#136 – Kristin Micalizzi: The Warrior Within Us#136 – Kristin Micalizzi: The Warrior Within Us
Recovery Survey
Kristin Micalizzi shares how drinking shaped her sense of belonging, motherhood and coping with her son’s complex needs, and why she chose to stop in 2020. She talks with Brett Morris about fear, identity, connection and how sobriety led to her podcast The Warrior Within Us and a more purposeful life.
41:54•16 Nov 2022
From Mummy Wine Culture to The Warrior Within Us with Kristin Micalizzi
Episode Overview
- Alcohol can start as a way to feel accepted and gradually become central to social life and identity.
- Social norms around college drinking and mummy wine culture can hide serious problems in plain sight.
- If you’re googling whether you have a drinking problem or telling friends you might, that concern itself can be a warning sign.
- Stopping alcohol may feel like an intense break-up, but over time it becomes just one meaningful part of a much bigger life.
- Recovery can open space for new roles, such as sharing your story, creating community, and pursuing long-delayed dreams.
“Nobody was questioning why we were selling this idea to moms that… the perfect solution for you was to have a glass or two or a bottle of wine every night.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This episode of Recovery Survey follows Kristin Micalizzi as she talks frankly about her long relationship with alcohol, from teenage "good girl" to mum caught up in mummy-wine culture, and then to alcohol-free coach and podcaster.
Kristin shares how drinking first felt like a magic key to belonging: it helped her fit in at school, bond with her older brothers, and later slide neatly into heavy college drinking that everyone treated as harmless fun. She explains how that same pattern quietly followed her into adult life – marriage, work and motherhood – especially when she and her husband were raising four children, including a son with significant disabilities.
Their running joke to people asking how they coped was, "We drink" – a line that slowly stopped being a joke. She talks about using a Whole30 programme as a test, the shock of realising alcohol was the one thing she could barely give up, and the intense sadness she felt when she finally stopped on 1 January 2020 while her son was in hospital.
That “break-up” with alcohol left her convinced she'd never be fun again, even as others tried to downplay her problem by calling it a simple healthy choice. Kristin and host Brett Morris compare their experiences of using alcohol to escape anxiety and discomfort, and how recovery has become about building a life they no longer want to run from. Kristin describes how time, honesty and connection shrank alcohol from “everything” to just one important part of her story.
She now hosts The Warrior Within Us, sharing everyday “warrior” stories of people facing life's curveballs, and works as a coach supporting others who feel a whisper to change. Her message is clear: you don't need a bottle to be fun, brave or worthy. What kind of life might you create if you stopped trying to escape it?
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