A Little Life Update

Since I haven’t been in your inbox for awhile, you might be thinking, “Wait. Who is this? Why am I getting this email?”—I’m Jolene, and here’s a quick re-introduction. I put the term Gray Area Drinking on the global stage with my TED Talk in 2017. And a year earlier, in 2016, this podcast interview launched my business in the Gray Area Drinking online space when Holly Whitaker and Laura McKowen invited me to come on their HOME podcast. We talked about the intersection between my Gray Area Drinking and romantic relationships, and my early work in corporate wellness.

But, for the last few years, I haven’t written or posted much publicly.

As one of my ministers in Charleston, SC, often says, “At any given time, we’ll all either find ourselves coming out of a storm, entering a storm, or in the middle of a storm.”

I think (hope!) I’m coming out of, and am on the tail end of, a doozy of a midlife storm.

I’ve never been one to share when the wound is open wide and gaping. Although I admit I do like watching from the sidelines when others share their real-time experiences. It gives me a temporary break from my own life. I know the social media gurus’ advice is to document everything as it happens in real-time, but it’s just not my thing. It never has been. I need time to digest, assimilate, and integrate what I’m going through before I share with the Internet.

The long and short of it is this: In 2021 I moved my whole life across the country away from the best holistic health epicenter in the US, aka Denver and Boulder, which I desperately needed (but didn’t realize how much I would need it) when I went into full-blown menopause four months after I moved. Word to the wise, for all you peri-menopause women: Do not make a major life transition in the middle of your menopause gap year—which is what I call the 12-month timeframe between your last period and your official day of menopause, 366 days after your last period.

I also burned myself to a crisp with my work, never having a moment to catch my breath after being thrust into the online spotlight by the aforementioned 2016 podcast interview and 2017 TED Talk.

Then, the two things that really tipped the scales for me most recently were my dad’s fast decline into dementia and the death of my soul cat.

In 2022, it became evident that my dad’s memory wasn’t good. By 2024, we were in a whole new territory as a family, trying to navigate his neurodegenerative decline, which escalated significantly. By December 2025, we were in crisis. We put my dad into a memory care facility, and that lasted two weeks. We got a crash course in how the “sales pitch from the lobby” can look good on the outside, but the reality of the inept management team and poor care from staff on the inside is a totally different story. He was then moved to a hospital for a month. Which was horrible. Hospitals are not meant for dementia patients. We finally found an incredible memory care facility, no easy feat, at the end of January 2026. This period of time was without a doubt the hardest season of my life so far.

Three months before the memory-care ordeal, I made the gut-wrenching decision to put down my sweet Java, who was diagnosed with feline kidney disease. I gave her subcutaneous fluids every day for the last six months of her life, but she wasn’t thriving, and I wasn’t either. I’ve been grieving her ever since.

I didn’t work much through all this. As a single entrepreneur with no FMLA or a built-in financial safety net, you can add money to the list of “hard parts from this year.” And yet, somehow through God’s grace, I survived without an income—I just don’t have my hard-earned savings anymore.

The daily care and management of my dad (and my own health) has been my primary focus this past year.

In case you’re wondering about my alcohol-free status, it was never in jeopardy. Which is interesting, because when I quit drinking 11.5 years ago, dealing with a crisis was my biggest concern: “What if something awful happens, and I want to numb and escape from it with alcohol?” Well, the awful thing(s) happened, and I’m still completely and totally 100% sober. No alcohol, no mood-altering or mood-enhancing anything. Zilch. Nada. Zero.

The reasons drinking remains a non-negotiable for me:

1. It has been over a decade since I’ve had a drop, sip, or drink of alcohol. All the circuits in my brain that are linked to alcohol have gone dormant. BUT I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I drink, those circuits would light up again, and I’d be back to trying to stop drinking, which is a miserable undertaking. I don’t want to go through that again, so I don’t drink. I felt resolute about that on Day 1, and I still do—even during the worst storm of my life. Things were already a level 10 bad, and since alcohol always takes things from bad to worse, it simply isn’t an option for me.

2. In my ongoing quest to learn everything I can about health, I’ve learned a lot about neurodegenerative disease over the past few years. While my dad wasn’t a drinker, the connection between avoiding alcohol to maintain your cognitive/brain health is strong. Watching this horrific disease overtake my father’s brain is enough to motivate me to do everything I can to prevent it from happening to me. There are many things that we can do to help protect our brains from neurodegenerative decline, and removing alcohol is the low-hanging fruit. I’m so glad I’ve been alcohol-free for 11+ years, and I’m grateful that I made the decision to stop putting alcohol in my brain and body in 2014!

3. Having the right support and resources. This is where my story moves from me to you. But first, a couple more things about me.

Some of you messaged me this year and said, “I’m curious if you’re still studying at Duke and how it’s going?

When I was in the middle of “the worst year storm of my life,” I decided in the eleventh hour last summer to defer my acceptance to Duke for one year. I’ll begin my graduate program in Durham, NC, next month —August 2026.

When Java was sick, my dad was declining, and I was struggling to find a decent rental close to campus that met my needs, I waved the white flag of surrender. The last thing I wanted was to postpone my program at Duke, but I couldn’t carry all I was carrying alone anymore. The day I was supposed to start graduate school orientation, I loaded what belongings I could fit into my car and drove back to Colorado.

Alongside advocating and navigating the best and highest quality care for my dad this past year, I’ve been doing the same for myself. I essentially created my own piecemeal “out-patient” program of nervous system repair and physiological replenishment with the help of some amazing practitioners and resources.

As a result, I have a ton of new resources and well-vetted (by me) providers to share with you in future Substack posts.

Whether you’re in the throes of trying to quit drinking or you haven’t had a drink in years, there are resources out there that most people never find or even know exist—resources that fill in key pieces that people (and most healthcare providers) ignore. I’ll be sharing more on my Substack about what I’ve recently discovered and personally experienced.

There really aren’t coaches out there who have anything useful or helpful for supporting people like me with multiple years of being alcohol-free under their belt and caring for aging/sick parents as a single entrepreneur. I struggled to find skilled therapists as well. I saw (and now no longer go to) various doctors who mismanaged my low lab numbers and didn’t test for or rule out some really crucial things. I’ll share the specifics of what happened to my physical health throughout this storm in future posts because it’s incredibly relevant to the support needed to get off and stay off the Gray Area Drinking merry-go-round.

As I start to speak and write about this, I’m feeling more solid and strong, and I have a lot to share on everything I’ve been through. I’ll turn the paywall on again once I’m in the swing of posting again. If you’ve made it this far, I really appreciate your support by becoming a paid subscriber. I’ll provide you with the valuable Healthy Discoveries that can save you time, money, and the emotional turmoil that comes from navigating broken healthcare systems—whether it’s traditional medicine, holistic wellness, sober support, or otherwise.

More coming very soon for both the layperson and medical and mental health providers.

My pretty girl, Java. She was my constant companion from June 2020 to September 2025, who stayed by my side day and night. A total mama bear, full of so much love. I’m certain she understood what I was saying when I talked to her; she always responded and had lots to tell me in return. She fetched and returned her toys better than some dogs. Java was a champ on long car rides and drove across the country with me four times, riding shotgun. She especially loved putting her front paws on the windowsill and propping herself up a couple of extra inches to get a better look at the big semi-trucks as they passed us by on the interstate. :-)

I miss her!

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