that they're instilled in, whether that's a religious practice or some other practice, there is still an opportunity for them to go deeper for them to use their connection to source, to the divine, to their higher self, to God for. They're next, the next phase.

How do they relate to this now? From where they are? They are completely different versions of themselves. And something that I've recognized in my own life is that even growing up in the Catholic church, and I don't consider myself Catholic, but even growing up in the Catholic [00:04:00] church, I do have practices that I use from that church, from that tradition.

But I didn't really learn anything. I didn't even, I, I have no clue about anything. So I have been studying, not only Catholicism more but Christianity because I don't want to knock anything until I actually have a full understanding of it. I was also, I've been studying Jewish mysticism this year. I've been down the path of the divine feminine, which was really what triggered my sobriety and why.

I know this is the one thing that is missing. From your dry, dry January, but the one crucial point that will actually make it stick and make all of your efforts. Worth it. Take them beyond dry January. And so I wanted to start too, by letting you know because of this and because of the results that my clients who I was working with during the holiday season got in such a short amount of time because they added this component.

Through the holiday sea season, deepened their experience of what that meant to them and took it to, just deeper [00:05:00] than that commercial level of things have been blowing my mind. One of my clients messaged me saying that sobriety feels so natural to her. And I was well girl, it's because it is 

Like this is the way you were born was sober. that I am offering a brand new offer. That I had offered before the holiday season called Beyond Dry January, and this is a six week program. It's private. It's just you and me to really find that voice of your truth and your authenticity of how you connect to spirit and how you can do that.

Use that to anchor into this authentic expression of your sober self. So the link is in the show notes. It's a six week experience. We have four private one-on-one sessions, as well as unlimited access to coaching through text and email. This is a game changer for everyone. And then you'll have unlimited, lifetime access to my course.

Which is all about going deeper into your own awakening journey and this space is very, very limited. I [00:06:00] would love to have you, so just click the link to find out the details, register, and then I will be in touch personally to schedule our time together. So the one thing I was researching spiritual fasting, and I came across what is called a Daniel Fast, so I won't go into it here, but a Daniel Fast is a 21 day fast that has specific parameters of, a story from the Bible and.

People are using this, A lot of Christians use this at the beginning of the year to start their year connected to God with God leading their year, And so I was, I just did research on it and I found this couple that had a YouTube channel and a podcast, and the wife said, A fast without prayer is just a diet.

And that I stopped me dead in my tracks. There was so many beautiful things I took from that episode. But a fast can is usually referring to food, but it, you can abstain from anything. Something that I am probably will abstain from for the rest of my life. As I took all social [00:07:00] apps off of my phone before the new year, and it's really been a game changer to me because I wanted that extra time to deepen my connection to my spiritual studies.

And I knew that that was some way I decompress sometimes at the end of the day. And so instead I'm decompressing. Through reading spiritual text, through self-study, and that feels and anchors me into something deeper. So the reason that this is important for you is because when we are connecting to, and what I mean by prayer isn't, necessarily reading biblical text, but it is this idea of tuning, turning inward.

Rather than checking out. And what often happens is even if you abstain from alcohol or whatever it is that you are fasting from, there's these term social media, fast, all of these things is that what we [00:08:00] tend to do instead is replace or distract ourselves. And we aren't necessarily going deeper into understanding what need we have.

That's not being met. And a lot of times there, I talk a lot about the intersection of belief and behavior here in my content because behavior is just a habitual action that becomes repetitive. And before we know it, we're, we're treating people a certain way or we're complaining and we don't really need to be.

So we have to become aware of it. And some of those can be easily shifted, but. What I also know is that when we just replace it with say, you, you're making all these mocktails instead, or even going out and having, say, a physical fitness experience. Now, if you are doing that, if you're deepening that into a prayerful experience or a very mindful experience of not get, having a necessarily a goal to like.

Lose [00:09:00] weight, but to connect with you and all of those goals, none of them are wrong or bad. And what I find is that our, the harmony of our holistic experience, mind, body, heart, and soul will happen naturally when we are making the choice from. Love, and this is a really beautiful question that you can ask yourself, is what is the loving choice?

Oftentimes we have two things that we do want to do. So for example, over the weekend there, I usually go to a yoga class one day of the weekend at the yoga studio that I do teach at, and there was this other class that had just started that I was signed up for because I wanted to know about all the classes so I can promote them and share the experience.

So it was two back-to-back classes, which. Typically I would be into, One was a yoga class and one was more of the strength training class. And I woke up and I'm at the end of my cycle, so my energy's a little bit lower, and we had been working on some [00:10:00] remodeling projects at the house. And I, and I was a little bit torn and I know this seems kind of simple, but I had to stop 'cause I didn't, I didn't want to go, but there was something that was holding me back and I just asked myself.

I took that moment to tune inward, to turn into hearing that whisper of my connection to source, to the infinite field of awareness to God, and just ask what's the most loving choice? And the most loving choice was to be soft, to be slow to sit in my, have my quiet time. That there was no rush to go to the class that I had signed up for, and I didn't need to pack it all in that I had a full day ahead of me and there would be more time.

And of course, I've been to a thousand yoga classes, So we slow down to ask that, and then by not stressing ourselves out, especially as women, If we're stressed and we're working out all the time, and I find this to be true with me, is sometimes the healthy choices for me. Can often come [00:11:00] with stress where I'm trying to pack it all in and then my cortisol levels are high.

And it's how healthy is that? And I often tell people, as a yoga practitioner, sometimes your best yoga is not coming to yoga. That is really listening to yourself and the discernment of saying no, when no is a yes to yourself and to honoring what it is that you need to be in that silence, be in that stillness.

The second reason that prayer or devotion is required in your fast from alcohol or whatever you are fasting from. Is like I was just talking about, is connecting to that deeper part of you that goes beyond the finite, that goes beyond our human experience. Our human experience is de deep, but it is finite.

It will come to an end. This body will become dust, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, But there is an energetic experience. There is. A deep [00:12:00] knowing our intuitive self, the wisdom that we have that is never taught but known, which is that whisper that you are hearing that's calling you home. To your authentic self through the lens of sobriety, through the removal of what has created distortions in your life.

And right now it might seem surface level, but I'm telling you, sister, it is very, very deep and very profound. And if you're listening to this. I know that you have these contemplations, you have even just a whisper of knowing that there's more for you. And there's a lot of things I do for vanity.

I'm not saying that that is any, there's anything wrong with that. Our human experience is very divine, but it will end and there is a way we can live in this life. Through our experience of that deeper connection that [00:13:00] changes how we show up, The energy, and this brings me to my third and final point, is present moment awareness.

When we are in the present moment, there is no lack. We have everything we need. If you are here, everything has worked out in your favor. 'cause what's the choice? Alive or dead? All of the sensations you're experiencing, and this is what we do in private coaching, is we honor the fact that. Wow, this actually just means I'm alive.

And when you act, when you tune in, instead of making labels and creating all of these stories, why this resistance is wrong, it's oh, it's, it's simply sensations in my body. Now there has to be a willingness, to be with that. And that's where we have to create the space to do it. And that's why the, the commitment to the private coaching container.

Is the, the start of that is the beginning of you making that commitment to yourself in a [00:14:00] way that could be challenging to fit that in. And the chances are you figure it out right when the car breaks, when you have a new baby, when there's an unexpected bill, when whatever happens, the kids are sick, you figure it out, even if it doesn't fit into your schedule.

But it's so easy for us to make excuses why it doesn't work. But when we do take that time, and on next week's episode, we're going to talk about getting your priorities straight. And I say that in the most loving way. this is where you need to get your priorities straight because it is inside of you.

In from which your world is born, The perspective that you take, the way that you show up energetically and how you see those that have eyes to see and ears to hear, can hear the truth and see the truth. But if you stay stuck in your old stories, and all we need to do is practice, we do it from the most [00:15:00] loving, compassionate, curious way, and we find your truth, we find your way.

This looks different for every single one of my clients. And so when we're in the present moment, we are in the gift of what we have now. And someone recently told me a wise man that when we look to the future, we often feel behind because it's okay to dream and get excited about creating that big vision and holding that.

But sometimes that creates a feeling of lack and scarcity because we don't yet have it. And it's this wishful thinking that can create a deficit. And when you are in a prayerful moment, an inner meditative moment of quietude and solitude. And there's many ways I've been, I've been doing so much research of all of the different ways of contemplation and prayer, that I've practiced over the last, I won't date myself over 25 year, oh my gosh, probably like [00:16:00] over my entire life because I did start my spiritual journey in the church.

So I've been doing. Some form of contemplative prayer for a very long time, and this helps you see the gift of what's here right now. I would love for you to join me for the next six weeks. As soon as the spaces fill up, the offer will be gone. But I want you to, to take you in to you experience beyond January because.

Chances are you don't have a plan. And what happens is you celebrate with a drink and then you're right back to where you started. And I don't want that for you because you don't wanna be in the same spot again. This time next year. Have a beautiful day. I.