About Amy

Here's the honest version.

I'm a mom of three in suburban Colorado. My kids are 11, 8, and 5. I drive a Subaru that smells like goldfish crackers. I have strong opinions about sunscreen and school lunch containers. I am, in almost every way, aggressively normal.

For years, my nightly routine looked like this: get the kids to bed, pour a glass of wine, collapse on the couch. Sometimes one glass. Sometimes three. It wasn't dramatic. I wasn't hiding bottles or missing school drop-offs. It was just... a thing I did. The way I transitioned from "mom mode" to "me mode." The way I exhaled.

Everybody did it. My friends did it. The memes told me I'd earned it. My favorite mug literally said "Mommy's Sippy Cup." It was a whole personality.

But somewhere around my late thirties, things started shifting. The wine wasn't making me feel relaxed anymore — or if it did, the feeling lasted about 45 minutes before the anxiety crept in. I'd wake up at 3 AM with my heart racing, already dreading the morning. My patience was thinner. My skin looked tired. I was more irritable with my kids at exactly the moments I wanted to be more present.

There wasn't a rock-bottom moment. There wasn't an intervention or a tearful conversation with my husband. There was just a slow, creeping awareness: this thing I'm doing to feel better is making me feel worse.

So I started researching. As one does at 11 PM when the kids are finally asleep and your brain won't shut up.

I Googled "why do I wake up at 3 AM after drinking." I fell down a rabbit hole of neuroscience studies about GABA receptors and rebound anxiety. I read about how perimenopause changes how your body processes alcohol. I discovered that the scientific consensus on "moderate" drinking had completely shifted — and almost nobody was talking about it in a way that made sense to me.

I found AA resources, which didn't resonate. I found influencers with perfect skin and book deals who made the whole thing feel like a lifestyle brand I couldn't relate to. I found clinical programs that treated every question like a diagnosis.

What I couldn't find was a resource that spoke to women like me. Moms who weren't in crisis but weren't exactly thriving. Moms who were curious, not desperate. Moms who just wanted to know: what would actually happen if I stopped?

So I started writing. First just for myself, in a Notes app at 10 PM after bedtime. Then for a few friends who were asking the same questions. Then for anyone who needed it.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist. I'm not "sober-famous" and I don't have a TEDx talk. I'm just a mom who got curious about what would happen if she stopped pouring — and started paying attention.

What happened was a lot. Better sleep. More patience. Clearer mornings. A relationship with my kids that felt less managed and more present. A 3 AM wake-up that just... stopped happening. It wasn't magic. It was neuroscience. And it was the kind of information I wished someone had given me years ago, without the judgment or the labels.

That's what this site is. Everything I learned, researched, and lived — organized in a way that I hope makes it easier for you than it was for me.

There's no test. There's no score. There's just you, getting curious. And that's already the bravest thing.

— Amy
Somewhere in the suburbs of Colorado, probably drinking tea