Hi, I'm Hadley!

I’m a mom of boys, a runner, and a writer. Twelve years ago, I left a stressful job in the mortgage industry to stay home with my three sons. I started a business as a health and wellness coach, and I fell in love with helping people find joy in the process of getting healthy. I was a lifelong runner and fitness enthusiast, and it was the perfect fit.

I was very good at preaching about the essentials of a healthy lifestyle, but the dirty truth was I wasn’t taking care of myself, and my health priorities were out of whack.

Alcohol was a dark cloud that had followed me for most of my life, always lurking in the shadows. Ever since I had my first sip at fourteen, something about my relationship with booze felt corrupt in a way I couldn’t articulate. It turned out that no amount of exercise or eating kale and quinoa could negate the damage drinking was doing to my body and mind.

From the outside, everything looked perfect. People assumed I had my act together, and I did nothing to dissuade them. I was the perfect mom of little blonde boys with excellent manners. My long hair was always perfectly coiffed. I was a marathon runner full of inspirational quotes for social media. I baked beautiful cupcakes for school events, and my house was always tidy. On the outside, I was killing it, and that’s what the world saw. On the inside, I was barely hanging on by a thread.

I wasn’t a raging drunk with vodka bottles hidden in my closet. I wasn’t physically dependent, and I wasn’t even close to rock-bottom. I drank the same way everyone around me did: I graduated from the college binge-drinking scene and went straight to the mommy wine scene. It was the typical suburban woman’s trajectory. “Normal” social drinker or not, alcohol had a stranglehold on me that I didn’t like. I was riddled with shame and self-loathing. I felt like I was the only person experiencing these tumultuous feelings tied to booze, which made me feel like something was wrong with me.

In 2021, I reached my breaking point after a series of escalating drinking episodes and the resulting deterioration of my mental health. One morning, after too much rosé, I woke up with hot chills and a pounding headache. I knew it was time. I made the scary decision to stop drinking. My heart screamed that it was the right choice. Instead of feeling like I was making a sacrifice, it felt like a new door was opening.

I spent the next year figuring out who I was without alcohol and learning to navigate a world that seemed to revolve around it. I’ve always been a writer, so I documented my experience, and before I fully realized what was happening, a book was born.

My story is a lot different from the storylines in most of the popular “quit lit” books. I didn’t see myself in their stories, which were all about women who were deep in the throes of addiction and scraping their way back from rock-bottom. They are powerful tales, but I wanted to speak to the millions who fall into the gray area where I spent so long.

Mine is a story for everyday moms who worry about the priority that booze has been granted in their lives. It’s a guide to help them figure out the role they want it to play going forward. It’s a message telling people they don’t have to be raging alcoholics to benefit from eliminating alcohol.