Kelsey's story: choosing herself, choosing her son
Five years sober. A full time single mom. A gym junkie. A mountain lover. An LGBTQ advocate. A feminist. A self described vigilante and sweetheart.
And, perhaps more than anything, free.
Kelsey does not speak about sobriety as though it is something she has simply endured for the last five years. She speaks about it with joy. With excitement. With the kind of certainty that comes from knowing exactly what life felt like before — and recognizing how different it feels now.
"I absolutely love sobriety. I didn't realize how trapped I was until I was truly free of my addiction."
For Kelsey, sobriety is not a lesser version of life.
It is the life she did not know was waiting for her.
"Being sober is the best feeling on earth! Waking up with clarity and confidence is better than any drink ever was!!"
Kelsey's turning point was her son, Breck.
When he turned one, she made a decision: she never wanted her son to have memories of a drunk mother.
Then came the morning of June 3, 2021.
Kelsey woke up sick and tired of herself. Something had shifted. She describes alcohol as suddenly becoming disgusting to her, and that day, she stopped drinking.
She has been sober ever since.
"I quit cold turkey on June 3rd, 2021 and haven't had a single craving since that morning."
Kelsey is also quick to acknowledge that her experience is not everyone's experience. She describes her own as an anomaly and understands that for many people, addiction and recovery are far more complicated.
But she still wants the person struggling to hear what she believes with her whole heart:
"If I can do it, ANYONE CAN!!"
Her path may be uniquely hers. Her hope is that someone else sees possibility in it.
Breck is now six years old.
He is Kelsey's number one motivation, and when she talks about what sobriety has given her, so much of it comes back to him.
"He deserves a sober mom!!!"
Today, Kelsey never has to worry about her son being around alcohol in their home. She knows his environment is safe and secure. She no longer has to live with the fear of what might happen while intoxicated, what trouble she could get into, or what relationships she might damage during a blackout.
That certainty matters to her.
But sobriety has also given Kelsey something deeply personal: the opportunity to experience her own life with clarity.
"I have full clarity and I'm learning how to deal with my emotions without masking it with alcohol. I am learning who I truly am for the first time in my late 30s."
Five years into sobriety, Kelsey is still discovering herself.
Not the version of herself shaped by alcohol.
Not the version surviving from one blackout or consequence to the next.
Herself.
For Kelsey, getting sober meant more than removing alcohol from her life.
It meant reshaping the life around her.
One of the most difficult parts of her journey was building healthier habits and becoming more intentional about the people she allowed close to her. Some friendships had lasted for decades, but longevity did not necessarily mean those relationships were healthy.
"Getting sober meant cutting out a lot of toxic friendships in my life. I had to let go of people I was keeping around for decades but they weren't serving my life positively anymore."
There can be grief in outgrowing people.
There can also be freedom.
As Kelsey let go of relationships that no longer supported the life she was building, she eventually found something else: community.
Two years ago, Kelsey joined Burn Boot Camp Sussex.
She describes the community as life changing.
Since June 2024, she has lost 50 pounds. She has built what she proudly calls "incredible amounts of muscle." But the transformation she describes is not only physical.
She also gained "a whole gym of soul sisters."
For a woman who had to make the painful decision to leave toxic friendships behind, finding a community where she feels supported has become an important part of the life she has built in sobriety.
"Burn Boot Camp Sussex is my rock!"
Her fitness journey is still ongoing. It is one of the goals she continues to pursue, alongside being the best mother she can be for Breck and sharing her recovery story so others do not feel alone.
Kelsey is a new person inside and out.
And she worked for both.
When Kelsey looks at herself today, she is grateful for two choices:
Choosing herself.
And choosing her son.
"I am grateful I chose to be brave in a world obsessed with alcohol."
For Kelsey, that matters.
Alcohol is woven into celebrations, social gatherings, stress relief, jokes, milestones, bad days, good days, and nearly every space in between. Choosing sobriety can sometimes mean choosing differently in environments where drinking is treated as the default.
Kelsey chose differently anyway.
And she wants people to understand that sobriety is not a consolation prize.
"Sobriety is soooooo much better than any high you can feel. I promise you'll love being sober more than any feeling on earth. It's absolutely, positively LIBERATING!!!!"
Then she adds:
"Beating addiction is the most BADASS thing you can do for yourself!!"
There is no shame in the way Kelsey talks about sobriety.
There is pride.
If someone currently struggling with addiction is reading her story, Kelsey does not want them to feel alone.
She wants them to know that her inbox is open.
She wants them to know there is another side.
And she wants them to be brave.
"They can do it!!!!! I promise it's soooo much better on the other side!!!! Be brave!!!! My inbox is always open to anyone trying to beat addiction!! You can make it out alive! I promise!"
Kelsey knows that nobody is above addiction.
That is part of why she wants to share her story.
Not because every person's recovery will look like hers.
Not because there is one perfect path out.
But because someone, somewhere, may feel as trapped as she once did.
And maybe they need to hear from someone who made it out.
Kelsey's definition of a second chance is simple, but it holds space for both responsibility and healing:
"Taking accountability for your past but giving yourself grace to move forward."
She does not erase the past.
She does not pretend it did not happen.
She also does not believe she has to live there forever.
Five years after choosing sobriety, Kelsey is raising her son in a safe and secure environment. She is learning to feel her emotions instead of masking them. She is discovering who she truly is in her late 30s. She is building strength in the gym. She is surrounded by soul sisters. She is advocating for the communities she believes in. She is telling the truth about where she has been.
And she is free.
"I'm a new person inside and out. I want to show people who feel trapped that there is a way out!!!"
There is.
Kelsey is living proof.
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reflections from the photographer
Before I ever photographed Kelsey, I know one thing about the way I wanted to tell her story:
I did not want to make it sad.
That may sound strange in a project centered around addiction and recovery, because these stories often carry incredibly painful chapters. But one of the things I am learning through The Second Chance Project is that recovery does not have one emotional tone.
Some stories whisper.
Kelsey's kicks the door open.
She talks about sobriety with a kind of joy that is impossible to miss. She calls it liberating. She calls beating addiction badass. She stretches out the word "sooooooo" because apparently a normal amount of enthusiasm simply will not do.
And I love that about her story.
Because we talk so much about what addiction takes from people — and we should. Those losses are real.
But Kelsey made me think about how important it is to also show what recovery can give back.
Clarity.
Confidence.
Safety.
Community.
Strength.
The ability to wake up and know what happened the night before.
The chance to learn how to feel an emotion without immediately trying to escape it.
The opportunity to meet yourself, maybe for the first time.
And then there is Breck.
As a mom myself, this part of Kelsey's story stayed with me.
When her son turned one, she decided she never wanted him to have memories of a drunk mother. Today, he is six years old.
Five years sober.
A six year old boy.
There is something about that timeline that I cannot stop thinking about.
He gets to know this version of her.
The clear eyed version.
The strong version.
The version who built a safe home.
The version who joined a gym and found a whole room of sisters.
The version still figuring herself out in her late 30s.
The version who chose him.
And the version who chose herself, too.
Photographing Kelsey and Breck felt especially meaningful because he is not a footnote in her recovery story. He is part of the reason she began writing a different one.
But I also want to be careful with that, because Kelsey's story is not only about being a mother.
She is a whole person.
She is a gym junkie and a mountain lover. A feminist and an LGBTQ advocate. A vigilante and a sweetheart — which may be one of my favorite self descriptions anyone has ever submitted to this project.
She is still becoming.
And I think that is what I carried with me most while photographing her.
A second chance does not mean becoming perfect.
It does not mean pretending the past never happened.
Maybe it means exactly what Kelsey said:
Taking accountability for your past while giving yourself grace to move forward.
Kelsey, thank you for trusting me with your story. Thank you for allowing me to photograph not only the woman you have become, but the relationship at the heart of so much of your why. Thank you for refusing to speak about sobriety like it is a smaller life.
And thank you for standing on the other side of something that once made you feel trapped and yelling back to anyone who might still be there:
Be brave. You can make it out alive.
Xo, Tierney
