"I was a professional woman. I had everything."
Before any of this, I was a business consultant. I built that career from nothing — no shortcuts, no handouts, just years of showing up and figuring it out. I was independent. I was the one people came to for advice, for a plan, for the thing that would fix the problem. I raised my kids while I did it. On paper, I had everything a person is supposed to want.
Yasmin, during her consulting years.
"The fire changed everything."
In 2020, my house caught fire. It burned my lungs, and it burned a version of my life down with it. What came after wasn't dramatic in the way people expect — there was no single rock-bottom moment. There was just pain, and then painkillers to manage the pain, and a body and a mind that had never had to lean on anything like that before.
"I didn't see it coming."
The painkillers led to drinking. Not all at once — slowly, the way most of these things actually happen. A glass to take the edge off. Then a glass because the day was long. I didn't think of myself as someone with a problem. I was a professional. A mom. Someone who had it together. That belief is exactly what let the drinking keep growing quietly, underneath a life that still looked, from the outside, like it was working.
"I decided to stop running."
Eventually the drinking caught up with the rest of my life, and I was arrested. I want to be honest about this part instead of skipping past it, because I think the people who need this site are tired of stories that leave out the hard chapters. I spent 13 months away from everything — my home, my freedom, my old idea of who I was. Instead of fighting that time or pretending it wasn't happening, I made a decision to stop running from it and actually sit inside it.
"This is where New Habits was born."
It was during that time that I found something none of the expensive programs I'd tried before had ever given me. I watched women around me get through the worst of withdrawal not by white-knuckling it, but by giving their hands and their mouths and their minds something else to do. My girls in camp used to eat through bags of butterscotch candy during withdrawal. It worked. Nobody gave them a chip for it, and nobody made them stand up and announce anything. They just made it through the next five minutes, and then the five minutes after that.
That's the whole idea behind New Habits. You don't have to fight a craving head-on. You can replace it — a mint instead of a drink, a book instead of a bottle, a small new habit standing in for the old one until the old one loses its grip.
"Two years later."
Today I'm two years sober. I didn't get there through AA, and I didn't get there through $150-an-hour therapy sessions I couldn't keep affording. I got there one small replacement at a time, and I built New Habits, New Hope so I could hand that same method to you. Right now that means a story, a method, and a shop full of the small things that helped me. Soon, I hope it means a free weekly community for people who want a way to change without shame, without judgment, and without a giant invoice.
Yasmin today, two years sober.