I didn’t leave the church with a bang.
I left with a whisper. A sob.
And a quiet vow to never again betray my soul just to belong.
I was twenty-two, sitting inside a towering Catholic cathedral in New York City. The kind of structure meant to inspire reverence with its marble floors, golden ornamentation, and stained-glass windows casting stories in fractured light. It was my boyfriend’s younger sister’s First Communion, her choice, her ceremony, her rebirth into a faith I had once called home.
I sat in the pew, surrounded by polished beauty and hushed ritual, and all I could think about was the man I had passed on the way in. He was sitting outside the church doors, begging. He wasn’t the only one. Several unhoused folks lined the steps, just beneath the barbed wire fence surrounding the church’s parking lot like a fortress. And here we were, inside this shimmering palace of supposed holiness, celebrating the body and blood of Christ while His likeness lingered cold and starving on the street.
I couldn’t stay.
I burst into tears, leaned over to my partner, and whispered, “I can’t do this.” I walked out before the mass was halfway through and sat in the car, weeping.
It wasn’t the first time I’d questioned the Church. I’d grown up in thirteen years of Catholic schooling, First Communion, confirmation, even Girl Scouts with a religious flavor. I was taught morality through the Ten Commandments, instructed to confess my “sins” to grown men in dark booths, and internalized the message that I could never be good enough unless someone else, usually male, usually older, told me I was.
It wasn’t until that moment in New York that the contradiction screamed so loud I couldn’t ignore it.
How could a place claim the name of God and keep the suffering outside its gates?
That’s when I started to understand: I hadn’t just outgrown a religion. I had remembered a deeper truth. I wasn’t created to worship a distant god through ritual submission. I was born to live in divine communion with my own spirit. I was always meant to choose my own sacred path.
And that meant leaving their God behind.
The First Acts of Spiritual Rebellion
My first act of defiance came when I was still a teenager. Refusing to go to church on Easter. Declining to have our food blessed as tradition dictated. Not out of laziness or adolescent angst, but because I couldn’t keep pretending. I didn’t believe anymor, not in the way they wanted me to.
Then came the first act of liberation: buying my first tarot deck. It was the original Witch’s Tarot, published in 1992. I was still young, and back then, I hadn’t heard the myth that you were supposed to wait for your first deck to be gifted. I just knew it called to me. My soul was done waiting for permission.
From that moment on, my inner world began to unfold in color. My dreams became more vivid. My intuition sharpened. I started pulling cards, journaling, listening. The more I chose my spirit, the more my body responded with peace, the more my mind softened, the more my soul lit up.
And yet, I still hid. Because no matter how right it felt, I’d been raised in a society that looked down on witches, psychics, and anyone who dared step outside the bounds of conventional religion. So I kept it quiet. I whispered my prayers. I read cards in secret. I spoke of visions only to those I trusted.
It would take years before I fully stepped into the light.
Why Traditional Recovery Couldn’t Hold Me
By the time I reached recovery, I was already spiritually splintered. And walking into my first AA meetings, I realized quickly that while the literature said “God as you understand Him,” the room had already defined that God for me.
The people around me didn’t all say it out loud, but their understanding of a higher power was clearly shaped by Christian tradition. Jesus, Mary, the Holy Spirit, they were often present in conversations, in language, in the moral framework that guided the room. Even when no one said it outright, I could feel the undercurrent.
I wasn’t ashamed of my spiritual path, not anymore. But I did feel strange. Misfit. Queer in every sense of the word. And even when people said I could believe in whatever I wanted, it was clear that “whatever I wanted” still made them uncomfortable.
And yet, my recovery didn’t truly begin until I chose to believe fully in the Divine as I understood Her.
Not just in whispers. Out loud.
I built altars. I cast spells. I called on ancestors. I pulled cards every single day. I wrote new prayers. I planted herbs. I consecrated the kitchen as holy. My whole life became a ceremony of sovereignty.
Reclaiming the Divine Within
Today, I define the Divine as the animating force behind everything — from the hummingbird outside my window to the ache in my chest that tells me something is misaligned. The Divine lives in connection, in creation, in the inner knowing that each of us is a piece of universal consciousness. A spark of sacred fire.
It is not for a priest or a book or a sponsor to tell me how to commune with the sacred.
That right is mine.
That right is yours.
That right is holy.
And when I aligned with my own spirit, when I chose my own divine definition, everything changed.
I shed shame.
I transmuted guilt.
I learned to live, not just abstain.
I began to love myself, for the first time in my life, as something holy.
My rituals are not random. They are sacraments.
My cards are not toys. They are scripture.
My cauldron is not superstition. It is sacred technology.
There are more than ten altars in my home. And all of them remind me that I am the temple.
A Landing Place for the Spiritually Orphaned
If you’re still trapped in a religion or a recovery program that invalidates who you are, please hear me:
There is another way.
Pain is not the price you must pay for belonging. Suffering is not a spiritual requirement. You don’t have to keep twisting yourself into knots to fit a mold that was never made for your magic.
You were never too much.
You were never too strange.
You were never too queer or too psychic or too sensitive.
You were sacred all along.
The Sovereign Phoenix, the religious fellowship we are birthing, is a sanctuary for those of us who were spiritually orphaned. A landing pad for the witches, mystics, sensitives, and seekers who have long been told their gifts were sin, their love was wrong, and their truth was too wild to be holy.
We are reclaiming religion. Not as dogma, but as devotion.
Not to control, but to consecrate.
Not to tell you who God is, but to remind you that you already know.
If someone told me they were afraid to leave their church or their recovery program because it was all they’ve ever known, I’d offer this truth:
Stay if your soul is at ease.
But leap if it’s not.
Because the Divine doesn’t dwell only in golden cathedrals or doctrine.
She lives in you.
And She’s been waiting for you to remember.
Love and magick in recovery,
Sunshine
About Sunshine
Sunshine is a Psychic Medium, Soul Healer, Reiki Master, High Priestess and the pink-haired trailblazer behind The Sober Witch Life movement. As a recovering alcoholic and spiritual mentor, she helps witches in recovery rediscover their magick and align with their highest purpose.
✨ Explore her transformative work at IlluminateUnschool.com
📱 Download the Sober Witch Life mobile app for free tools & weekly recovery circles available on both iOS and Android
🌙 Join the Free Weekly Recovery Circle for support and a community of sober witches
📖 Get her book Sober Witch Life: A Magickal Guide to Recovery
