Apr 8, 2020
- You know deep down that you have to change your drinking.
- You know that the way you drink affects every area of your life, that you can’t compartmentalize alcohol, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself you can, and
- You know that the way you drink robs you and your loves, of joy, peace, freedom and the very best version of you.
Every morning you look in the mirror and and feel the familiar sob of sadness and despair for the dull eyed women staring back at you. You can’t remember the last time you woke up feeling rested, happy and proud of yourself.
You know you don’t look or feel your best, you need better sleep, more focus, more patience, more calm and you know, absolutely, that changing the way you drink will bring you a happy, healthier, more balanced and energized life.
Yet with everything you know, you struggle to make what should be simple changes around alcohol – maybe you don’t want to drink every night, or even just to drink less every night -it doesn’t matter, because whatever your morning decision is around alcohol, by the time evening comes, you drink. Again. Why?
It’s very simple. You don’t drink because of what you know, you drink because of what you feel. Or more specifically, you drink to comfort the way you feel. And your conflicting knowing and feeling are the root cause of the alcohol war you wage within you, every damn day.
Imagine now that you can change, and easily. That your inner war can be resolved, not by brutal defeat, but by a different and gentle understanding, that shifts your thinking and feeling into peaceful alignment. Where both sides are working for you, together.
Can you imagine that? What would your life look like, and how would you feel? There is an easy way to change the way you drink, it is the Alcohol Freedom Blueprint.
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The Alcohol Freedom Blueprint is a 90 minute intensive session, that is the simple solution to finding freedom from your exhausting inner battle. It changes the way you drink immediately, by removing the stress and anxiety of thinking something is wrong with you, as well as offering you a clear way forward to delivering you back to the life of peace and joy you deserve, free from your alcohol ‘need’
From your 90 minute Alcohol Freedom Blueprint Session, you will,
- Understand the exact 3 step process you go through every single time you have to drink – and how to lovingly let go of that process at the very first step, so that you can feel comfortable and in control of your alcohol choices
- End your exhausting alcohol mind chatter, so that you have the inner quiet to focus on the joys of your life
- Find freedom from your triggers, so that you don’t waste your life enhancing energy on working out strategies for avoidance, and instead you can lavish that energy on you and your loves.
- Receive 2 personalized strategies to empower you, so that you gain joyful confidence in yourself, free from your anxious fears of deprivation
The complete Alcohol Freedom Blueprint is a completely unique process that turns everything you have read and learned about changing the way you drink on its head!
Its power and effectiveness comes from the understanding that your drinking was your ‘solution’, long before it became your problem, and that reason you struggle to make the changes you long for is that your ‘alcohol is the solution‘ belief is still trapped inside you.
Doesn’t it make sense now, that when you try to stop drowning in your ‘alcohol is the solution’, it’s going to be the hardest way to change? I mean, take away your ‘solution’ and what are you left with? Problems………..
Instead, The Alcohol Blueprint Freedom, unravels and releases the ‘alcohol is the solution’ belief, effortlessly.
The Alcohol Blueprint Freedom IS for you if,
- You know that ‘enough is enough’, & your desire to change the way you drink has become greater than your pain of staying where you are.
- You are ready to take responsibility for YOU
- You are ready to step into the woman you truly are, free from the pain of your drinking
- You are ready to embrace a process that will change your life with an open mind
But it is NOT for you if,
- You are not prepared to show up as YOU, every day.
- You are looking for a magic wand – you are the magic
- You are not ready to own your choices
- You are not ready to embrace the life of freedom that awaits you
The Alcohol Freedom Blueprint starts with you completing a deep dive questionnaire, designed to uncover your beliefs around what alcohol is to you and how you believe you will feel / cope without it, as well as asking what interventions (if any) have tried before, why you believe they didn’t work, and finally, how you would like to think, feel and act around alcohol.
This is followed up by a 90 minute, highly personalized Zoom session, where you will,
- Be coached through the 3 step process you go through every time you drink
- Know exactly you believe alcohol offers to you – this is always a huge surprise and a big Ah Ha moment!
- Identify the conflicting voices in your head, of “Have a drink / Don’t have a drink”, and how to end the battle, peacefully, with both sides acknowledged and understood
At the end of the 90 minutes, you get a your full session replay to download and watch again and again, to keep you fully supported on your journey.
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So, how do I know how to help you, when nothing else has worked?
Well, I struggled for 28, long, painful years with alcohol. My drinking wrecked my son’s childhood and almost took my life.
I tried every therapy, sane and crack pot, out there to end my out of control drinking and nothing worked. Nothing.
Then 7 years ago I was told that if I didn’t stop drinking, I would die. But obviously I didn’t know how to stop, because believe me, if I did, I would have done it years before!
And instead, heartbreakingly, in my fear, confusion and overwhelming feelings of being a total failure, I started to drink more as I gave up on life, on my son, on me.
I wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t the mum he deserved. He would be better off without me.
And then I did stop! Out of nowhere, a miracle occurred (or so I thought), and it was effortless.
I was ‘lucky’ enough to have a glimmer of awareness about a possible alternative truth behind my drinking, and that glimmer was enough to shift my thinking the tiniest bit, the slightest movement, that told me that maybe, just maybe, what I had believed about my drinking, wasn’t the only truth, and that there was more to see. And so I started to look, to investigate, to research, to learn and to implement what I found.
Now, 6 years effortlessly sober, peacefully free, in a space of quiet joy and love with myself, my son and life, I have re-created the exact process of the journey to freedom I embarked on and shrunk it down into the programs I now offer, with absolute compassion and love to YOU. x
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Client Testimonial
“For over 10 years I’ve struggled and tried various recovery methods including 3 stays in rehab. I’ve finally got the effortless freedom from alcohol that Sonia promises,. I can’t remember feeling happy. I am me. Thank you Sonia. I’m truly grateful” x
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The investment for the life changing 90 minute ALCOHOL FREEDOM BLUEPRINT 90 MINUTE SESSION, is only £394
If you would like to know more about how this will work for you in your life, let’s have a confidential conversation, all you have to do is click to request a call below
Mar 24, 2020
Your world has shifted yet again! I wonder how many more times I will write that. Now you are in Lockdown, severely restricted around leaving your home, or doing any of the things you have taken for granted for so long, and without any real idea when it will end.
Your health and the health of your loved ones is uncertain, schools closed, business closing, and you seem to have very little control over the future – your morale keeps dipping, not matter how hard you try to keep it up there.
My loves and I are safe and well, so I know how fortunate I am, but of course I still my dips too, and my most recent, in the scheme of things small, but at the time to me big, came about because I had planned, since January, to take My Girls (my 2 doglets) on a walking holiday in March. Three days of much needed re-connecting with myself and of regrouping on every physical and emotional level, as the three of us walked around the coastline. I had booked a chalet on the beach in Devon, and it is literally my idea of heaven. I have been going there 4 times a year for over 30 years.
I went when my mother was killed, 29 years ago and when my Dad finally passed in October 2018.
I have been visiting the same place, and do the same things, through the highs and lows of my life, and I feel at my most connected there, so to not go, and the decision made one day before I was due to leave, was a real blow to me, even though I knew in the previous week, it was unlikely to happen.
Plus, I lost my money, which no-one can afford to do right now. So, on the morning of my departure date, which was the first day of Lockdown, I was feeling very dispirited and low.
Then I took My Girls for our walk. I went to a lovely wood close to my home. The sun was shining, and My Girls, as usual, almost combusted with joy – honestly they act as though every bit of food they get is the first mouthful they have been fed in a month, and every walk as a release from their ‘chained-up-in-a-shed’ lives – it is so embarrassing, especially as they are treated like princesses!
Anyway, as we walked, the sun warmed my face, comforting my disappointment, anxiety and fears, and I felt my jaw loosen and my breathing slow as I took in the gifts of the world I am so blessed to live in.
There are always very precious gifts that remain all around you, regardless of what is going on in life.
The daffodils were still growing, the birds still soaring above, the huge Red Kites dipping down and gliding back up above my head.
And then I noticed something else, in this state of national emergency, when travel is restricted, the blue sky was, an unseen in the last 20 years of my life, an uninterrupted expanse without the constant planes overhead and the wood, close to the road as it was, silent of the cars that usually rushed past.
In the midst of all this turmoil, our plant, our Mother Earth is breathing a deep, long, grateful sigh of relief that we have stopped our ‘doing’ and she is allowed to regroup, to heal, to flourish again.
You must take this opportunity to do the same. You have been stopped in your ‘doing’ tracks, and now is the time to ‘be’.
To become close to one another again emotionally, if not physically, by reaching out to the aunt/uncle/friend that is always on your ‘I’ll must call them, tomorrow will be easier’ list – a tomorrow that as you know too well, never comes.
Now you have the time to set up a virtual coffee and chat. Make it a different person every day, maybe even make some a weekly event. Do this at least every other day. Connect with them, talk to them, nourish and be nourished by your contact with them.
Reach out to the nightmare family member – just by text if that’s all you can face (they are still a nightmare) – check in on them, tell them you are thinking of them and if you love them, tell that too. Do it for your sake, and let that ripple out.
You don’t have to pretend to be best buds, but knowing that you should reach out, and then doing it, will give you a level of peace you need.
Be kinder to yourself. Get to know who you really are, and what you really need. Relax into the enforced ‘stopping’ of your rushing around, in your attempts to acquire the ‘stuff’ you feel you need, but is not necessary, is actually irrelevant and sometimes even damaging, to your ‘being’
Make a list of the books you would like to read, and then buy/download one a week. Listen to an audio book as you move more gently through your day.
Do some loving decluttering, the physical letting go of no longer needed objects also enables you to let go of the no longer needed thoughts and feelings.
Create more space in you inner and outer world.
These small things will start to gift you back the peace and balance and contentedness that you lack, and it is the lack in your life that is the fuel of your drinking.
The universe has created this time for you. This is a time of transformation on every level. And not only is now the time, now, you have the time.
The time to heal, if you choose to.
If you use this now wisely, it will be the greatest investment of your time you will ever make.
Stuff the new car, the new clothes, the holidays, etc – the things you buy to make you ‘feel better’.
Take this time to be the person who truly feels better, who is better because of your new ‘being‘. Now is the time, like our planet, for you to start your self-loving process of healing.
All this will pass, and whilst you go through this process, be very kind and gentle with yourself.
Sonia xx
There has never been a more a more important time for you to invest in being your best physical and emotional self, and you know that alcohol takes you further from that you.
You cannot know where you will be in 6 weeks time in your outer world, hopefully things will be more normal, but you can’t be sure of that.
However, I can tell you 100%, that if you do take responsibility now to invest in you, you will effortlessly return to being the quietly naturally resilient woman you were born to be, able and confident in your abilities to give and receive the care, love you need and deserve without any need of alcohol to ‘get you through your days’. That is the is the result you will have at the end of the 6 week Rapid Alcohol Recovery Method process.
If you know, within you that now is your time to invest and commit to YOU, contact me here to book an Exploratory Call
Oct 31, 2018
To make lifelong change to any Unhappy Habit (to change the way you drink/eat/shop and all the rest), you need to accept where you are now.
Accept that you are lost and confused about what you do, without judgement or criticism. It simply is what it is, nothing more, nothing less, and you want/need/must change it.
You don’t even need to now the ‘how’ of the path you took to get there, that is truly not relevant.
Its ‘how’ you maintain the Unhappy Habits NOW that matters, the rest is just a journey into your ’emotional past’ that has often long since gone, which can be both painful and pointless, when it comes to moving forward, other than it holds valuable information that you can use if you choose to.
So let’s start with taking a little look at at the structure of our Unhappy Habits, of what they would look like if we could actually see them. And for this purpose, the analogy of an iceberg is perfect, as it represents both your physical acts and the emotional intentions that drive them.
Above the water is the smallest part of your iceberg, and make no mistake, that smallest part can be pretty damn big. Its icy tip symbolizes your behaviour and its visible consequences.
It’s what you see reflected back at you in the mirror.
It’s the weight you hate, the signs of your alcohol consumption, the dehydration and anxiety in your dull eyed stare.
It’s in the stress you see so clearly etched on you own face when you have drunk, yet again, in a way you promised yourself you wouldn’t. When you have eaten an amount, you promised yourself you wouldn’t. When you have spent money you don’t have on stuff you don’t need….
As well as the looks of hurt, confusion, and lack of trust that you see in the faces of your children and your loved ones, when you have done again, what you promised them you wouldn’t, as well as the lies, desperation and hopelessness that are the ever present companions of what you DO.
That cold white ice is the what you ‘do’ of your habit – what you put into your mouth, what you spend, and seemingly, very sensibly, when you try to make changes, that’s where we start. I mean, if something you are doing isn’t working, just do something else, right……….
So, you circle our visible iceberg warily, thinking through your options, taking into account what has and hasn’t worked before, maybe there is a new diet plan, a new quit drinking, inspirational, motivational, prayer book even, that might just work this time.
And with your new information, you attack your icy peak with our unprotected hands in an attempt to mold it in to the new, improved ice sculpture version of yourself, which sadly you have learnt to feel we can never really be….. because my God, you have tried before and always ‘failed’ to maintain your new ice shape.
The ice shape that is the slim you, the sober you, the one that just isn’t who you are right now.
And why do you feel you can never be this new version of you?
That’s easy. You have been practising your ice sculpting skills for years and they always ‘fail’ you.
At best you have been able to create a temporary ‘new’ you, but then LIFE and the ice starts to shift and re-arrange itself as you try desperately to shape it back into place, until with bloodied, defeated hands you give up and accept your drunk/fat/broke destiny, without even acknowledging how brave you were to try again.
And I want you to know and accept this now…..the very fact that you keep trying means that you are the bravest of the brave.
Ok, so deep down, long lasting empowering, relief and release giving change does not come from working on your icy peak….. Agreed?
So, logically, the only other part of your iceberg to look at is the huge, submerged and brutally ragged, confused mass that lies beneath the water, you inner world, that supports your visible peak.
Dark and seemingly unknowable, this is the foundation of your iceberg, and it is formed by what you have learnt to believe is the only truth about both yourself, and your habit.
What your habit brings to you. How you will without it, who you will BE without it, what you will lose, how you will cope, and added to that is your experience around your habit in the good times – and there were good times, because if you hadn’t experience the good, before you lost control, you wouldn’t believe in its ‘power’ to make you feel better.
And together, all of the above has solidified, been frozen into what you accept as your reality.
Do you recognise yourself here?
Do you recognise the feelings that come up when you try to approach change, even just in your thinking? Before you take any action?
Do you recognise the discomfort, fear, anxiety that always shows up first in the pit of your stomach simply at the thought of making changes?
Those feeling are the only evidence you need to know that you have a belief about what you do….it is the seemingly freezing cold, menacing, submerged part of your iceberg that you believe will rip at you apart both physically and emotionally, if you get to close to it, and so you flinch from even approaching it, dwarfed and cowed as you are by its unseen but definitely felt, size and power.
Many brave souls who have understood this truth still take up the battle, donning protective clothing and attacking the submerged iceberg with all the weapons in their personal arsenal. They launch missiles of self-hate, recrimination and abuse at its silent mass, they meditate, join support groups, read endlessly on their poison of choice, and hope that one of these explosives will detonate on impact, smashing a tunnel to freedom. And still, no, that doesn’t work either.
So, what does?
To melt any iceberg you simply have to raise the temperature of the surrounding water.
And in the case of your Unhappy Habit, I mean the temperature of YOU.
To choose to bring out your sunshine of compassion, forgiveness and love of YOU to YOU, and let it shine down brightly, warming the air and and in doing so, allowing in the light to the Self-Awareness that is key to any transformation.
Self-Awareness can only be found in an expanded state of you. In your state of harsh Self-Judgement, Self-Criticism & Self-Despair, you shrink yourself down into a tight knot of fear and pain, and no new awareness’s can come in.
You rehash old information, that constricts and confuses you further. You tighten the straight jacket of your mind and completely close down any opportunity to the intuitive learning’s from your heart, that give you comfort, trust and faith in you, and allow you to look at what you DO, when and why differently.
Every new Self-Awareness brings questioning to the boundaries of what you believe and your experience.
It allows for the possibility of a different view of the reality you had previously created, and a different view, is an expanded view, which allows for different strategies and different behaviours, easily.
And as your self-awareness grows, you learn to have confidence in yourself, to pause and breathe before you ACT your Unhappy Habit, to recognise the patterns you run BEFORE you act, and to create new ones that truly do offer the comfort and support you are looking for. That is your always and forever TRUTH.
And in doing so, your icebergs naturally melt BECAUSE you expand your understanding of both yourself and your Unhappy Habit.
As you grow, any confusing thoughts and beliefs, frozen for so long, take on a softer, gentler shape, allowing us the flexibility to gently challenge what you DO, what you believe it gives you as well as finally feeling and accepting what it takes from you without your inner battle, all of which gives you the magical, joyful opportunity to act and be who you were born to be, who you are meant to be, habit free, happy, healthy and HEALED.
And the gift of letting your iceberg completely dissolve, it that you are left with an untroubled expanse of water, peaceful and calm, with no need for us to do anything, just to ‘be’.
I hope this message gives you comfort and insight and hope. I hope it resonated with you – it is my truth, and it is yours too. And I hope that it takes you to looking at yourself and what you DO differently.
The ‘different looking’ is the start of your incredible journey back to YOU.
If you need help in understanding & changing any Unhappy Habit, please contact me HERE today.
My LIFE Recovery Coaching comes from a place of deep understanding and compassion of a former addict, a lost woman and Mother, who now lives in acceptance of who I am, who loves who I am, and who is daily HEALING.
Be kind and gentle with yourself.
Sonia x
PS. if you would like to know more about my personal journey, from Pain to Peace, and from Hurt to Healed, 28 years of alcoholism, to peaceful freedom, take a look at my internationally acclaimed book, This Isn’t Me, described by Ranvir Singh, of Good Morning Britain as “Beautiful and devastating” (click on the link HERE). I wrote it for my son, as an apology for his younger years, and as an attempt to explain the un-explainable and it was where I started my journey back to LOVE
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Aug 5, 2018
Every day we are faced with a multitude of choice points. The points where you decide which road you are going to take and its consequences.
Most days for me start with “What time do I get out bed?” and the consequences of, “If I choose the later time will I be late for work/ whatever”, on to, “Shall I wash my hair or can I get away with another day”, (with my fine hair it’s usually a, “No! Do it!”), and then the plethora of other choices we make during the day before we hit our pillows again.
All the years I was drunk, I didn’t even realize I had a choice. I thought drink had chosen me, that my alcoholism was the result of an unfortunate game of Russian Roulette in which I had spectacularly lost and that I just had to accept it, painful and desperate though that thinking was.
I remember crying tears of despair knowing that I would have given my eyesight to be the mother my beautiful boy deserved, that a physically disabled mother would have been better than the alcoholic one he had.
And honestly, that thinking was almost the entire reason I stayed in a trap of my own creation for almost 28 years. I had abdicated responsibility for my choices to a bottle of bloody vodka. A liquid that couldn’t speak, buy itself, open its lid and finally leap down my throat. I mean WTF! I actually believed that alcoholism had chosen me and that I just had to accept it.
Now I know differently, and here’s the thing about choice. It is the greatest gift we have as humans, our greatest cognitive skill. It offers ALL opportunities for change if we just own it.
From the day I understood that I had a choice, I was free from my drinking. From the day I understood that I chose what I ate and drank, regardless of the fears of the how I would live/cope/be without alcohol, those fears evaporated in front of my very eyes.
I allowed my fears in and they were like mists parting around me, I walked through them and they didn’t touch me! How could they, they were simply thoughts and memories, painful and difficult though some were, which I had a choice to either act on or ignore. Yes I felt unsteady and unsure, of course I did, I had used alcohol as a crutch for over half my life. I had used booze to protect me from pain even though it had become an even greater source of pain, and still I had felt I had no choice.
But I didn’t let that unsteadiness or any uncertainty of how I would cope affect my sober choice. And every time I stuck to my choice, guess what? I grew stronger, more resilient, and prouder of myself and, at exactly the same time, my fears weakened into a state where they could be acknowledged, comforted and understood, making my sober choice even easier. It will be the same for you, I promise x
The most empowering choice we have is our ability to chose who we want to be and how we want to feel. Make that one choice and all other choices fall into line to support it. Do you want to be slim? Choose to be slim and your food choices will follow. Do you want to be sober? Choose sober and your drink choices will follow.
If making one overriding choice feel too big for you right now, too ‘for ever’, make smaller ones consistently. Choose each day who you want to be, how you want to feel, and your choices to support it will fall into line.
When an old feeling of, “How will I cope in a stressful situation, when I am bored, lonely, out of my depth”, when you remember the pain of a broken childhood, heart, whatever your trigger is, comes, STOP. Pause. Breath deeply, fill your lungs. Hug yourself and remind yourself of who you want to be. Who you really are.
Let the feelings come and let them drift right on by. They will, all feelings do. And if sometimes unhappy feelings take longer to pass than you would like, be kind and gentle with yourself and know, with 100% certainty that all feelings are just thoughts that eddy and flow through our minds, that they are not physical and that you don’t have to react to them unless you to choose too.
To help you out, I want you to remember a really happy time, one that makes your heart sing.
Mine is my son jumping in to my arms when he was four, in our local swimming pool screaming ‘Geronimo’ as I taught him to swim. Even typing this makes me smile and shifts my ‘It’s too bloody hot in my office and I need to get out’ feeling”.
Take your heart singing moment and hold it tight. Step into it, feel it, hear it, see it and feel your body and energy literally shift to a happier place. Then make your choice.
My final words on the subject of choice are very important.
Your choice is not determined by anyone else’s view of us, your choice is determined by YOU.
You will often find yourself in situations in life that you cannot control, probably daily. These are external situations. However, only you can choose how you react to them, these are internals responses. Own that.
Stop saying to yourself, “He did/She did. He makes me feel/She makes me feel/I need it to cope/I need it to relax” and all the rest. When you own your responses and so your choices, everything, literally everything is yours for the taking. I promise you x
To find out more about my journey from alcoholism to peaceful sobriety, check out my book This Isn’t Me page.
To find out more me and working with me, check out my About Sonia and How I Work For You, pages. In fact, take a wander throughout my website, my aim to is to bring you the transformation I love every day x
Jun 29, 2018
This Isn’t Me is the painful story of my journey into a heroin addiction and recovery, and then subsequent alcohol addiction that lasted over 27 years. It is about the horrifying shock of realizing that my alcoholism was impossible to overcome, even with all the available interventions and professional support I engaged with for over 15 years, when I had successfully overcome heroin with none.
It details the relationship between myself and my now 19-year-old son. About being a single mother and the absolute joy of the gift of him. A joy that turned into the crippling nightmare of severe post-natal depression, requiring in-house psychiatric care on two occasions, and my return to drinking and then self-harm to cope.
I write of my despair on realizing that I would die an alcoholic after being informed that my liver was damaged. Of the deceptions and self-disgust, of my complete desperation to be different.
And then it details the miraculous, magenta moment just over three years ago when I just stopped drinking. No last drink, I simply stopped. Of the “how” and “why” of my stopping. My sobriety is easy, and I do not attend any interventions or have any therapy or support. I just don’t drink. Even after my first sober, truly painful experience of loss of a loved one, alcohol did not enter my mind. I even have alcohol in the house, I just don’t see it.
It tells of my total commitment to helping my son heal as much as possible in a healthy way where his hurts and confusion are discussed and talked through, as and when he needs those conversations. I write about where I am now, where we are now in our relationship, our closeness, our friendship, our love and understanding.
Available only on Amazon. Click link here AMAZON, This Isn’t Me
Reviews
“This book has saved my relationship with my son”
Jenny F
“I myself have been alcohol free for 6 years I don’t like the term in recovery. I cannot recommend this book highly enough written with such honesty and truth I can totally relate to. It has helped me to be more open with my children about our experience during my drinking days I really felt like it was written about me we are now going to start family therapy thank you Sonia.” Lisa
“I couldn’t put this book down. The author writes with honest simplicity about her journey through drugs and alcohol, never once seeking to shock or elicit sympathy, she Just tells it like it was. Pages written about her relationship with her son pulled at my heart strings and I felt her pride as he grew into an amazing young man. Well done. I think we can all learn about ourselves and whatever demons we battle from this book. I’ll certainly be thinking about my choices.” E Kirby
As the LIFE Recovery Coach, I now take clients through the same journey of powerful change, through my unique, 6 week Alcohol Recovery Method
If you would like to know more about how I can help YOU find peace and freedom from your LIFE Pain, contact me HERE
I am here to help xx
