Wanna Grow with Me in 2024?

Vol. 10: A Weekly Love Note

Well hello lovely reader! It’s me, your faithful messy bun wearing weekly writer, Jess. For those of you new around here - it’s my mission to slip a little note your way every week, filled with topics related to embracing a sober lifestyle, motherhood, running, God, homeschooling, and more!

Decidedly Dry is a free weekly newsletter. If you absolutely love reading it and want access to a library of archived posts, additional tips and tools, and more, consider being a paid subscriber. You can also share snippets of today’s note from Jess on social media, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. Thanks again for being here.

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Happy December my Loves!

As 2024 quickly approaches, I’d love to encourage you to remove the pressure of resolutions and instead, set realistic, joy-bringing, and attainable goals. So often we click that “reset” button in January and our resolutions are too vague, unreachable, or a lot of times, we simply haven’t properly prepared ourselves and are likely to throw in the towel.

So maybe this year, we make a point to set realistic goals and have a plan in place before that clock strikes 12. What do you say?

For me, I have three areas I want to continue growing in; my alcohol-free journey, my daily movement, and my faith.

When I’m alcohol-free I am authentically me. I’m present, healthy, and it sure feels good to continue keeping an important promise to myself.

When I’m intentionally adding movement into my day (whether it be walking, running, lifting weights, stretching, etc.), I feel better about myself, I’m more positive, and my self-confidence grows.

When I open my Bible, am listening to an episode of The Bible Recap, or am engaged in a conversation about faith, I feel joy and love growing inside me. It’s hard to put into words, but discovering and exploring my spiritual side has been such a beautiful gift.

I’m currently pouring my creativity and energy into an accountability type challenge for January. It’s going to be amazing! It’ll focus on those three themes and the reason I’m mentioning them to you today, my sweet friend, is because we all know we’re more likely to accomplish things when we do them together. My hope is that YOU might be interested in joining me!

In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more details for those who are interested. Keep an eye out for these exciting announcements!

Sending you big monster hugs,

Jess

*Note: the Digging Deeper w/Decidedly Dry Challenge will be available to paid Substack subscribers. Consider upgrading before January so that you can join us! That means you can participate for as little as $5/month.

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Newest Episode on Decidedly Dry:

Episode #83: Ali Shapiro on Staying Alcohol-Free Without Relying on Food to Take its Place.

In this episode, I had the pleasure of welcoming the wonderful and amazing Ali Shapiro on the show. Ali is the host of the top-ranked podcast, Insatiable, she’s a holistic nutritionist, integrated health coach, and a rebel with a serious cause. She’s academically, practically, and empathetically aware of how the medical system, diet culture, and body positivity movements all have their own flavor of crazy. 

Ali developed TRUCE while in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where she drew from her 17+ years of working with real life clients and her own personal healing journey from emotional eating and having cancer as a teenager. Ali’s work and clients’ unique success has been featured in well + Good, mindbodygreen, Prevention, Women’s Health and Forbes, as well as industry leading podcasts Being Boss, Tell Me Something True, and Food Heaven.

Ali and I had actually never met prior to our interview - and holy toledo did we hit it off! Our conversation is real, it’s raw, and it’s being delivered to your beautiful ears at just the right time. Can’t wait for you to enjoy this special chat.

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Things I’m Digging:

• Kings Corner Card Game: My boys and I love playing card games. We were recently introduced to Kings Corner and have been playing it nearly every single day since. Click here to find out how to play.

• Currently Reading: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. My Dad gifted me this book years ago and I’m finally picking it up. Please tell me I’m not the only doofus out here who has a pile of books they fully intend on reading, but accidentally start different ones? This should be a great read though and I’m excited to dive in.

• Currently Listening To: After dropping my son off at school, I’ve found myself listening to Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song) by Amy Grant. Not only is it perfect for this time of year, but the lyrics are simply beautiful and bring me to tears nearly everytime I hear them.

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This weekly newsletter and podcast is a free offering from my Substack newsletter, Decidedly Dry. There’s an option for you to purchase a subscription, which basically means you’re interested in supporting me and my work with your dollars. A paid subscription also means you’ll have access to different features beyond my weekly newsletter. Features *might* include: additional writings, bonus podcast episodes, resources, recipes, journal and doodle prompts, workout routines, etc. I’m not 100% sure yet and that’s what makes this kind of exciting. It allows me to experiment as I go and figure out how to build (what I hope to be) a long lasting, supportive, entertaining resource for you.

Why Subscribe?

There is a free subscription and a paid subscription. The paid subscriptions to Decidedly Dry are $5/month or $50/year.

Paying subscribers get:

• My regular newsletter, where I talk about sobriety, motherhood, homeschooling, my ever-growing God curious journey, books, and more

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• Workouts that make me want to cry, but I naturally end up loving

• Journal and doodle prompts

• Ability to comment and join the community

One Last Thing…

I just want to take a minute and say thank you for sticking with me. If you’re receiving this email it’s because you’ve either purchased a journal, participated in a wellness challenge of mine, loved my content, purchased coaching, etc. No matter what it was, our paths crossed at some point and you’re still here. That means so much to me and YOU, my sweet friend, are the reason I continue doing what I do. Regardless of which you choose, free or paid, we’re still bff’s.

PS. If you have someone in your life who you think would enjoy this newsletter, I’d love for you to share it by clicking the link below: