How Grief Built Perfectly Made AF

2026-07-18

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Trigger warning: This episode contains references to the alcohol-related death of a family member. Is it possible to build something meaningful out of the worst loss of your life? For Kelly, the answer arrived just five months after she got free from alcohol herself. That's when her brother died from the same thing she'd spent years measuring her own drinking against. She built Perfectly Made AF in response, a nonprofit funding alcohol freedom scholarships in his memory and an annual Boulder gala designed to prove an alcohol-free life is anything but...

Trigger warning: This episode contains references to the alcohol-related death of a family member.

Is it possible to build something meaningful out of the worst loss of your life? For Kelly, the answer arrived just five months after she got free from alcohol herself. That's when her brother died from the same thing she'd spent years measuring her own drinking against. She built Perfectly Made AF in response, a nonprofit funding alcohol freedom scholarships in his memory and an annual Boulder gala designed to prove an alcohol-free life is anything but boring. Kelly's Naked Life story traces how she got there, from years of comparing her own drinking to his, to the two days after his funeral when she had to choose what came next.

Kelly and Coach Cole discuss:

What almost happened two days after her brother's funeral, five months into her own alcohol-free life
Why "I'm not him" was the comparison that let her avoid her own drinking for years
The message she wrote her brother a month before he died, and why it came too late
How a scholarship fund turned into a full nonprofit with 18 people currently enrolled
The thinking behind this year's Perfect Gala, from a mobile planetarium to a "grounding portal"
Why Kelly keeps the scholarship recipients anonymous, even from herself
What she's hoping to build next, from new partnerships to content for schools
And more on decision fatigue, mommy wine culture, and what it really means to find your own path to alcohol freedom…