EP 54: The Sober Witch Movement: Reclaiming the Magick of Recovery and Spiritual Healing with Sunshine Witchki

So you've built a strong foundation and now you’re ready to break through life’s glass ceilings and create next-level success that feels as good as it looks? 

I want to help you make it happen. 

Book your free 1:1 Next Level Breakthrough Call, and together we'll:

• get clear on what next level success looks like in your personal and professional lives 
• name the biggest thing holding you back from having it now, and 
• map out a powerful strategy to create unstoppable success in the areas that matter most 

You deserve to experience next level success, to expand what’s possible in your life, to step into the identity of a woman who knows WTF she is, and to know exactly what to do to manifest your biggest dreams.

—
A Sober Witch Movement? 

Today I’m I’m joined by Sunshine Witchki, founder of Illuminate: the Unschool of Sober Witchcraft, author of Sober Witch Life, and the visionary behind a global movement creating sacred, inclusive spaces for witches in recovery.

Sunshine is a trailblazing Psychic Medium, Soul Healer, Spiritual Advisor, High Priestess, Reiki Master, Author, Podcast and Radio Show Host and Recovering Alcoholic. 

Known as The Pink-Haired Sober Witch, her mission is to help witches in recovery rediscover their magick, align with their highest purpose, and live the abundant life promised in sobriety.

We talk about what it means to recover without abandoning your magic, why spirituality is not optional for deep, lasting recovery, and how remembering your divinity can change everything.

This is a conversation about being sober, sovereign, and wildly alive, and will be particularly interesting to my witchy listeners and anyone interested in alternate paths to sobriety.

In this episode, we get witchy and talk about:

• What it actually means to be a witch — and how witchcraft can be a sacred, grounding recovery path
• Growing up drinking, high-functioning addiction, and when sobriety becomes non-negotiable
• Why having a “poor relationship with alcohol” isn’t about labels — it’s about obsession, rules, and energy
• The connection between masking, neurodivergence, spiritual gifts, and substance use
• Why spirituality (not just abstinence) is the difference between surviving sobriety and loving your life
• The pillars of healing
• Creating recovery spaces where women don’t have to contort, dilute, or abandon who they are to belong
  
  
  

If you’ve ever felt like traditional recovery spaces didn’t fully see you — or like you had to leave parts of yourself at the door to stay sober — this episode is for you.

_____

Love Sunshine as much as I do? Connect with her here:

Website / YouTube / Facebook

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Ready for your next level of success?

Book your free 1:1 Next Level Breakthrough Call

Network and join us in  Girls Who Recover: A Community of Miracles and receive inspiration + mini-trainings for how to create next level success from the inside out.

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Hey gorgeous.

I love you.

I'm so proud of you.

And I believe in your ability to create a life you absolutely love.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Girls Who Recover podcast with Dana Hunter Fela, where incredible women just like you, go to transform life's biggest setbacks into your most powerful comebacks so that you can live a life you. Love. I'm your host, Dana Hunter Ella, transformational coach and founder of Girls Who Recover, and my mission is to pull back the curtain on our mistakes, failures, shame and personal disasters, and light the way for how to use those to create your biggest and most gorgeous comebacks. Follow the show now. Grab your iced coffee and turn up the volume for girls who recover. Let's light it up. Welcome back to Girls Who Recover. I'm so excited to introduce to you our guest for today. Her name is Sunshine, and to help me with your full name, sunshine. It's sunshine. Witch ski. Yeah, witch ski. Got it. So sunshine witchy. I was chuckling because I definitely should be asking these questions sooner, but hey, yay. For progress and not perfection. But I wanna introduce you to Sunshine Witchy. She is already one of my favorite people. She's the founder of Illuminate, the unschool of sober witchcraft, and the visionary behind the Sovereign Phoenix, a nonprofit creating protected spiritual spaces for witches and recovery. She's also the author of Sober Witch Life, A Magical Guide to Recovery and Host of The Witch Hour, the Sober Witch Life podcast. And she's got two friends, the Deepest Spirituality Podcast. Her work blends sobriety, spirituality, and magic to help individuals reclaim their power and align. With their highest purpose. That is a gorgeous resume. Sunshine. How does it feel to, to hear that about you and your work in the world? I got tingles all over, I it's wild to think, I, you look at all the things that you do and they feel like things that you do, and then somebody says this back to you and you're like, oh my goodness. I, I, yeah. So thank you for that. That was really beautiful to hear. Yeah. Thank you. It's the wor the work that you're doing in the world is dare I say magical. I say that a lot, but here it's right on point. And I'll say sunshine. I normally don't, I get a lot of invitations to speak on podcasts and a lot of people are like, come, let me speak on girls who recover. Which I feel very grateful about. I'm like, where not did you find us? The podcast has really been a gift and it's exploded and in a way that blows my mind, but most of them, truthfully, I just trash. I'm like, listen I already know who I wanna interview. I am after them. And so when yours came through, I thought that is so interesting. And the way that you came through wasn't a direct, it was through a witchy friend of mine who I adore. So interesting that the, how the universe brings this together. Around you came through the side door with somebody that I love, and then I got access to your work and I thought, oh my God, a sober witch who can teach us all about it. Please, yes. So thank you for saying yes. Thank you for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. It's always a delight. Always delight Tina to be able to share and talk about this work. Yeah. Let's get into it. Tell us about you Sunshine. Tell us your story and then tell us about your work in the world. Yeah, I'll start telling my story. Oh God, goodness. I, it's always shocking for me to say this out loud and to and I have to pause when I say it, but I've been drinking alcohol or had been drinking alcohol since I was eight years old. I was born in a and raised in an alcoholic household. My father was an alcoholic. And around the age of eight years old, I started to actively seek out my father's half finished drinks to finish them, and so I have just years upon years from, eight all the way up until 40, 32 years of drinking and anybody that's ever shared their story, it never gets better in that. Yeah. It progressively gets worse and worse. And, I found myself in 2019, the beginning of 2019, there had been a couple of things that kind of really. Had me seriously questioning my relationship with alcohol. And one of'em was in the latter part of 2017, my father found himself on his deathbed. He drank himself to the point that his heart was functioning at 6%. Wow. His liver and his kidneys were shutting down. And he has since he had a major surgery and then a heart transplant a year later. But all of that has me looking. And then I had a cousin who was on his deathbed, like his heart, his body was at such a horrible place. He couldn't even qualify for a heart transplant like my father did. Yeah, both of these individuals, very dear to me, very close to me. And I just, I knew that my relationship with alcohol was leading me down the same path. Maybe not as quickly, maybe not in the same way, but I was going to find myself staring at. Mortality, sickness, physical decline if I continued drinking in the fashion that I was. Yeah. And so the beginning of 2019, I started just with an experiment of just trying to not drink and asking myself why was I consuming alcohol? What was this really doing? And I'd love to say that happened, and then, that's where my road to recovery started. But it didn't they normally don't start with the first try, no. And I, Dana, I actually, in, as I've been in recovery have gone back and seen Facebook memories that have made me like, I know. I was questioning it as early as probably like my thirties, my bank, early thirties, but just was never taking it never to that point of knowing truly and seeing what it could do if I didn't change things. So I relapsed in the early part of 2019, drank for another couple of months, ended up on a vacation in July with my partner at the time, and had 10 days off and showed up at the office on a Monday going through withdrawals. Sweaty, clammy, shaking. And we're talking about, I, and I love to say this I was very well respected in my corporate career. I was making six figures. I was highly sought after in my industry. And just here I am on a Monday morning. Going through alcohol withdrawals. Yeah. What was that like? Shaking. Just Oh, it was shaking. It was the clammy squint, the, just everything clammy, queasy. Like knowing in the back of my head that if I had a drink, all of that physical symptoms would've stopped. Yeah. And I was very grateful that later that evening I had therapy already scheduled, and I showed up in my therapist's office and I started bawling and I said, I'm an alcoholic. I just, I'm an alcoholic, and so we talked through it and this, my ego wasn't ready to admit what it needed to admit. I started down the path of just not drinking again. Just not drinking. That's the only way I can describe it. I just was not gonna drink again. Just don't do it. Don't do drugs. Yeah. Yeah. And once again, would love to say that started me on my path of recovery. But I had a vacation planned for my 40th birthday that I'd been planning for I don't know, probably almost a year and a half. Wow. In Costa Rica. So my partner and I hopped on the plane and at that point he knew I was trying to stay sober, but he kept drinking and I was like, no big deal. No big deal at that point. But we get off this plane in Costa Rica and he walks right over the duty free and picks up two half gallons of alcohol. Yeah. We were only there for a week. Two half gallons. Yeah. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's we're on vacation. And I and so now like the little devil and angel on the shoulder are just like having at it. We drive two and a half hours to the resort. And, he, we stopped for beer. I didn't have any, we're sitting around the bar in the pool and he looks at me three, four drinks in at this point. And he goes, don't worry, I won't judge you if you drink. I, yeah. Miss Nate in the garden. Oh my. Yeah. And so I picked up again, and I, that was, I drank that day, hung over the next, and then my 40th birthday. And I turned into someone that day that I'd never met before. I only know that I had my celebratory birthday dinner because I have photos of it, but it was only me because I had gotten into such a horrific fight with them. Yeah. That I like literally to the point of I was such a cruel individual, like a great, a's you know, see you next Tuesday. I planted drugs on him hoping that he'd leave and get picked up by cuss. Hit him in his suitcases and his backpacks. Yeah, just really horrible. And listen, when we retaliate, we go retaliate. Okay. Oh, I get it. Yeah. It was just, it was such a gnarly experience and I we made up on that trip but didn't stop drinking. It wasn't until my last drink was October 8th, 2019 by the time we came home, I knew at that point that I was no longer going to be able to stay sober in the ways that I just didn't know how. I didn't know how, I. Had no clue how in the world, I had two relapses that year and I knew something had to change. Yeah. Yeah, so it was, that's my story of the, this really, and the years of drinking and the blackouts and the poor decision making and I just, we've, all of us that have gone through alcohol abuse or drug abuse, have all of these just stories that you're just like, who was this person? Yeah, exactly. That couldn't have possibly been me that did that. Whew. Yeah. You have no idea how grateful I am that I got sober before Facebook. It was like on the edge, 2009, like great. Facebook had just come out, and I am grateful every single day because some of the shenanigans that I got myself into, if they would've been photographed, it would've been over. It was, it ended up being over anyway. But I feel you this sort of looking in the mirror and not recognizing who is this person and what is she doing, and what kinda life are we creating for ourselves? Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I was gonna ask you a little bit about, yeah, if you could talk a little bit more about what you, what it was like for you when you were drinking that, because there a lot of people drink, a lot of people drink, but the way that someone who identifies as you used the word alcoholic or abusing alcohol is different. So can you just speak to, the other thing I wanna say is, I can't emphasize this enough. You said it from eight to 40 and it never gets better. And it doesn't matter if your window is, hold on, while I do the math, 32 years or two years, I think some people come are like I only have been drinking for two years. But it's not the amount of time, it's the what happens. What happens on the journey of drinking? So can you tell us a little bit about what it was like and how it might be different from somebody who quote drinks normally? Yeah. It's the behaviors around it, that's what makes it different. And I'll tell you the behaviors that to me, that pointed out that I was an alcoholic and they became weirder the longer I was in the addiction. But in the early in the early part, I sought out alcohol. Like I, like alcohol was a part of what I wanted my social circles to involve, right? It was not a negotiable, like it was a non-negotiable. If there was a social outing that I was going to, there was going to be alcohol, there was a party I was throwing, there was going to be alcohol, right? And so the life in and of itself was a revolved around it in some way, shape or form. And all of my friends drank. There were not any, that's the other thing. There's no, when you are. When you have a poor relationship with alcohol, not even if you don't identify as an alcoholic, when you have a poor relationship with alcohol, you are going to be surrounded by people that drink. Yeah. You have a poor relationship with any kind of substance or beha. You are going to be surrounded by people that are doing those. There were like attracted, you're just like attracted to that because of the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me what it means to have a poor relationship with alcohol? I've thought a lot about this and I've talked with handfuls of people and I think one of the things is it becomes a habit. And habits can be once a day, once a week, once a month. These are things that you are regularly doing. To me, that's a poor relate. If you ever thinking about drinking. That's a poor relationship with alcohol, in my opinion. I'll say that my, my opinion, right? People who do not have a good healthy relationship with alcohol don't even think about it. It just doesn't even come to mind to them. It's not on the radar, and I relate to that. Part of my experience was I would be thinking about it and then thinking about it, and then as it progressed, it was like I was thinking about it more and more. And then it got to a point from years where it was, I was either drinking, recovering from drinking, or thinking about drinking. There was no white space. It was one of those three things on repeat. So it was like an obsession. Yeah. Yeah. And the wild thing is I don't believe people see it as that, they don't see the obsession piece because the, there's the other piece is that people have rules around the not drinking. Yeah. So they get into this moderation. So I've, I have a friend of mine that I've been friends with for a long time since we were children, and she has a rule that it's just one drink with dinner, right? She has a rule that she'll only do two drinks in a social situation, right? Once again, people with healthy relationships with alcohol don't have to moderate and apply rules to their drinking. There's no controlling and enjoying, no, there's no. Yeah, that's a great point. And it also, it, it applies. I know we're gonna talk about alcoholism here, the more I've been in the game, it applies to so many things. Like I totally have an inappropriate relationship with coffee right now. In fact, today's my day one of not having coffee. So I feel, I don't feel like I'm myself,'cause I'm not racing through the day, i'm like, oh man, are we gonna actually do this? But the same thing is the inappropriate relationship with whatever it is. It can be sex, it can be sugar. Halloween just ended, right? It can be sugar, it can be shopping, it can be, but this unhealthy relationship with whatever it is. Yeah. If you're thinking about it and you've got rules around it, like maybe, and this doesn't mean you have to end up under the bridge. I just had a really fantastic conversation with the CEO of sober sis and her story wasn't like, she wasn't in it under bridges, like she wasn't waking up in someone else's bed. She just noticed that she was drinking more and that she would be thinking about it and planning it. And so it was like high, I'll call it a high class alcohol abuse. And I think that we other ourselves you mentioned that. Or it's I don't, I don't wanna be an alcoholic or I don't wanna be a having a, I don't wanna, that's not me, that can't possibly be me, but we're just laying on the carpet, aren't we? Sunshine, if you're thinking about drinking or making rules about it hello, there is something so unbelievably wild that happened when I got sober and it probably, it took a couple of months, but I don't think about it at all anymore. There is no energetic dispersed whatsoever from my mental, physical, or spiritual body around alcohol. None of it, it just doesn't exist anymore. Tell us about take us on your sobriety journey, because many of my listeners are pretty familiar with alcoholism and the story, and then what ha what it was like, but your path is very unique. So tell us about, you've been sober now. Five, six years. Just over six years. Yeah. Six years. Congratulations. It sounds like you just had a milestone. So six years. And tell us about your journey in the six years. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we got back from Costa Rica and my partner, he had his own addictions and that were very dark and alcohol was not his drug of choice, but we got back and he said, the only way that I can ever do this is you've gotta go to aa. You've gotta do 90 meetings in 90 days. And I was horrified at this, right? I've been, I was the president of a nonprofit at that particular point and had a full-time job. I'm like, how in the world am I going to do 90 meetings in 90 days? I'm like this what are you like? And it, he was very adamant about it. And I'm grateful. This is your partner's at your partner's suggestion. Okay. Yep. And I'm very grateful for that because I didn't know what else to do. That was the one thing I realized at this point. I had no clue how in the world to get sober and stay sober at that point. So I did, I committed to 90 meetings in 90 days, so I stepped into the AA tables and that was the beginning. So 90 meetings, 90 days. Yeah. So I committed to 90 meetings in 90 days. And so I would step into these rooms and. I felt it was hard. It was really hard to do. There was a lot of tears. It took me a while to talk and I was, I started to realize really early on how awkward and weird I felt in these rooms, right? I grew up as a Catholic, but I had stepped away from Catholicism a long time ago. Thank the goddess that I had come to face that religious trauma and was not carrying it with me anymore because closing some of these, these meetings with the, our father or, saying the word God in some of these meetings, if I was still in, in a. Like in that horror of religious trauma, I don't know what it would've done to me. Yeah. So I'm very grateful that I wasn't at that point, but it just made me start to really question things and I started to realize the more meetings I had behind me, the more there became this connection between my drinking and my masking. Say what you mean when you say masking. Yeah. By masking meaning putting some kind of face or front on to hide or conceal who I really was. Yeah. There was a relationship. So drinking. Drinking in order to put on the mask or drinking in order to take it off, or both. I would say drinking to deal with, having the mask on. Because it was so uncomfortable to show up in a world that I didn't feel welcomed, accepted, or even understood in. Can you say a little bit more about, about why the, tell us more about that. About why you felt like you didn't belong. It sounds like in a wor in the world. Yeah. I've come to realize that one of the major reasons is my drinking also numbed a lot of my psychic gifts. Like all of them pretty much, and so here I would be sitting in these meetings, sitting at these tables and, I'd get these overwhelming waves of emotion and feeling, I'd start to hear what people were thinking, right? I'd get v visions and flashes of stuff, right? And it was just, having to put this mask on, like it wasn't happening. I have memories of in my twenties when I first started to develop like intimate relationships. And I don't just mean sexually intimate, just intimate relationship as a, as an adult of being, people telling me that they didn't like how I talked to them because I could hear their thoughts. People like judging, like telling me I was controlling was a big deal because I would try to help them navigate what they were going through. Yet they weren't, they didn't understand it. Just all of these situations, and so here I'm at these tables and I'm starting to realize that connection between, oh my God, like I'm, I've been drinking because I don't feel comfortable in these spaces because people. Don't exactly understand some of the things that I'm trying to say, right? I've come to realize now, I'm very neurodivergent in, in how I interact within the world. And so yeah, it was just, it was so uncomfortable being who I was. And on top of all of this, I'm physically different because I've been obese my entire life, right? So not only am I like strange and unusual in, in all of like my beliefs in how I interact with the world, but I physically even look different. So it was just these first few months were really a, I the picture I get in my head is like, the mask was being melted off. I was slowly, every time I had to walk into a new room, walk into a new meeting, sit amongst strangers, tell these stories. I got this regular practice of being who I was and being vulnerable in that moment. Yeah. And then the 90 and 90 days came to an end, right? It was coming towards an end and I think I was probably two weeks shy of it. And it was around Christmas time that year, and I start thinking to myself, what am I gonna do? Like I, I appreciated the 90 and 90 day commitment, but there's just, it was a lot. It's a lot of work to do that, right? Yeah. So how am I going to continue to stay sober and I. Started to look around at the people that were in these rooms and they had a lot of years. And I tried to see what was it that separated them from the folks that talked about relapsing, that talked about relapsing after a year, that talked about, this is my fourth or fifth time sitting at, in these rooms. And the thing that I noticed that was a constant was their spiritual belief, whatever that was. They had faith in something. They had a practice that they were engaged in. Some of them were going to church, some of them were volunteering on a weekly basis. Some of them were donating their time, some of them were active in the programs, just the recovery rooms as it was. And that kind of became their faith, right? And so in that same time, I remember sitting there and we were talking about some of the practices around this particular recovery work. And I got to speaking and I made the comment during one of our sessions about connecting to my higher powers, and I had somebody pull me aside later after we wrapped for that meeting and they said, Hey I just wanted to point out that you had said the word higher powers, like multiple powers. Yes. And it's, higher power. Where do you live in the world? Where are you? Where? Right outside of Detroit, Michigan. Okay. Outside of Detroit, Michigan, and the city that I'm in has a has a pretty much of a divide between Muslim and Christians. So like they were pretty good at not bringing a lot of the religious undertone into the meeting. But it still did not go over well. To have somebody pull me aside afterwards and say something to me about it. And I said, yeah. I said, I actually believe that I have multiple higher powers. I work with my ancestors. I have certain gods and goddesses that I work with, and their eyes just got big. Like they didn't know how to respond to me. Yeah. They just did not know how to respond in that moment. And that's where I knew that not only did I in general in life feel like I didn't fit in somewhere, I knew that the reality was as open as these tables were to anyone that just still wasn't the right fit for me. Fair. Yeah, that's fair. And so I had to ask myself, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna, go to church or go to something? How am I gonna do something on a regular basis that's gonna align me with my spiritual beliefs, align me with, what matters to me and is going to not be what I would consider? I grew up, like I said, Catholic, and so we'd go to mass on the holidays. I didn't wanna be a holiday based faith. I just, that's not what I wanted. Got it. And so I pulled out my tarot cards for the first time in what would've been years, and I started to pull cards for myself every morning. And that felt really good. Wow. That felt really good. And then I said, it was towards the end of January, I said, how else can I like, engage in this? Because I would just started to feel these gifts just fire themselves up. And so I started a Facebook page and I started every Tuesday night I would go live and I would offer one card readings. What was the nature of the Facebook page? It's called, it still exists today. It's called Sunshine Readings. It was literally me going online and just being able to provide these readings. I just wanted to give back. It was my way of engaging with individuals in something that mattered to me and connected to my spirituality. Yeah. Yep. It was a way that I didn't feel alone. I love all of this so much. So in everybody's recovery journey, there are some commonalities. S and you've already identified a couple of them. One is you have to have a, some sort of spiritual connection. It's, if you don't, I'm like, I'm wondering how your life actually is. No judgment, but the difference between somebody who's in recovery with a spiritual connection and is somebody who's simply sober, but trying to manhandle it on their own, if you understand what I mean. It's totally night and day. Your name is Sunshine. It's the difference between the sun and the dark night. And not to say which one is better, but I'm all about people living their biggest, brightest lives. And in my experience, in recovery, the people who were the happiest, the most fulfilled, the most living on purpose, they all have a spiritual connection. And God doesn't care what you call them or her or it, or he like, they, they don't care. And so the question is, how can you sweet listener, create a relationship with a power or powers that are here to support you and guide you and advise you and love you and show you the way? So your work in the world is so interesting to me. Sunshine, tell us about. You basically started a movement, so if you don't mind, let's go there. You started a movement of sober witches, is that right? Yeah. And you've written books about it. You clearly are making your mark in the world. So we didn't just get sober. We are now the leader of a movement for sober witches. And my first question on that is, were you a witch before I heard, or did you identify as a witch before? I heard you say you knew you had some spiritual gifts. You're clear Voyant, clear audience, clear many things. I see you nodding. Did you know that before or is that something that you discovered in sobriety? And if like, how has that flourished since you aren't. Aren't drinking your life away. Yeah. No, I, I'd identified since as a witch since I was 16. But I, at that particular point, throughout my teens, twenties, and my thirties, I did what I call like reactive practice. It's like when somebody has shit go wrong in their life, they're like, oh, dear God, please help me out here. It was that kind of work. It wasn't a regularly ingrained in my day-to-day life type of work. And so that to me is a really big difference. If I was just doing it every now and again, it probably wouldn't have been what kept me sober. I probably would've relapsed. I'm not, I'm, the high probability of that I found. How to incorporate it into my daily life. And so divination is involved into my daily life, right? So I talk to my spirit guides, I talk to my ancestors. I pull cards pretty much on a daily basis, right? There is not, I would say almost hourly. I'm connected and yes, I can see, I can hear, I can feel, I can know. I've talked to spirits on the other side of the veil, so I can s smell and taste as well. I practice like ritual, literal, magical ritual on a regular basis as simple as how I make my coffee in the morning to how I prepare and, get myself ready for bed at night. The prayers and the intentions that I set on a daily, in a regular basis, it became ingrained in my everyday life. And I looked back after a year in recovery, after you celebrate that year and I'm like, holy, a whole year. I'm like, what got me here? And I realized at that particular point that I had worked a lot of this program I stepped into, but I adapted it to support. Me and the witch that I was. And so my second year of recovery, I started to write it all down. And that is where the book came about, right? I spent Spirit had me wait until my five year to actually edit and get ready to publish it. But yeah, so I wrote instead of the 12 Steps I wrote, the 13, the Witch is 13 Steps to Recovery. I love it. Okay, so just let me pause for a moment for our listener who's but what do you mean when you say you're a witch? Can you give us just like a gen general definition of this is what it is, this is why I identify as one. Yeah, I believe so. I haven't written out the witch's philosophy. What makes a witch? I believe there are three pillars that makes a witch. The one is the belief in and the practice of the psychic arts, right? This could be through using tarot, pendulums, dowsing rods. This could be just connecting to your own gifts and listening to spirit, and having the conversations with spirit as they are the belief in the practice of, and really on a daily basis. The second one is the belief in the practice of magic and spell work, right? And so people often think of magic and spell work as, like ingredients and you make, and you do light candles and all this kind of stuff. But it can be prayer. Prayer is a spell. Yeah, it is. Setting in time. Listen, we're already casting spells, whether we know it or not. Oh, yes. With our intentions, with our words, with our frequency, with our feelings, with our relationships. All of those are 100%. Words have power. Words are the most powerful spells. And you don't need anything else. That's I recently I've had this conversation a couple times in the last week. We have from a magical perspective, we have all of the elements within our, within ourselves. So literally just the way that we speak to ourselves can be a spell, right? So that's the belief in the practice of magic and spells. And the third is the belief in the importance and the practice of service. And service can be as simple as being a mother or a father and raising beautiful human beings. Or it can be service as it is creating a nonprofit religious fellowship for other witches in recovery. It can be simple or it can be grand, right? Those are the three things that I believe make up a witch. So one, number one, use your gifts. You've got'em, use them. Number two is believe in the magic that is yours and practice it. And number three is the, it's strikingly similar, right? To the framework, to the, yes. And then the third is be of service. Be of service to your family, be of service to your community, be of service to the earth, be of service, be a person, a human of service. That's beautiful. I even say it starts with being of service to yourself. What does that look like? Tell me what that looks like. That means recognizing that you do need healing, recognizing that you are dealing with trauma, recognizing that you have things in your shadow that need to be brought into the light, recognizing that you are important, that you are worthy that you are divine. I can't tell you how many women I have talked to that have shared the similar sentiment of not feeling worthy of a beautiful life. Yes. Who me? Oh, I couldn't possibly, yeah. We are all beautifully divine individuals and are worthy of all the amazing things that life has in store for us. Can you say that one more time? I just wanna just want you to say, we are all divine beings that are worthy of the beautiful life that is in store for us. And the worthiness comes from our own divinity. Yeah. It's like why we can't question, it's like there's no. Wait a minute. We're not questioning your worthiness. You are literally of the divine. Can we be done with this conversation around, am I worthy? Like Of course you are. I just wrote some things about this and I'm doing a, I'm doing a masterclass next week on essentially this, where it's good girl conditioning. We've been conditioned to believe that we're not worthy. What, where did that come from? What's in the water? Let's come home and remember who we actually are. Yeah. Which is a daughter of the divine divinity itself in human form. We're not actually humans. We're souls running around in cute human bodies, yeah. Aren't we cute? So tell us about your movement. So I, I'm clear on the tenets of what it means to be a witch. I wonder why we're there aren't more in the world and what that just feels like. Oh. And then tell us about your, this movement that you've created to, to support witches in sobriety and recovery. Yeah. It's, again, ever since I stepped into recovery, I lead a spirit driven life. And a spirit led me to leave my corporate job la year and a half ago, April of 2024. And I thought, yeah, I thought I, I'd been a professional psychic medium pretty much since the entire time that I've been in recovery. And so I thought this is what I was gonna do. And spirit taps me on the shoulder and it says, are you ready? And I was like, okay. Okay. For what? And they're like, you are going to lead witches in recovery. And I just kinda paused and I was like, okay, that was not on the to-do list, but let me clear space off. And so I started to look at all of the work that I had done for the three years prior, all of the courses that I'd created, all the programming that I created. And I started to realize how these were all of the things that had gotten me sober and kept me in recovery, right? And so I started to adopt all of them. And last September, so September of 2024, I started the very first Witches Recovery Circle meeting. And so this movement began when that happened. We have, we now at this particular point have two circles every single week. Monday nights at 7:00 PM Eastern and Fridays at noon eastern. We have people that join us from all over the world. Not just like here in the metro Detroit area all over the world. We, I've released the book that was published and released on o March 20th of this earlier this year. I've sold, I'd love to say thousands of copies, but we're aiming towards a thousands. We're well over a hundred at this particular point. It's already done. It's done. Yeah. We just partnered with two recovery community organizations here in the Metro Detroit area and are offering ritual at each of one of those as well as the circle. We have programming like the Creative Alchemy for Recovery programming that we do month, once a month. We've got spell Crafting for recovery. And I also teach Claire's development Workshop. So a literal psychic development workshop. Every single I'm gonna pause right now while I do a bunch of stuff, but every single month, and this to me is the movement. It is helping all of these individuals understand that there's another way to step into recovery. There's another way to stay in recovery. And I never would've imagined that not only is it this movement behind it but. Spirit once again had a something in store for me. And just, I think it's just two weeks ago, I incorporated a religious nonprofit for Witches in Recovery. Wow. Yeah. What do you mean by religious? Yeah. It's really lovely. I was just writing about it this morning. What everything that I'm talking about these beliefs this practice this belief that we're divine beings, right? This, the belief that we have, the sovereign we have sovereignty, that we have the ability to create these beautiful lives, the belief that we are worthy. All of these things that I have written, that spirit has had me channel and put to paper as I took a look at all of it, they are the tenets. If you go and you look at what is required to create a religious organ, it is it they all exist. Religion is often thought of Christianity. It's thought of like Muslim Jewish things of that. But the whole practice of witchcraft and the belief that spirit exists and runs through each and every single one of us, that in and of itself as a religious belief, we just get to define it in a way that makes sense for us. And I've talked to it. The beautiful thing about having these recovery circles for the last year is I've talked to so many witches and the story that's come up with just the state of where kind of our country is, they've been more afraid today than they had been in a lot of years. I bet. And I looked at this and I said, okay, what would happen? Somebody if my ability to practice this spiritual belief was threatened, what would happen to my recovery. Yeah. And I got nervous for me, and I got nervous for every other individual that's relied upon this practice in order to stay sober. Yeah. Yeah. What are some ways that you are encouraging your community in modern times? I would say the biggest is to connect in community. Addiction for those, if your listeners that know addiction loves to isolate Oh yeah. That, that little, creepy devil or demon that, so many of us have faced in our past loves to isolate. And so the biggest thing that I recommend is the connection. And I don't Great if you find connection with all of us. But find connection in some way, shape or form. Find some way so that you're not isolated. Find someone that you can trust. Find someone that you can be yourself with. And it doesn't need to be a hundred people, it can just be two or three folks. And then make sure that you're connecting on a regular basis. Yes. That's another through line is community and connection. And so it's been, I've said this, I'm sure I didn't make it up, but the opposite of addiction from my perspective is connection. Connection first with yourself and God or Spirit or whatever you're calling the higher power. And then connection to divinity through other humans. Remembering we're not actually humans. We're all souls and spirits having a human experience. Yep. And so it's just, and the reason why. Addiction is so isolating and makes us sick is because in order to thrive, our souls need to be dancing together. They it's a requirement. It's the assignment. I don't know why, but when we pull back and then we cage ourselves with drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever it is that's keeping you up at night and away from what you're supposed to be doing and away from everybody else, that is that is a recipe for you started the conversation with your sweet father who, alcoholism, no wonder it affects the heart because it isolates us from other people and what we're supposed to be loving in the world. And you know that it doesn't surprise me. What about. The other thing I just wanna say is like, how beautiful is this? That there's not one way to get sober and there's not one way to be in recovery. And the thing, the message that kept coming through for me as you were talking is well find a way or make one right. Find a way or make one. And you're making one. You're, yep. You landed in the recovery, the mainstream recovery, and you're like, wow, this is nice. And thank you for the information. And if it's. Is this what it was like for you? Or like it, I wanna create something that works for me and then, there must be other people like me. I wonder if they would benefit. What was your thinking as you made the ion? That wasn't even my thinking. That was spirit saying that. Yeah. Here's your assignment. Yeah. That was spirit. That if, I, my second year of recovery when I wrote the book, that was part of me continuing to stay in recovery that year. Yeah. Was just get writing and reflecting and things of that nature. But I realized as it started coming out onto paper that, yeah, this spirit's this isn't just for you, this is for anybody else that might need another way. And there, there are a handful of other, like pagan, right? Once again, pagan recovery. But there's none that like blatantly call out the witch and the witchcraft. There just isn't. And I, I was reading the statistics. We're at, if you were to look in the United States right now, over 2 million individuals identify themselves as practicing witchcraft right now. Wow. Witchcraft not paganism. Witchcraft. And it just I knew for a fact, and I am an individual, again, like I, historically, I've held leadership roles. I feel comfortable being in leadership. I feel comfortable more with a lot of my own sovereignty and blazing whatever path that I need. And I had to pause and take a look and say, there are a lot of people I've met throughout my life that know they are, they need someone to set them down a path. There, they, there are a lot of people that I've met throughout life that are like, they look for somebody else to wave the flag so they know where to go. So why wouldn't I allow Spirit to lead me and to use the beautiful gifts that I've been given? Not just my psychic gifts, but the years of leadership that I've stepped into, right? Yes. Why wouldn't I allow Spirit to lead me that way? I'm curious about. Your gifts and you your, you keep mentioning like, spirits leading me and my gifts are open and I can use them. Can you talk about the difference between, you had your gifts before you got sober, but like the impact of drinking on your gifts and now the expansiveness that recovery offers so that you can hone in your gifts so that you can strengthen them and the impact that's had. So tell us a little bit about like before and after for your gifts. Yeah. I and the sweet spirit, right? Because your, in your intuition has to be wide open. If you're like, oh, there's spirit again. Bopping me on the shoulder. Oh yeah, I, yeah. Everybody has the ability, has psychic gifts. Not most folks don't know how they're showing up from'em, and they, most folks, therefore don't know how to use them. And you talked about clairvoyance and things, so I'll just share. There's four really prominent. Claires psychic. Claires, the clairvoyance is the ability to see images, clear audience is to hear clear Cognizant is to just know you get just a download and you just know. But there's one that's called Clair Sentient that I've found a lot of individuals that struggle with addiction actually have, and that clear sentience is the ability to feel right. And so I believe for much of my life, both as a child and all the way through, through my adult drinking years, that what I was doing is I was numbing the emotional overwhelm, the energetic overwhelm that was happening around me in life. I grew up in an alcoholic household, so there was all sorts of chaos in that energetic field, right? I stepped into multiple jobs that I could tell you just people were not in a good position. So even as an adult. And so that alcohol or that addiction, and I actually say I'm a recovering alcoholic and workaholic. Same girl. Same. And so these were both tendencies to numb to be able to avoid feeling. And I literally, when we, I led ritual Saturday night and we got to talking and I, this, somebody else has had to have said this before. And I said but I said it out loud and I laughed. I said, there is no healing without feeling. I need you to say that again please. When the girls come back, there is no healing without feeling. There's no healing without feeling. It just does not happen. And so the alcohol subsided, right? The numbing subsided. I had been out of this like horrifically toxic work environment that just perpetuated my workaholism, and here I was just like raw dog in it, in life, right? I had everything coming at me, and I, it was a lot. It was a lot to deal with, and spirit just started to show up. The more time and space I gave myself to pause to, to reflect, I had a very beautiful therapist that was just so wonderful at entwining my spiritual beliefs into our actual therapy sessions. Yes. And so pulling cards was a moment to pause to asking spirit for guidance and protection, right? Asking what should I be seeing? And I started to walk in the mor the pandemic hit. Which took everybody, and isolated them in for me in the right way. Meaning I wasn't subjected to be in all of these situations anymore that were just overwhelming to my energetic nervous system. So yeah, the gifts just fired up. And in ways that from the visions, and I'd used them before, but I'd only used them when I would pull out my tarot cards. Okay. So now it was like every waking hour, and I've said this to, I've a dear client that I'd mentored for almost two years on their psychic gift. They like really wanted to waken'em. And they, they made this comment to me one time. They're like, I really wish that my gifts were just like yours, right? And I looked at them, I said, you wanna know the difference? Because they actually have amazing gifts. They just doubt themselves. I said, you wanna know the only difference I require mine and trust in mine in order to stay sober? The moment they're mandatory. Yeah. The moment I start second guessing my connection to spirit, what I'm hearing from spirit, the visions I'm getting from spirit, the feelings, the downloads, the moment I start questioning them is the moment I am now stepping closer to a relapse. Yeah. Yes. And that, because when we disconnect from spirit, we disconnect from our spiritual nature. It's almost you can take your phone off the charger. It'll last what, a day and a half. It's like that. I've seen that too in in various forms of recovery where it's, when we disconnect from spirit, it's almost like we stop feeding the plant. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like the plant doesn't die immediately, but the plant is going to die. Yeah. It needs the spirit. Yep. This is so interesting. So tell us about your work in the world now. How are you using your gifts and your work in the world? I heard you say you see in individual clients it sounds like, but how, like if someone is Yeah. Loves you as much as I do, how can they work with you? The best way and I'm doing a little bit of work on the website, but the best way that I always share now is to go visit sober Witch Life. Okay, that'll witch Life. Yeah, that, that website. So you can even look for Sober Witch Life on Instagram. That'll connect you to me directly on Instagram. You can look for Sunshine Witch Ski on Facebook and I'll, you'll connect me there, but you can find me on any of the socials. But from a website perspective, going to sober witch.life, that'll connect you to the circles. So the weekly circles that'll introduce you to the book there that'll introduce you even to the radio show. I am one of the recovery communities that I work with as a digital radio station. So I've been hosting a radio show once a week. Yeah, so fun. It is a lot of fun. I've actually enjoyed it a lot more than I was realizing. But that's the biggest way is to connect. And I will say for anyone. Because I've had a couple of people ask anyone, just curious, just come join us in circle. You don't have to turn your camera on. I don't even mind if you sit and watch for the, the first day because maybe you're feeling uncomfortable. It's very rare people end up not coming and joining us again. But yeah, check us out on circle. I do offer one-on-one work with clients as well, especially for folks that are in recovery because I've found that as individuals are earlier in recovery or even going through, like they've been in recovery and they're going through a major transition in their life. I've been blessed with these beautiful gifts and being able to help validate what people are already feeling or seeing from a second source becomes really really helpful and beneficial. And then. The other piece too of working is, we're talking about addiction and the impact that it has on the spirit, right? Yeah. And I have met with quite a handful of folks that actually struggle to let things go, whether it's the alcohol, the behaviors and one of the things that I find the most fulfilling is I can go into past lives as well and take a look and find out what may have been impacting you here today that's actually coming in an in from a past life. So those are really deeply beautiful sessions and just so wonderful. But yeah. Sober Witch life will connect you directly to me. I just wanna reflect something too that's really profound for me. I'm sorry I'm having a moment with myself.'cause I was like, oh my gosh, this the part of the conversation where you just said, I, I didn't feel like I belonged and I was different and I didn't feel, you didn't say this, but I didn't feel welcomed or accepted because of who I was. That makes me feel so proud of you because a lot of people just leave. They just leave and they say, that was terrible. And then they go back to drinking or they go back to isolating and they go back to di dying. Basically, I'm, I feel emotional just because, I am a part of that recovery movement and I want anywhere, I want every, I want there to be a space for everybody. But I just feel, I just think it's so beautiful sunshine that you made a way and you didn't, yes, you did it for yourself, but now there is a place for someone who identifies as, I don't belong. I have these gifts. I don't know what to do. These people are talking about one higher power, or they're, whatever they're talking about, we're say of the Lord's Prayer, this isn't a good fit for me. Where else do I go? And they can land safely in the place that you needed. So you started, you needed it. So you started it. And I get so emotional about that because we get to find a way or make one. We get to, especially as women, and I think we do ourselves a disservice to say, to go to try to solve a problem, go into somewhere and say okay, that didn't work. I guess I can't solve the problem. I'm just gonna have to be miserable forever. There are a lot of people who are living like that right now. Yeah. You said no to that, you said no way. Plus, I mean you do have this, everybody has the same leg up, but you are open to the leg up that you have literally the spirit of the universe guiding you saying do this next. So it wasn't like you had to bootstrap it and work really hard and read something, like the workaholism vibe. It was like, actually this feels like the next right move. And I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing. So we're gonna go make it, create it, and because you did that, there's now a space for anybody who might need that. So you're literally offering people a new life because the opposite of connection is addiction, which ultimately, as we both agree, only gets worse and likely will lead into some sort of death. Mental, physical, or spiritual or all. Yeah. So Brava to you my friend, I really just feel overwhelmed with how, how beautiful and magical this is that you've created. I appreciate it. And I, I often tell people that I feel very grateful and blessed to be able to do it. I just, I am, I'm so grateful. Spirit has led me to this place and I feel so blessed to be sober and in recovery and able have literally be capable of doing it. Yeah. I get to offer it to other folks, but it's such a huge part of my own recovery and the amount of work that I'm still doing. Like what a blessing to have a place to be able to do it in. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so grateful. I'm very grateful for you. Yes. Yes. I love that we're ending on gratitude. Thank you so much for you and your work in the world. Thank you for creating a space where people feel safe and welcomed and included for making it so simple. The 1, 2, 3, and you're in and you can practice and you're welcome. So if you love sunshine, which key as much as I now, now we're just gonna have to be best friends forever. I will be sure to include all of the show note, all of the links and places where you can find sunshine in the show notes. And if there's something, there's someone listening right now who relates, who is who heard your story and thought oh, that sounds a lot like me, what would you encourage them to do next, first or next? Come find us in circle. Yeah, come find us in circle. Like I said, Monday nights, Fridays, just come join us. There's a whole unbelievably magical group of individuals that would be delighted to meet you. I love that. We'll make sure they, they get the link for that as well. Okay. Sunshine, from my heart to yours. I love you. I'm so grateful for you and your work and the world. I'm so proud of you for blazing this trail, and I believe in your ability to create a magical life that you love. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks, Dana. Oh, whoa. Did you just feel what I felt? There is a whole lot of that and more to help you create miracles in your life. On upcoming episodes of the Girls Who Recover a podcast now ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally. If you've built a strong recovery foundation and you're feeling ready to break through life's glass ceilings, let's make it happen together. In the show notes, you'll find a link to book a free one-on-one conversation with me and in that conversation. We'll get clear on what next level success even looks like for your life. We'll create some powerfully aligned goals and a plan. We're gonna talk about the big thing holding you back, and you will walk away with a roadmap for how to create a life you are obsessed with. Because hear this from me, my friend. You deserve. Success and freedom and the full identity of a woman who knows what she's capable of and who she is. And I wanna help you get there. So book your free call in the notes. And if you love this episode, follow us five stars, write a review, share it with your best friend, share it with your mom. And in case you haven't heard it today, I love you. I'm so proud of you, and I believe in your ability to create a gorgeous life. You are madly in love with starting. Right now and I'll see you in the next episode, blah.