The summer of 2017 was the first time I realized something was seriously wrong with my father’s body. My partner, Keith, and I had gone up north with my parents for a week at the cottage. We had been there many times before, cooking meals, exploring the little town, walking the beach. But this time, my dad just could not keep up. Even when we slowed down, even when we tried to take it easy, he lagged behind. I could see the fatigue settle into his face. He napped in the middle of the day, something I had never seen him do.
Not long after that trip, he agreed to go to the doctor, and everything changed. At St. Joe’s in Ann Arbor, I stood in a hospital room with my mom while the doctor told us that his kidneys and liver were shutting down. His skin showed jaundice. His heart was only pumping at six percent. Six. The choice we were handed was brutal: hospice care and a year at most to live, or an LVAD surgery that might buy him more time.
It was not easy. He had to go days without drinking, days without smoking. He had to prove his body was strong enough to endure. My mother was too overwhelmed to be listed as his support, so I signed the paper myself, a literal commitment to be present before, during, and after the surgery. I took a leave of absence from work. I cut lawns, walked dogs, made food runs, sat in waiting rooms. And through it all, I drank heavily to cope with the stress of watching the man who raised me fight for his life because of the bottle.
Eventually he received the LVAD. A year later, he got the call and went on to have a heart transplant. Just the other day he emailed me, grateful for the help that got him to that milestone. And yet, even with a brand new heart, addiction’s grip did not let go.
My father’s drug of choice was alcohol, specifically dark rum, Bacardi Dark. I knew how to make him a rum and coke by the time I was eight or nine. Every evening, every weekend, that bottle shaped our lives. We all knew not to approach him until he had a drink. The grumbles, the anger, the orneriness lifted once the rum settled in his system. He would shift to playful for a while, until he got too tired or too drunk. That cycle was the rhythm of my childhood.
And even after nearly drinking himself to death, after the machines and the surgery and the transplant, he picked up a glass again. He drank to celebrate his new heart. Regretfully, I joined him. Later, when I was four months sober myself, I watched him drink again, and that moment split something open in me. The anger. The hurt. The grief of knowing he had dragged us all through hell and was still willing to return to the very poison that nearly killed him.
That day anchored my own recovery. Because addiction does not only kill with an overdose, it destroys slowly, it ravages organs, it breaks families down year after year. Watching him made me choose a different way. It made me commit to breaking the generational curse that stretches through my bloodline.
I do not know if my relationship with my father will ever heal fully. But I know that my work now, choosing recovery, building boundaries, serving others, creates healing that ripples back through him and through the ancestors before us. That is the promise of sovereignty: each of us is responsible for our own healing, and when we choose it, we do not just heal ourselves. We heal those tied to us across lifetimes.
This is what The Sovereign Phoenix exists to protect: sacred space for witches in recovery to do that soul-healing work. Machines can keep a heart pumping. But recovery is a spiritual wound, and healing it requires ritual, sovereignty, and connection to the Divine within.
September is National Recovery Month and Suicide Prevention Month. These weeks remind us of survival, but survival is not enough. To live, to thrive, to be whole, we must continue our healing. No one can do it for us.
So this is my prayer for you, as much as for myself: May you honor your survival. May you claim your sovereignty. May you do the healing that is yours to do, and in doing so, may you heal generations.
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
