Allison Patel is now Allison Parc

Allow Me to (re)Introduce Myself

Welcome to the first day of the rest of my life. Alright, that’s dramatic. But, it’s how I’ve been feeling lately, and often, and I’m excited to finally be able to share why! But first, we have some catching up to do…

On January 1st, I woke up, smiled, and began thinking about how completely different my life would be one year from that day. I genuinely had – and on some things still have – ZERO idea how the journey, or the outcomes, might look.

Change scares a lot of people. It has definitely gripped and threatened to cripple me at times. But I have always, for the most part, been a change champion and in 2016, I challenged myself to take it a step further. I chose to change nearly EVERYTHING.

(By the way, now might be a great time to open that bottle of Brenne and pour yourself a dram. Heck, I’ll join ya.)

What am I talking about? Well, my marital situation, my dating situation, my living situation, and my business situation (yay growth!) have all changed. And today, my name follows suit! (Yes, really. Although, that’s not a “Situation”… sorry Jersey Shore fans.)

Here’s a regular debate for women: to take, or not to take, your husband’s name in marriage. There’s a lot to be said for both sides, or a variety of ways to creatively merge names if that’s your preference. When it was my turn, I traded in my French roots and swooped right into Patel, subsequently throwing off a lot of people at meetings as a white gal rocking a classically Indian last name.

But, what does a woman, who practically marked the shift from ballet to whisky in ink with her name change, do when Patel is no longer applicable? Does she go “back” to her former name – an old identity that doesn’t fully serve the woman she has become? No, thank you. We can’t go backwards in life, only forwards. So, I’ve chosen an entirely new name for myself, created by moi, by way of too many factors to list without boring you!

So without further ado, allow me to re-introduce myself. Hello, I’m Allison Parc. No more Allison Patel! (As a bonus, yes, you can still call me AP. 😉

Thank you for continuing to join me on this wild ride. Let’s raise a glass of Brenne together for all of the powerful choices we courageously make while continuing to move forward. We have but one precious life, for an uncertain amount of time. Here’s to new things, and making the most of them!

With love ~ Allison Patel Parc

Trying to Restart

I am shaking my head as I type this … where do I begin? It’s IMPOSSIBLE to share what has been going on in my world with a single post – so I am going to begin with a “restart”. I’ve had months of “publish block” — unable to hit “publish” on posts I have taken hours to write. Why? Because of fear. SOOOO appropriate considering the last post I DID publish was on how to PUSH THROUGH fear! Ugh.

So on the 8hr+ flight home to NYC from Paris yesterday, I asked myself: what are you ACTUALLY afraid of with regards to this blog? Not being perfect? (kinda, but not really). And then I realized: I just can’t talk exclusively about “whisky” … my life is so much bigger than that one topic, and since whisky IS my life, they are interwoven so tightly that I do not know how to separate them. For me to write authentically, I simply can’t just share about whisky.

“SO F*** IT” I told myself, “The Whisky Woman” doesn’t have to mean anything beyond my “nickname” so to speak. I can just share the happenings of my life because what is happening is so wild I feel like some days I am living inside a really incredible movie.

In fact, when things have become nearly paralyzingly tough this year, the catch phrase that my friends have started saying is, “Well, it’ll be GREAT for the book!” And to repeat, since my life’s work IS whisky, our favorite topic will always be invariably involved in the subjects.

In January I had a sense that this year was going to be “big” … how big I did not know. But at least I was right about that. One of the awesome things that happened was that I have been blessed to welcome Katie Schloss to my team – an incredibly savvy woman with an eye for design, a brain for social media that intimidates me in the best possible ways, and a heart as big as Manhattan. Katie has taken Brenne’s Instagram from my “of the moment/on the fly” posts to a page that actually helps tell our story and inspire people (myself included!).

My last email before boarding my flight was to Katie. In it, I shared how I wanted to recommit myself to my blog and really start sharing again. That I am going to do my best to move through my fears and actually DO IT. To that, she responded with this:

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“Erin Fetherston had a collection of dresses titled “Urban Flowers” when I was a freshman in college.  “Urban Flowers,” to her, are the tiny, little weeds and flowers that look dainty, but who are able to work their way through the elements, through the concrete, and grow through the surface into the light.  Being one of the only women to own her own whisky company (period, end stop), going through everything you’ve overcome this year, you have a beating-the-odds story of resilience that resonates; it just needs to be told, and it’s been an honor helping shape your story and watching your brand come to life on social platforms. :)”

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Photo credit: Emmanuel Huybrechts from Laval, Canada

So with this, I am hoping I follow my own lead and truly “restart” my engagement here. No matter what happens, I am so incredibly grateful and blessed that you all are still here, still supporting me, still behind my goals of being a successful entrepreneur igniting the conversations of “French Whisky” and “terroir-driven Single Malts” around the world.

With a lot of love and a dram raised way up, THANK YOU. xo – Allison