In this compelling episode of “The Sober Witch’s Life,” Sunshine dives deep into the intersection of witchcraft and traditional recovery programs. She explores the transformative power of her unique 13-step approach, diverging from the conventional 12-step model of AA. Sunshine candidly shares her personal journey, detailing her initial struggle with the AA community’s negative connotations of the 13th step, which sharply contrasted with its spiritual significance in her witchcraft practice.ย
This episode illuminates the potential for personalized recovery paths and underscores the strength found in community rituals designed to support those battling addiction. Listeners are invited to reflect on the evocative experience of participating in a communal magic ritual and are encouraged to either craft their own recovery rituals or join Sunshine in future gatherings designed to foster healing and connection.
Sunshine – The pink-haired sober witch:
All right. All right. All right. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Sober Witch Life podcast. Super excited that you’re joining in here. I don’t know if this is your first one or if you’ve been around a couple of times but go check out any of the other ones. We are smack dab. You’re joining us. Smack dab, kind of in the middle of exploring the witches, 13 steps to recovery. That’s right, dear friends, I don’t even know.ย
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A couple of years ago, I guess I started down this path and intended to do it for myself, and, you know, writing these 13 steps, and then, you know, lo and behold, decided to share it with others. And we’ve been going through them each of the weeks as I’ve been recording. And I thought about today as I was prepping today’s, and we would technically be, I believe, on Step nine, but I’m fast-forwarded. I’m fast-forwarding all the way to Step 13. And I want to talk about that because it’s kind of near and dear to my heart right now. It’s giving me the warm and fuzzies it had me. How would I describe this? At crying Friday morning, it’s Monday right now. I was crying Friday we’re going to start, as always, with a little bit of storytime. And this goes back to when I first stepped into my road to recovery, and I was leveraging the tables through AA, the 12-step program through AA, the traditional Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, program. And I don’t know how long it was before, maybe about a month, probably about a month, going to meetings almost every single day before, I heard for the first time, that someone referenced the 13th step.ย
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Now none of the literature talks about it. It’s not published anywhere. But if you go into the tables, you can ask, you can ask about what that 13 step is. And I learned what it meant, and I was pretty disgusted, and a big bit ticked off at the number 13 was being used for it. And so for those of you that are not familiar with it, in the traditional 12-step program, when people are referencing a 13th step, it is a very derogative 13th step, basically meaning that somebody that has been around the program for an extended period of time is kind of preying on those that are newer to the program and very often this is in reference of older gentlemen preying upon younger women within the program, who are stepping in, very new, into their own sobriety, their own recovery, and they are very vulnerable. And so it’s this like predatory use of it. And I did. I mean, I would think, that if you’re a witch, you may understand the importance of the number 13 for a witch, it is a number that is connected directly to the goddess of witchcraft, which is Hecate. But I was, I was kind of mad, people kind of laughed about it. Like the evil 13, I remember having to argue, and then, explain that some folks would be insulted because it had meaning to them. Then the number 13, for some people, is a lucky number. For us witches, it actually is a very empowering number.ย
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There are 13 moon cycles, So it really kind of bothered me, but I wasn’t ready to say it was because I was a witch, so I guess bummer on that one because I didn’t have a chance to be able to educate. But I think the reason why, looking back, I didn’t have that reason to educate is because fast forward to when I was like sitting there and now starting to look back at the steps like I worked the traditional 12 steps. I did them. I worked through most of them with the sponsor. The ones that I didn’t actually finish with the sponsor, because they ended up breaking up with me before I could finish with them. I finished on my own, with a therapist, you know, helping to support that. But there was something still lacking, so there were other things that I started to do at the same time, when I looked back and started to reflect upon the work that I was doing that really I believed was keeping me into the road of recovery, it didn’t have to do with the traditional 12 steps. It had to do with these other,ย heavily, heavy leaning into the witchcraft side of my beliefs,ย the beliefs that I have as a witch, they were just more aligned with my own personal beliefs.ย
I remember at some point talking with spirit and being curious about what to do about the. 13th step. It made me really uncomfortable, and I felt like I had to address it. I felt like I wanted to talk about it. I felt like I wanted to do something about it, as I was kind of writing these down and exploring them because I was at this point, I was, I knew I wanted to have the record of them, but I knew there was something special here that was kind of like bubbling out of me. And so, meditating on it, talking with spirit, they were showing me a portion of my daily prayer that I do, and my daily prayer includes, kind of three components. It includes this component of gratitude, a component of surrender, and then I this third component of, I’ll say, blessings. And those blessings weren’t for me, that third component was me praying for all those individuals that are still suffering from addiction, whether or not that addiction was drugs, alcohol, sex, chaos, violence, drama, shopping, food, sugar, whatever was robbing them from living their best possible life. I prayed that they find the courage that they needed to take the steps towards a life filled with more peace, love, happiness, hope, joy and prosperity. I pray that they continue to find that courage every single day.ย
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It was a ritual that I was doing, and I don’t know that it came through horribly clear to start. I knew that this prayer, this ritualistic prayer that I was doing, had something that I needed to be paying attention to, but I wasn’t really positive what it was. And so it took me a little bit longer to continue to really meditate on what it would, what it was that I would be doing right, because the reality is, these are supposed to be individual steps that you’re performing. But the belief that a witch has, like a good majority. There are some witches that will, like, lean away from this, but a good number of witches that I know, oh, I respect, that I engage with, and Iย that I’ve practiced with, know and understand that when we lean in together for a cause or a purpose, our magic is that much more powerful. So the 13th step is as a sober which I know that I have a natural gift to heal and to do spell work. And will do regular spell work to help release the universe of the pain and the suffering caused by addiction. The 13th step for a witch is to do spell work, to do ritual, to do something that helps rid our community, our world, our universe, of this disease of addiction. And why am I sharing all of this with you right now? I think it’s easy to understand that I’m sharing it with you because, as a witch who might be in recovery, this is the 13th step you get to do. That’s kind of simple, but it’s more so a reminder. I’m sharing this with you, this whole story with you, as a reminder that you get to choose your own way. You get to choose your own road to recovery.ย
There are all sorts of tools and all sorts of things that are out there, but you ultimately get to choose. Nobody gets to tell you exactly how it needs to be done. They can tell you how it worked for them, and you might give that a try, but it is up to you to choose your own way, and you get to rewrite whatever steps someone has told you that you should be doing so that it best serves your recovery. You get to choose, and last but not least, the very selfish reason as to why I’m telling you is because you are invited to join in this past Thursday, I held my very first inaugural awakening Hope Community ritual to help combat addiction, and it was free, and I had some near and dear friends that will always show up to everything I do show up to support me, and it was so wonderful and beautiful. We all talk about our own stories and how we faced addiction ourselves and the impact that it has, but the most beautiful part of it is a couple of souls that I had never met wandered through those doors with dishes to share in the potluck, and they can. Attributed and participated in the entire ritual, and they left with hugs and tears in their eyes and a new friend and a family that they could belong to. It’s that reason that my heart was so full up until, I would say even right now, but Friday, it was so full that I had tears it wouldn’t stop streaming out of my eyes. I share this with you because you are invited to join in.ย
You can come up to the metro Detroit area and join us for any one of our regular community rituals. I host them around the seasonal holidays. So our next one will be in November, around that Halloween, that Sam holiday. We’ll do one around Yule in bulk, ostera, Beltane, Litha, all of them. We’re going to keep doing them every single one of the pagan holidays. There will be ritual, and it will be amazing. Amazing but you can also create your own ritual. You can create your own awakening hope ritual and lead it and conduct it and try to raise the vibration of the community gathering with other witches in recovery. You could just create your own individual one doing spell work by yourself. You off 13 Step is a reclaim of the number that is meant to show the power of the Witch, and I’m sharing that with you here today because I hope you join me that being said, My dear friends, much love and ritual, always from me to you until next time.
