Before I ever picked up a drink, I picked up the habit of hiding.
I hid that I liked girls just as much as I liked boys. I hid that I believed in magic, that I whispered to the moon, that I felt energy in my fingertips. I hid the part of me that knew, without being told, that the world was alive with signs and spirit and strange, beautiful things no one else seemed to talk about. I became a master of blending in. A little sparkle here, a little peekaboo hair color there, but never too much. Never enough to risk being called out.
So it wasn’t a surprise that when I entered recovery, I felt the old ache of contraction again.
Those first meetings were full of honesty, but also full of caution. I’d sit and listen to people share their trauma, their powerlessness, their relationships unraveling. I heard about abuse and betrayal, about drinking to numb pain or feel powerful again. And while I understood that pain, I had lived it, I also felt the quiet warning in my chest: Don’t tell them everything.
Because what would they say if I mentioned I was psychic? What would they think if I said I spoke with my dead grandmother, that I read tarot cards and cast spells for protection? That I was bi, a bit genderfluid at times, and raised in a world that tried to shame all of that into silence?
It wasn’t just fear. It was survival. And it wasn’t just in recovery rooms. I’d learned to scan every workplace, every friend group, every women’s circle for signs of who it was safe to be around. I became fluent in hiding, until the hiding itself started to make me sick.
Safe but Silent: The Early Days in Recovery
In those early days, I was showing up, but not showing me.
I went to meetings. I nodded. I shared just enough to be seen, but never so much that I’d be known. I learned how to talk about higher power without saying “goddess.” I’d say “intuition” when I meant “ancestor.” I’d say “gut feeling” when I really meant “clairsentience.” It wasn’t lying exactly. It was editing. Trimming myself down to fit the room. Translating my truth into something more palatable.
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being surrounded by people who are pouring their hearts out, and still feeling like the strangest one in the room. When someone would talk about the abuse they survived, or the God they found in recovery, or the pain that pushed them to drink, I resonated. But my pain had different symbols. My healing came with a different language. And I hardly saw anyone else who looked like me, queer, neurodivergent, spiritually raw and open, holding crystals in one hand and trauma in the other.
So I stayed quiet. Not always. But often enough that it became a pattern. I would censor myself when I wanted to speak. I’d bite my tongue when my guides whispered through me. I would dim my light just enough to avoid the questions, the stares, the polite nods followed by distance. And like so many of us do, I convinced myself it was okay. That being “included” was enough. That spiritual safety was something I could live without.
But safety isn’t the same as healing. And silence isn’t the same as peace.
The Turning Point: A Conversation and a Color
I can’t tell you the exact date it happened. Recovery is full of blurred timelines and spiritual snapshots. But I remember the moment clearly.
I was talking to an old-timer in the program, someone with more than fifty years sober. He had that grounded energy, the kind that makes you feel safe without even trying. We got to talking about his journey, and he told me how he found God. The way he said it, there was no judgment. Just reverence. Just truth. I felt completely at ease with him.
And yet…I still hesitated.
I didn’t tell him about my God. About the divine voices I hear when I’m quiet. About my altar, my ancestors, my bright pink candles and bowls of moon water. I didn’t tell him I’d found my higher power through tarot cards and trance states and whispered rituals beneath the full moon. I was afraid he wouldn’t understand. Or worse, that he’d smile politely and then never speak to me again.
That conversation stayed with me, though, not because of what I said, but because of what I didn’t. It made me realize something deeply uncomfortable: if I wanted long-term sobriety, I couldn’t build it on spiritual erasure. I couldn’t keep hiding my truth and expect to feel whole.
And then, not long after, I dyed my entire head bright pink.
Until then, I’d played it safe. A streak here. A peekaboo of color there. But this was different. This was loud. This was magickal. This was a declaration. I was tired of being palatable. I was tired of blending in. I wanted to look like how I actually felt—strange, vibrant, wild, and mine.
That was the first spell I cast in recovery. And it worked.
Reclaiming the Hidden Self Through Ritual
Once I stopped hiding, the real work began.
I started leaning fully into my psychic gifts, no more calling them “gut instincts” or “quirky intuition.” I honored them as sacred. I started conducting rituals on a regular basis, especially for protection. I began pulling cards not just for clarity, but as a conversation with my guides. I lit candles, spoke to my grandmother’s spirit, cleansed my energy after hard days, and sat with my cauldron in silence and awe. Witchcraft wasn’t a hobby, it was home.
And it wasn’t just about casting spells. It was about shadow work. Real shadow work. The kind that makes you look inward and ask hard questions: What do I actually want? Why does this hurt so much? Where is this shame coming from? Whose voice is this, mine, or someone else’s I swallowed years ago?
Magick gave me a mirror. Ritual gave me language. My gifts gave me a compass. And slowly, I stopped reaching outward for validation and started looking inward for truth.
I wasn’t alone either. I had a therapist, an incredible one, who didn’t flinch when I talked about spirit guides. They’d ask me, “What kind of ritual have you done lately?” Or, “Did you pull cards on this yet?” They reflected my power back to me at times I wanted to forget it. In moments where I felt overwhelmed or disconnected, they reminded me: you have tools, use them.
That was a turning point. I stopped thinking of my spirituality as something I had to hide or explain. I started remembering it as a lifeline. It wasn’t “woo.” It wasn’t “cute.” It was survival. And it was sacred.
What the Rooms Didn’t Want to Hear
As I stepped more fully into my truth, I began to notice just how much of it had always made people uncomfortable.
It wasn’t just that I talked to spirits, but which spirits I talked to. Not the Christian God or an angel from a well-known religion, but my grandmother, my grandfather, guides I’d met in dreams, energies I didn’t have names for but felt deeply connected to. I’d sit in recovery meetings with these voices whispering wisdom into my ear, helping me sort through my emotions, giving me comfort, and I couldn’t say a word about it.
Because when I tried to share, the air would change.
Even in so-called open spaces, the moment I spoke about my partner, or about the fact that we were in an open relationship, I could feel the room shift. Questions would come. Doubts disguised as concern. Judgment masked as advice. In one women’s meeting, several members challenged the validity of my relationship altogether. They questioned whether it was healthy, whether I’d still feel the same after “more time in recovery.” As if queerness, polyamory, and autonomy were just symptoms to be cured by sobriety.
That moment stayed with me. Not because of what was said, but because of what it made me do.
I left.
Not all at once. But about a month later, I stopped attending meetings regularly. I stopped trying to wedge my healing into spaces that could barely make room for my name, let alone my soul.
And I’m not the only one. So many of us have been there, sitting in a room full of chairs, completely alone.
The Energetics of Recovery
Eventually, it wasn’t just the silence that hurt—it was the energy.
As I deepened my spiritual practice, I became more attuned to the currents flowing beneath the surface of the rooms I entered. Not emotionally, energetically. I could feel addiction still pulsing through certain individuals, even when the words they spoke were clean and sober. I could feel when someone was deeply unsettled, when their energy was volatile, when the sickness wasn’t done working through them.
There were times I offered rides to people because I wanted to help. That’s what we’re taught in recovery, service, support, and showing up. But I could feel it. The addiction was still active in them, even if the drug or the drink was gone. And being around that frequency, especially in early sobriety, was not safe for me.
And then there were others.
The ones already sitting in the meetings. The ones who prowled the space before it began, trying to corner newcomers or dominate conversations. The ones who brought in predatory energy, not always in overt ways, but in subtle pushes. Unwanted attention. Unspoken power plays. Creeping hands or manipulative questions masked as concern. I saw it. I felt it. Not just for myself, but for others, too.
It was overwhelming. And it was impacting my healing.
That’s when I started setting energetic boundaries, not just behavioral ones. I stopped forcing myself to stay in meetings that didn’t feel safe. I stopped trying to “power through” discomfort and started trusting the signals my spirit was giving me.
When the pandemic hit, something strange happened: I finally felt relief. Virtual meetings meant I had a choice. I could click “leave” without drama. I could choose who and what I let into my energetic field. I wasn’t trapped in rooms that were vibrating out of alignment.
And for the first time in my recovery, I started to feel sovereign.
The Role of a Spirit-Aligned Therapist
I’ve already shared how my therapist helped reflect my truth back to me, but what became clearer over time was just how rare and sacred that kind of reflection really is.
They didn’t flinch when I talked about talking to spirits. They didn’t try to reframe my rituals as coping mechanisms or sidestep my intuition for “evidence-based” practices. They saw my witchcraft, my mediumship, my magick—and they met it with respect.
When things got hard, and they often did, they asked me things like,
“What kind of ritual have you done lately?”
“Have you pulled cards on this?”
“What did your guides say?”
Not “Are you sure that’s real?” or “What does your sponsor think?” but questions that honored my way of knowing. Questions that brought me back to my center.
It wasn’t just support, it was empowerment.
They reminded me that my healing tools weren’t on a shelf, they were inside me. They reminded me that I didn’t need to earn spiritual connection through someone else’s doctrine. I already had it.
Therapists like that are rare. But they shouldn’t be.
Because if recovery is going to include all of us, it has to recognize that healing doesn’t look the same for every soul. For some of us, it’s not scripture that saves, it’s sacred smoke and moonlight and ancestral presence. It’s spellcraft and shadow work and the steady drumbeat of intuition.
And when a professional honors that? It changes everything.
The Myth of Inclusion
Let’s be honest, traditional recovery programs know they have gaps. That’s why we’ve seen the rise of LGBTQIA+ meetings, women’s tables, Dharma Recovery, SMART Recovery, and all these other pathways. And thank the Goddess for them. They exist because the dominant model hasn’t worked for everyone. If it had, we wouldn’t need alternatives.
But even in those spaces—even in the so-called “inclusive” rooms, I still had to translate.
Yes, I could sit in a women’s meeting. Yes, I could share in a queer-friendly space. But more often than not, I was still surrounded by people whose spiritual identities were rooted in Christianity, or who had internalized ideas about what healing “should” look like. Even in recovery circles that welcomed my pronouns or my partner’s gender, there wasn’t space for the full scope of who I was: a witch, a psychic, a neurodivergent being receiving messages from ancestors and building altars between therapy sessions.
So I learned something that no one tells you at the start:
Inclusion is not the same as centering.
I wasn’t just looking for a seat at someone else’s table. I was trying to build an entirely different temple. One where we could speak the language of spellwork and shadow. One where divination was sacred, not silly. One where no one flinched when you said your higher power wears a skirt made of feathers and appears in dreams.
That’s the space I needed.
And if it didn’t exist, I would have to create it.
A Message to the Hidden Ones
To the queer, neurodivergent, witchy souls still sitting in the back of the room, still editing your story, still trying to make your healing digestible, I see you.
I know what it’s like to feel like too much and not enough at the same time.
To wonder if the room would still hold you if you spoke your whole truth.
To feel the ache of being surrounded by people in “fellowship” and still feel utterly alone. To sit on your hands when your guides are speaking, because you’re scared no one will understand.
I’ve been the only one with a deck in my bag, a sigil in my pocket, and a partner no one talks about. I’ve swallowed stories because I didn’t want the silence that might follow. And I’ve walked away from spaces that asked me to be someone I’d already worked so hard to un-become.
So if you’re still hiding: Don’t give up.
Your strangeness is not a liability. Your truth is not a threat. Your path is not a detour—it’s the way through.
There is a circle being built for you, where spellcraft and sobriety sit hand in hand. Where ritual is honored. Where your neurodivergent wiring isn’t something to fix, it’s something to work with. Where love doesn’t have to look heteronormative to be holy. Where you can take a deep breath and finally exhale.
You deserve that. All of it.
And if you haven’t found it yet, we’re making it now.
What It Means to Be Spiritually Sovereign in Recovery
Being spiritually sovereign in recovery means no one else gets to define your path to wholeness.
Not your sponsor.
Not your therapist.
Not your family.
Not the old-timer who found God in a chapel.
Not the newcomer quoting from the Big Book.
Only you.
Sovereignty means choosing your own sacred language. It means that your relationship with the Divine, however it presents itself to you, is valid, holy, and entirely yours. It means trusting your inner guidance over external approval. It means knowing that your sobriety is real, even if it’s supported by rituals, herbs, tarot, or moonlight instead of church pews or standard prayers.
Recovery isn’t just a program. It’s a spiritual journey. A remembering. A reclamation.
It’s not about becoming who others say you should be. It’s about returning to who your soul already is, the version of you who never had to shrink to stay safe. The version of you who speaks to the dead and listens to dreams. Who moves with intention. Who casts spells, not to control, but to come into alignment with truth.
Spiritual sovereignty means you are the author of your own healing story. You get to write the rituals. You get to name the gods, or walk with none at all. You get to evolve on your own terms.
And yes, you get to change your mind along the way.
Final Blessing: Come Out of Hiding
You can’t heal what you’re still hiding.
Not the queerness.
Not the grief.
Not the voices that speak in the quiet.
Not the knowing in your bones that there’s more to recovery than just abstinence.
If your truth still lives in shadows, your healing will stay there too. And I promise you, you deserve more than that.
You deserve the kind of recovery that honors your whole being.
The kind that doesn’t ask you to trade your magick for approval.
The kind that makes room for your cards, your craft, your ancestors, your emotions, your frequency.
The kind that lets you be fully seen, and still fully loved.
So if you’re still hiding, come out slowly if you need to. Come out in color. Come out in candlelight. Come out in the quiet moments when your soul whispers, “It’s time.”
And if you can’t find a place that welcomes all of you, come find ours. Or let it find you.
We are building it in your name.
