About this episode

Kerri Maher shares her journey with alcohol and personal growth in a conversation with Coach Hayley.

In Summer of Love, Kerri Maher writes about wine country glamour, shame that runs across generations, and the woman at the center who can't quite say out loud what she knows about herself. She lived that from the inside before she could write it clearly. She read Annie Grace's This Naked Mind in its earliest self-published form in 2016, stopped drinking for 15 months, then convinced herself the problem had been unhappiness and let it back in, and spent four more years in the push and pull: a sticky note on the fridge that kept watching her fail, sneak drinking she couldn't rationalize away, and a strange accidental last act at the end of 2021 that finally closed the door. This conversation with Coach Hayley is the first time she's said any of it out loud. Kerri and Coach Hayley discuss: What Kerri's first, unspoken reaction to a friend's news told her about herself — and why she almost didn't register it Why reading Annie Grace's This Naked Mind in its earliest self-published edition wasn't the simple end of the story The sticky note on the fridge, the promise it represented, and what she was still doing while it stayed up A question from the Sober Powered podcast that gave her…

People in this episode

Host: Coach Hayley

Guest: Kerri Maher

Topics covered

• alcohol addiction
• personal growth
• emotional regulation
• family dynamics
• coaching
• self-discovery

Keywords

• alcohol
• self-improvement
• coaching
• emotional regulation
• family shame
• personal story
• This Naked Mind

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Sober Powered

Books & works: This Naked Mind, Summer of Love

More episodes of This Naked Mind Podcast

• The Real Reason You Drink · July 21, 2026 · 1h 15m
• How Grief Built Perfectly Made AF · July 18, 2026 · 59 min
• Are You Drinking To Escape? · July 14, 2026 · 1h 4m
• I Was A Functional Drinker For 32 Years · July 11, 2026 · 46 min
• Why You Drink To Fit In · July 7, 2026 · 1h 4m
• Why You Keep Going Back To Alcohol · June 30, 2026 · 1h 9m

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