Author: Anne Marie Cribbin

There’s something about autumn that makes the glow of a TV screen feel like a ritual. Maybe it’s the earlier sunsets, maybe it’s the comfort of a blanket and a warm mug, maybe it’s just that fall makes us crave story. I can’t think about the early seasons of “Downton Abbey” without remembering a glass of red in hand. At the time, it felt elegant — like I was participating in the aristocracy of television. But the truth is, the show blurred into the haze of alcohol. Now when I watch, I notice the details. The one raised eyebrow from…

There is a kind of hunger that gnaws long before we name it. It’s not in the belly but in the marrow. A hollowness that grows each time the world asks us to settle for less than truth. Spiritual starvation comes in many forms. It comes when we are told to sit quietly in churches that preach love but practice exclusion. It comes when wellness culture reduces our worth to green juices, vision boards and a never-ending chase for self-improvement. It comes when the deeper questions — Why am I here? What is my life for? Where do I belong?…

“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” isn’t typically where viewers go looking for lessons in recovery. More often, it’s known for icy confrontations, quick-witted clapbacks and the drama of friendship fallouts. But in Season 6, Episode 2, the show paused long enough to capture something rare: a mother and son in the thick of an honest, tender conversation about addiction.  That moment belonged to Mary Cosby and her son, Robert Jr. Viewers who know Mary for her biting one-liners may have been startled by the posture she took with him: present, grounded and compassionate. What unfolded was not a…

Taylor Swift’s latest release, “The Life of a Showgirl” (Oct. 3, 2025), arrives with a shimmer that feels almost audacious in this cultural moment. After years of heartbreak anthems, pointed diss tracks and moody explorations of grief and longing, she has given us an album that radiates light. It’s glossy, it’s glittering and — most notably — it’s unapologetically happy. Critics have been quick to call the record shallow, dismissing it as a collection of carefree pop tracks without the lyrical depth that has defined Swift’s career. But that critique misses something essential: sometimes joy itself is the statement. Sometimes…

In the cycle of the Celtic calendar, we are in the season of Lughnasa (LOO-nah-sah). It is the festival of the first harvest, the moment when the land itself begins to give. Grains ripen, fruits swell, fields tilt toward abundance. It is a season of generosity and also of invitation to notice what the land is offering and to practice the art of receiving. That practice is not always simple. Many of us know how to give until we are emptied out. We know how to work, how to strive, how to tend. But to receive? That can feel uncomfortable,…

In our dopamine-deprived culture, female pop music isn’t shallow — it’s a lifeline. Taylor Swift’s announcement of “The Life of a Showgirl,” set to drop Oct. 3, 2025, lit up the internet with countdown timers, sparkling vinyl variants and fan frenzy. (AP News) Sabrina Carpenter’s “Man’s Best Friend,” arriving Aug. 29, has gone from Instagram tease to global anticipation. (Elle) Chappell Roan’s latest single, “The Subway,” dropped July 31 and immediately became a queer anthem of fierce vulnerability. (Vogue) Beyoncé’s genre-bending “Cowboy Carter,” released March 2024, reframed country music as both personal history and collective reckoning. (AP News) And Ariana…

The tomatoes on my windowsill blush in slow motion. One shade deeper each morning, refusing to be rushed. I watch them while I make herbal coffee, feeling that familiar tug of impatience that used to send me scrolling for flights, sales, or the next glass of rosé. Scarcity loves urgency. It whispers, Hurry! Someone else will get the best bite, the last ticket, the perfect moment. You’ll miss it if you blink. Seven summers into sobriety, I’m learning to linger instead. Rather than chasing more, I practice noticing what’s already glowing in my hands. It’s not a pivot I made…

Remember where you were on August 12, 2025, at 12:12 a.m.? It’s TS12 time. LET’S GO. Honestly, the only thing that scares me more than this is knowing TS13 is next. But as my therapist reminds me when I’m spiraling into the future: say one true thing out loud to ground yourself. I am sitting at my desk.It’s a beautiful morning.My yogurt is cherry almond flavored.And I am PSYCHED OUT OF MY MIND. The Life of a Showgirl.I mean. The Life of a Showgirl?? This is not a soft launch.This is not a wink and a nod.This is a strut-in-heels-down-the-street,…

There’s a version of recovery that looks very impressive from the outside. Structured. Consistent. Clipped and polished. The kind that wakes early, drinks water with lemon, says all the affirmations, attends all the meetings, makes green smoothies, journals by candlelight. It is a recovery that can be photographed. Tidy. Celebrated. Marketable. And underneath it, I often find a very old fear. Control, posing as healing. It’s easy to mistake one for the other. Our culture rewards control so thoroughly that it takes some time to even notice how much of our so-called wellness is really just surveillance. We swap wine…

In the middle of Washington, D.C., behind a simple Cape Cod-style house, not far from North Capitol Street, my grandmother’s backyard was a wild, generous thing. The heat of June and July coaxed everything into overdrive. Basil and mint climbed the chain-link fence. Rosemary spilled over the steps. Zucchini blossoms flared open like little suns. There were grape arbors that stretched across the yard, rhubarb and tomatoes crowding each other for space, and once, even peanuts that probably sprouted from something tossed in the compost. Between concrete and clotheslines, it thrived like a postage-stamp-sized Eden.   I spent a lot of…

In a city that runs on breaking news and Metro fires, mornings matter. I need something bold and grounding, something that meets me with warmth and depth before I meet headlines and honking. For me, that something is Teeccino. Teeccino offers both herbal coffee and herbal tea—but let’s be clear: I’m here for the herbal coffee. When brewed strong and slowly, either through a French press or drip-style, it fills the kitchen with the kind of aroma that says: ‘You’re awake now.’ Something is beginning. I gave up caffeine long before I gave up alcohol. Caffeine sent my anxiety into…

I rearranged my spice cabinet this week. It felt like I was putting myself back together, one jar at a time.  I took everything out. The jars with crusted lids, duplicates of thyme, an old tin of smoked paprika that still smelled like late winter. I started fresh. Clean cloth, warm water, good music playing low. I stood there for over an hour, slowly wiping, sorting, smelling, remembering. It wasn’t about organization. It was about intimacy. About belonging again to my own kitchen. For a long time, I didn’t belong there. Not really. The kitchen used to be where I…

Come for the quiet. Stay for the bougie ice cream. Hot Girl Summer has packed her bags. Brat Summer’s glitter has faded. What we’re stepping into now isn’t about visibility or rebellion. It’s about richness. Slowness. Texture. This is Luxe Summer. And if you’re sober, you’re already fluent in its language. Luxe Summer didn’t arrive with fanfare. It crept in on soft linen sheets and whispered through a breeze scented with lavender and cut limes. Fashion trendsetters dubbed it “quiet luxury” — minimalist, intentional, and rooted in quality over clout. Think Gwyneth Paltrow on trial in a $1,000 cashmere sweater,…

We don’t talk enough about the wild in recovery. We talk about steadiness, which matters. We talk about structure, which is essential. We talk about peace, and we talk about pain. But we rarely talk about the part of us that still longs to run barefoot. The part of us that wants to shout, or kiss the wind, or laugh too loudly in church. The part of us that isn’t reckless but untamed. The part that is aching to be free. In early sobriety, I was terrified that choosing to stop drinking meant choosing to live a small life. I…

The poet, composer, mystic, and saint Hildegard von Bingen once described a force she called viriditas — the greening power of the soul. It’s the way life insists on blooming. The way the earth cracks open to make room for tiny, stubborn shoots of green. The way moss curls itself over stone, the way ivy winds up brick walls, the way even the driest deserts can remember how to flower. For Hildegard, this divine greening wasn’t just a seasonal event — it was a holy force, a vitality that flows through all things, and it was her favorite metaphor for…

I was a recovery coach at Tempest when Chrissy Teigen originally shared on social media that she had quit drinking after reading Holly Whitaker’s book “Quit Like a Woman.” I remember the moment clearly because our membership numbers jumped dramatically. We called it the “Chrissy Teigen Effect.” Her openness didn’t just make sobriety more visible. It made it feel possible. Real. Desirable, even. So when I listened to Chrissy’s recent conversation with Holly on her podcast “Self-Conscious,” I felt something crack open again. This time it wasn’t excitement or validation. It was compassion. In the episode, Chrissy shares that she…

Last summer, I found myself sobbing in a stadium in Dublin while 50,000 people sang about illicit affairs and teenage love triangles. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t high. I wasn’t even overwhelmed. I was awake. It was the kind of collective joy that doesn’t happen often — raw, reverent, a little feral. Like church, but louder. I’d flown across the ocean, notebook in my carry-on, heart cracked open, knowing this wasn’t just a concert. This was a reckoning. A ritual. A reclamation. And now, this summer? It’s quieter. The tour has moved on. My sequined Karma jacket is in a…

The first drop falls and then another. Not rushed. Not loud. A beginning made of hush. The soil stirs. Not from hunger— but memory. Stone remembers water. Remembers what it is to be softened, to be a vessel, to be more than weight. Rain shakes the silence loose. The scent rises— earth unbuttoning her collar, murmuring in a tongue older than language. This is not a storm. This is a release. Petrichor: stoneblood. The sacred seep. The veins of the divine breaking open to remind us that even what seems most solid has a story of flow. Change is not coming. Change is here. In the loosened root, the moss gone darker with remembering, the breath you didn’t know you were holding now let…

Someone asked me recently how I maintain work-life balance. I think they expected something tidy — maybe a calendar hack or my favorite productivity tool. Instead, I said, “I don’t.” Not because I’m falling behind, but because I’ve stopped performing. Balance, in the way our culture describes it, isn’t real. It’s a modern myth. A metric of control. A cruel standard that says: If you were really healed, if you were really committed, if you were really well, you’d have it all handled. But I’ve found that chasing balance doesn’t ground me. It fractures me. Recovery taught me this first.…

The Celtic calendar doesn’t measure time the way modern life demands we do. It doesn’t split the year into tidy halves or neatly ordered quarters. It listens to the land instead. To the birds returning. To buds breaking open. To bees hovering like messengers. And so while many might think of May as the middle of spring, in the Celtic year, Bealtaine is its own beginning — the gateway into the light half of the year. Bealtaine — celebrated on May 1 — is one of the four major fire festivals of the Celtic calendar, marking the midpoint between the…

Why are we talking about menopause on a site that celebrates pop culture? Because 6,000 people in the United States enter menopause every single day. That’s more than 1.3 million a year. And many of them are doing it while still raising kids, holding down jobs, navigating relationships and recovering from trauma. And for more than a few, trying to figure out if that glass of wine is still “working” the way it used to. Perimenopause, the long and often confusing lead-up to menopause, can begin as much as 10 years before that final period. Yet most people are caught…

The hum of an air conditioner draws you back, Back to me, Away from the swirl of thoughts that hover in the space between. Spring was pressing into my streets, The night air restless, March sighing as she loosened her grip, Her crown slipping into the shadows. Forsythia drooped in my parks, Blooming too soon, too heavy for their time. You stood on my corner, beneath my street lamp, As I shifted around you. The threshold of change was right there, But you couldn’t see it— Not yet. Did you laugh that night? I can’t be sure. But I remember…

Dear Andy, First of all, let me start by saying: I love this messy little empire you’ve built. The “Real Housewives” franchise is a masterpiece of absurdity and opulence, a symphony of Birkin bags, surprise lawsuits, sprinkle cookies, and women fighting over who said what at whose charity gala. It is, at its best, an intoxicating blend (pun fully intended) of glamour, camp, and deep, deep pettiness. Where else can we get a woman hurling a prosthetic leg across a dinner table (Aviva Drescher, you are forever unhinged in our hearts), a socialite snarking, “If I give you a Chanel…

There is a moment — brief, fleeting, balanced — where the world stands still. The spring equinox. A day when light and dark hold equal sway, a momentary pause before the tipping begins again. It’s easy to think balance is something we should strive for, that it’s a permanent state we can reach with enough effort. But nature reminds us otherwise. Balance is not a place where we live. It is a place we pass through. The world does not remain in perfect equilibrium; it only visits. And so, why should we expect ourselves to be any different? We hold…

I never got the fire-making badge in Girl Scouts. In fact, I got kicked out before I had the chance. So, I’ve never actually built a fire myself—never stacked logs in a careful teepee, never struck a match and watched the flame catch, never hovered over embers, coaxing them back to life. But I know, deep in my bones, that fire is about more than just burning. It’s about tending. And that’s something I do know how to do. In the Celtic calendar, fire is woven into the rhythms of the year. The great festivals—Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa, Samhain—are marked by…

The ocean chews at the shore, gnashing with a nervous tide, waves walloping, splitting sand apart in their fury. Saltwater spray soars skyward, compound droplets beating down on blue-black water, churning and frothing—rising from the depths of rage. The waves take monstrous shape, furious, like the gaping mouths of gargoyles, hungry and relentless, gnawing at the fragile edge of the world. This briny cathedral, an altar where offerings are endlessly spilled on the shore— glass and rock and slime, death and life mingled in bone, flesh, mineral, and breath. Salted wounds. Salted tears. Salted sea. It consumes all—whole and free— …

The story of colonization is written in many languages, but one of the most insidious is the language of alcohol. For centuries, the British Empire wielded alcohol as a weapon of control, suppression, and assimilation against the Irish people. Understanding this history is essential not only for recognizing the deep wounds inflicted on Ireland but also for reclaiming sobriety as an act of rebellion, resistance, and self-determination. Alcohol as a Tool of Oppression  Colonization isn’t just about land grabs and political domination; it’s about dismantling the spirit of a people. For the Irish, alcohol became a way to break resistance,…

There is a moment, subtle and nearly imperceptible, when the earth begins to shift. The deep freeze of winter loosens its grip, and something stirs beneath the surface. It is not yet spring, but it is no longer the dead of winter. This is Imbolc—the season of thaw, the hinge between what has been frozen and what will bloom. Imbolc is the ancient Celtic festival that honors this moment of transition. Celebrated around February 1st, it marks the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The name Imbolc is thought to derive from “i mbolg,” meaning “in…

I come from a long line of Guinness drinkers. Sundays after church, my siblings and I would Irish step dance at the local Irish bar while the grown-ups threw back pints, the rich scent of Guinness lingering in the air. I have vivid memories of picking daffodils outside The Dubliner in Washington, D.C., wearing my green dancing dress, my shawl fastened with Celtic cross pins with little emerald shamrocks. I dreamed of one day visiting Ireland, the land of my ancestors, and drinking Guinness at every pub along the way. And then I got sober. And I thought that dream…

We danced around the periphery with fairy wings Throwing glitter that caught the light Hips swaying in the shimmer The tall grass moving with us Pinkies locked and promises made to step into the center This was our time Full moon freedom on a Saturday afternoon “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it.” Sweet chants of childhood cheering us on Eyes closed. Count to 3. Then leap. Into the caramel and marrow The center of the magic With it’s swirls and swells and tyrant twisters And sandbars and shady weeping willows too We took flight in the…