Spiritual Spotlight Series
Discover a world of healing, holistic, and spiritual modalities with the Spiritual Spotlight Series podcast. Every week, we introduce you to diverse spiritual practitioners, including psychics, energy healers, life coaches, spiritual thought leaders, and witches. Each episode offers inspiration and enlightenment through the unique journeys, experiences, and divine abilities of our guests. Perfect for those on a path to spiritual awakening, this podcast blends science and mysticism to expand your understanding of spirituality. Our mission is to open your eyes to the world around you, making complex concepts accessible and enlightening for anyone seeking spiritual growth. Whether you're new to spirituality or looking to deepen your knowledge, the Spiritual Spotlight Series is your go-to resource for awakening and transformation.
Spiritual Spotlight Series
Sunshine's Spiritual Metamorphosis: A Tale of Awakening and Leadership
What happens when a successful corporate professional undergoes a profound spiritual awakening?
Meet Sunshine, a dynamic psychic medium, soul healer, and spiritual advisor, who shares her incredible metamorphosis from a 12-year corporate career to founding Sunshine Readings.
Sunshine takes us through her personal journey, beginning with an early disillusionment with the Catholic Church, leading up to a life-altering experience in 2019. She recounts her teenage years exploring metaphysical and occult practices, inspired by her visits to a metaphysical bookstore and the influential books and mentors she discovered there.
Sunshine also delves into her family's spiritual background, notably her grandmother's psychic mediumship talents, and her ongoing exploration of Christianity and the Holy Spirit.
Discover the challenges and triumphs Sunshine faced while transitioning from a long-term corporate job to becoming a spiritual advisor and healer.
Highlighting the importance of integrity and servant leadership, Sunshine discusses how fostering a healthy work environment can lead to personal and professional growth.
Get an inside look at her innovative "Illuminate the Unschool of Witchcraft" program, which blends psychic abilities, magical power, and healing gifts for personalized learning. Sunshine also shares heartfelt stories and practical advice for dealing with skeptics in the realm of spirituality, underscoring the transformative power of energy reading in both spiritual and corporate settings.
Tune in for an episode filled with authenticity, wisdom, and inspiring insights into the world of spiritual guidance.
Sunshine is a trailblazing Psychic Medium, Soul Healer, Spiritual Advisor, High Priestess, Reiki Master, and Recovering Alcoholic. Known as The Sober Witch, her mission is to help highly motivated witches in recovery rediscover their magick, align with their highest purpose, and live the abundant life promised in sobriety.
https://www.illuminateunschool.com
https://www.soberwitch.life
https://www.youtube.com/@IlluminateUnschoolofWitchcraft
https://www.facebook.com/groups/soberwitchsbazaar/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenromanowski/
We hope you found the episode to be enlightening and insightful. Our goal is to create content that not only entertains but also helps you grow spiritually and connect with your inner self.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, we would greatly appreciate it if you could take a moment to like, subscribe, and write a review. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us and helps us to improve the quality of our content and reach a wider audience.
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Hello everyone, welcome to our Spiritual Spotlight Series. Today I am joined by Sunshine. She is a psychic medium, soul healer, spiritual advisor, high priestess, reiki master, recovering alcoholic and founder of Sunshine Readings. Thank you so much for coming on Spiritual Spotlight Series. I'm so happy you're here.
Speaker 2:Hi Rachel, I'm glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Sunshine. Can you maybe share your journey from working in a corporate environment to founding Sunshine Readings, what was maybe a pivotal moment for you?
Speaker 2:A pivotal moment in that journey. It never would have happened if I did not hit a rock bottom in 2019 and admit that I was an alcoholic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wow, wow. Can you maybe share more about your journey from the Catholic faith to exploring the esoteric and the occult, and what drew you to those spiritual paths?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love this story so much it's very, very distinctive. I was around 11 years old and I was a Girl Scout growing up, and when you are a Girl Scout you're going to be a part of a parish. At least in the past You'd be part of a Catholic parish, and so my schooling, raised as Catholic, went to Catholic school, was at one parish, and then I went to Girl Scouts at another parish and at Girl Scouts I was watching these girls act as altar servers and I went up to my parish priest and I said Father Kevin, I said I really want to be an altar girl. Can I be an altar girl? And he said no. And I said what do you mean? No, he said. And I said what do you mean? No, he said no. Uh, I said, but they, you know they over at St Peter and Paul, you know they've, they've, they allow it.
Speaker 2:And he says, uh, my church, my rules, oh my gosh. And I was just like you know, blank, blank, blank, blank. What, like? What do you mean? Your church? I thought this was God's house, like, what are you talking about? And so it was really from that point forward that I was determined to pretty much drive every single religion teacher I had Absolutely bonkers. I would ask all of the hard questions. You know the whys that nobody ever had an answer to. I was asked, at least by one, to just, you know, keep it down and not disrupt the class. I mean, cause it? I it was. And uh, you know, I just I had a real hard time with the Catholic church after that point.
Speaker 2:I just couldn't understand it and it didn't feel like a truth. It didn't feel like something that was really, um, honest and wholesome wholesome, and you know something to believe. And so I started to seek other you know other paths and found myself, around the age of took a couple of years, but around the age of 16, stumbled into my very first metaphysics bookstore and was in awe. Yeah, I was in awe.
Speaker 1:I love that At 16, do you remember what book maybe drew you in? I?
Speaker 2:don't know what book specifically would have brought me in. I think what brought me in more so is the name of the store was El Alhambra. It was here, literally in the city that I live in right now, and it was in this basement of this building, and so it was kind of mysterious and weird and spooky and so, yeah, you know that was. I think what drew me in was the fact that it was different and odd, and you know part of the occult, but I do know I still have two of the book, my first books that I bought. One of them is Raymond Buckland's. The Ultimate Guide to Witchcraft is one of them Got water damage at some point but it is kicking around here somewhere.
Speaker 2:But the other book, interestingly enough, was just returned to me about a year ago because and it literally has the manual credit card slip in it oh, my goodness, yeah, you know, like the. You know, yeah, that thing, the manual credit card, and it's dated 1997. So it would have been, I would have been a senior in high school that year and it was. It was the wheel of life. Yeah, the book about the chakra is the wheel of life. Yeah, I love that you know.
Speaker 1:I remember watching Montel Williams and having Sylvia Brown. Just I was enamored by how she was as a reader.
Speaker 2:How did I miss that? I don't even remember. I remember you know I didn't watch a lot of TV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember I went to an all girls Catholic high school and, like you, I struggled because I wasn't Catholic in a Catholic high school. And, like you, I struggled because I wasn't Catholic in a Catholic school and you're treated differently. And then it's like okay, and then my guardian would have tarot readers come in and then we went to a spiritualist church. So it was very like what's going on here and I love that you were open to that as well and it really like shaped the path that you're on now.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely my. You know I was blessed, even though my family was Catholic. You know both sides. My mother and my father's side of the family was Catholic. My mother's side of the family, my grandmother, was a psychic medium and even though she was a devout Catholic, she would call it talking to the angels, like so she would tell you know, the joke was you could never lie to grandma. Nobody could ever get away with anything right, cause that's the psychic ability. And then grandma talked to the angels, which was her mediumship. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that and I love that she was willing and open to do that. My new thing is is that you know, I'm trying to, you know, explore more of Christianity, and I call myself Holy Spirit activated.
Speaker 2:I you know I, I have a huge love of Christianity at this particular you know I, when I was in my early twenties, like my teenage years, my early twenties, I had a lot of spite towards the Catholic church you know and I, it clouded a lot of my understanding, acknowledgement and acceptance of Christianity right.
Speaker 2:Because, the Catholic church is not Christianity, right, um, and it is not Christianity. And so, uh, yeah it it it did. But I've come to realize, like the messages of Jesus are beautiful, they're unbelievable. Like you, you know some of the you know there's a reason it has been such a dominant religion for the last 2000 years and that's because it so much of the message makes sense. But us humans love to bastardize things and use it for our demise.
Speaker 2:I'm not even going to say for our benefit, but we love to use it for our demise.
Speaker 1:So true. So you kind of brought this up before. So how did your journey to sobriety influence your decision to take your spiritual practices more seriously? And what, eventually, to establish Sun Sign Breedings?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I hit my rock bottom in. I hit two rock bottoms in 2019, but anybody that's got a story of recovery often will tell you that there's not one. Relapses do happen, and so I hit my rock bottom for the second time, and my partner at that time said that the only way that he would continue to remain in the relationship was if I went to AA. And so I agreed. You know I was. I was horrified at what I'd done. I mean, just horrified at what I'd done and we were on vacation. It was my 40th birthday. I came back and the day we got back I knew one person in my life at that time that was in AA, in the program, and this person I hadn't talked to since I was a teenager and I reached out and I said, just kind of knowing the program, you know, just kind of knowing the program. I said I need help. I said, can you take me to a meeting? And so I did 90 meetings in 90 days and for any of your listeners that are familiar with a 12-step program, it's a spiritual program, right, you know they don't talk about religion per se, but they talk about, you know, a higher power, and so that's what makes it a, you know, spiritual program. So here's me, a little old witch sitting at the tables with you know, all of these folks and thankfully, the area that I live in, um is, has got a high, um, a very eclectic religious background. So, like, people are very open. Some folks are muslim, some are catholic, some are christian, um, some will be baptist. You know, we had atheists, um, and and so, uh, it wasn't until probably this had happened in october, I hit my rock bottom and it was right around christmas and I remember sitting at the tables and I made a comment and somebody pulled me aside and they're like, do you know that? You said higher powers, right there, like, when you were talking. Like you said higher powers, like, did you mean to say that? And I said, yeah, I did. And he said my higher powers are all of my ancestors, you know that surround me and guide me and protect me. You know, and they were kind of, oh, okay, me and guide me and protect me. You know, and, um, they were kind of oh, okay and uh.
Speaker 2:So we fast forward a couple of weeks and and I'm like, maybe just after the new year, and I was, I was feeling kind of I'd been almost, you know, approaching the 90 days, needing to make a little bit of a decision of what you know, what I was going to do next. Was I going to continue, was I not? And I, you know, one of the things that I really was envious of in in all, in all reality is I was envious of people going to church. They would talk about this like spiritual practice, and they would talk about community, and they would talk about church, and I was just like dang man, like why did these people got like a place to go to hang out, you know, like be, you know, and so I just kind of missed it, and I didn't miss the Catholic church, right, I didn't miss the catholic church, right, I didn't miss the hypocrisy, um, but I, I did miss, and, you know, kind of took a pause and I missed, I missed practicing my path, I missed my own spirituality, and so it was january 20th of 2020.
Speaker 2:I was just about four months into, you know, my so that's November, december, january. It had been three months, three months exactly almost to the day into my sobriety, and I fired up a Facebook page and I decided, you know, called Sunshine Readings, and I decided that, in order to participate in my weekly church service, so to speak, I would go live and offer a tarot reading, and so that's how it started. I, once a week, I sat down, I spent an hour and I would read. I'd pull cards for as long as I could for that hour, and that was my way of kind of like, going to church every week. Yeah, um, and I never anticipated though I've had, uh, astrologers tell me this since that I never anticipated it turning into a business or anything of that nature. Um, that wasn't what, that wasn't why it was initially created. Um, but, uh, the astrologists have told me that there's no way I could have not ended up with a business. Yeah, and so that's how that journey started.
Speaker 1:I love that. So what was it about the toxic corporate environment that pushed you to make such a significant career change, and how does experience shape your approach to business ownership?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I, even before recovery and starting Sunshine Readings, I'd left the company in 2017. And that was the really really bad working environment.
Speaker 2:The gentleman that I worked for. The CEO of that company was, you know, narcissistic, um, incredibly abusive, uh, I I jokingly have told people at that time I was in therapy for two things my, my CEO and my ex-husband. My ex-CEO and my ex-husband, um, and it was just, there was a lot of um, you know, um, uh, a Machiavellian approach to running business. You know, he, he talked about his favorite leadership book was the 48 laws of power. I mean, yeah, it's just some really, really nasty things. And so I left, I walked out of that job without I'd been there for 12 years. Wow, I had nothing, almost 12 years. I had nothing lined up, um, but I had returned after a two and a half month leave of absence, taking care of my father, and it was so startling how horrible the environment was because I'd been out, because I'd been out of it for two and a half months.
Speaker 2:And I, you know, and my dad was like very sick, and so not only was I out of it, but I was also in this place of like is this really how I want to be spending my time, right, like, and so I left without anything lined up. I did work another corporate job that I just exited, just over a month ago now, but even when taking that job, I've told people they kind of like you what. I went in for an interview. I called them back and asked for another one. They extended the offer and I said you know what I really love that, but I think I'd really like to have another conversation. I've you know what I really love that, but I think I'd really like to have another conversation. I've got some more questions before I can decide. I love that and yeah, and so I, you know I asked more questions.
Speaker 2:I was with that company for another five, almost five years. They were, you know, they had their own, their own garbage, which I think you know I've come to realize every business is going to have its own garbage. And to answer your question like, how do I treat differently? You know it's the same way that I treated. You know, I've been a leader all of my corporate career. And it's the difference is I will run my business in the same way I've led my team, and that's with integrity, honesty, transparency, respect.
Speaker 2:Right, you know, not a single one of us as individuals will ever run a company and have people work for us. And you know, unless we truly want to be the solopreneur, right, like we don't want anybody else to work with us, you are going to rely upon and require other people to help you. Right, and so to me, it's a matter of remembering that we will never grow as an organization. We'll never, you know, become bigger, better, more advanced, help more people If you aren't taking care of your actual folks that are helping you. Do that in the first place.
Speaker 1:So true, it sounds like you lean into servant leadership.
Speaker 2:Oh, very much so stronger in servant leadership. I've looked up the various different leadership styles a handful of times and that is is much more, minus the fact that there's another leadership style Like I. I prefer leadership. I prefer to be very hands off, but the challenge is, is not everybody operates well like that?
Speaker 1:So true, some people like to be like micromanaged, and oh, they don't even realize that they like to be micromanaged.
Speaker 2:But yes, you're spot on, they're like, they're like I. Just how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do this?
Speaker 1:And you're like, I trust you. I'll verify your work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh you're, oh you're, oh, you're the guy that needs the steps. Okay, got it. Give me another 20 minutes and I'll write down the 20 steps that you have to take. Okay, yeah, got it.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. So Illuminate the unschool of witchcraft sounds fascinating. Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind this program and maybe what a participant can expect with it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's a couple of pieces that I think in this the name kind of speaks to it. Illuminate itself is all about shining the light on things that may not have been easily recognized and seen right. That's why the name Illuminate it's meant to bring things out of the dark and into the light. The unschool portion is.
Speaker 2:My belief is that us, as human beings, we don't really have one way that we learn well, right. And so the unschooling concept is taken from the homeschooling concept that it's really up to the individual students to tell the instructor or the teacher or you know me in that regards what is it exactly that they want to be learning about and how is it that they learn well, right. And so the unschooling portion basically will shape and shift the programming based upon the students that are currently within it, active within it, and I will show up in the way that they need me to show up. So if they need it written, if they need it recorded, if they need it videoed, if they need to be on camera, off camera, loud, whatever, nobody's asked me to record it in ASMR, but I would totally record it ASMR style.
Speaker 2:If that's, I know Hi there we're going to talk about your psychic abilities. Right, if that's what they needed, right, if that that was how they learned best, right. And so you know, yeah, that's a really big, huge passion of mine, because you know I can't stand cookie cutter folks. I have a hard time learning through like video Don't send me, through a seven series video, to learn something.
Speaker 2:It's just not my way of learning. So that's the unschool, and the witchcraft portion of it is literally witchcraft. So my own philosophy around witchcraft is it's the combination of psychic abilities, magical power and healing gifts all combined in order to be of service in this world, and so the individuals that are in this program every single one of them are going to have an innate desire to be able to be of service. I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that you respect your student to deliver what you are willing to teach in a way in which they're going to receive it. Oh, a hundred percent, that's amazing. So can you maybe share the story behind how you received your universe given name sunshine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my universe given name. So this is probably I don't know I. I was probably like 28, 29, maybe maybe in my early thirties, I don't know and at that particular time I had a friend that her and I had been friends for many, many years. I now watched her third child be born, and so he was a little baby. Her middle child was a little girl and I think she was like three at that time, and then her oldest would have been, I think, five or something around there, and so I. They lived a mile away and I was over there pretty often, but I hadn't been around for a while.
Speaker 2:Things got busy and the little girl starts asking her mom uh, when does auntie sunshine coming over? And her mom's like I don't, I don't know who this is. And and so, like two weeks go by, I walk in the back door. All of a sudden the little girl starts running up to me and says Auntie Sunshine, auntie Sunshine. And my friend looks at me and she goes you're Auntie Sunshine. I was like I guess, and it's stuck ever since. So I always say the universe blessed me with the name Sunshine by a little three-year-old, little three-year-old girl.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful story. I love that she connected you with Sunshine. I love that. What is some advice you would give to someone who is skeptical about spiritual guidance but curious to explore it, and how do you handle skepticism in your practice?
Speaker 2:You know I mean curiosity. What I would say to anybody that's curious is just sit down with someone, sit down with a psychic, sit down with a spiritual advisor. Just give it a try. Curiosity has killed a cat. It's not going to kill you. I mean, maybe if it's like you sticking something metal in a light socket. But don't do that.
Speaker 1:Right, don't do that one.
Speaker 2:But no curiosity should be what leads you to sitting down right now. If you're going to be skeptical and you're going to sit down like a stone wall, right, remember that stonewalling is a form of abuse. Don't do it. Good point, good point. Stonewalling is a form of abuse, so don't do it. Just tell them hey, I'm skeptical, say why, explain why, and be willing to be open and just to listen. Have a conversation with them.
Speaker 2:Just that alone may change you from being just skeptical and being more curious and actually having the desire to receive some of that spiritual guidance. As far as, how do I deal with things in my actual business when it comes to skeptics, it's not very often folks will sit, it's just the reality. Some people will joke about it in public if it comes up and they'll, they'll jive about it and you know I may poke fun too and just depends completely stonewalled, no, no, no. I had a woman this was many moons ago she sat with me for a mediumship session and she's like nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Everything that I said, nope, nope, and she finally goes you're not very good at this, are you? And I was just like. I was like, wow, well, I sat for a moment and I asked my guides how to approach it, and they said like she was really hurt is what it was.
Speaker 2:And so, long story short, on that particular one, everything was hit. I had the conversation with the individual afterwards. It was her son that wanted to come forward, but, needless to say, everything that I was saying about her son didn't resonate, because what her son told me is she didn't actually know him.
Speaker 2:She was an abusive mother and never really knew him, never really got to know him, didn't approve of a lot of the ways, and so what he kept showing me was like he kept showing up as like a TV screen, switching stations, and when I finally asked him I said what does this mean then?
Speaker 2:He said he's like I was constantly on edge and never knew who I needed to be around her. Wow, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you know, it's just how I handle the skeptics is like when they sit down. I'm going to, I'm going to talk with my guides, I'm going to read the energy in order to understand how to best navigate that situation and try to guide them back. A lot of times, the reason why people are skeptical and still sit down is because they actually have a hurt that's buried really deep in them, and so if I can get them just to open up and be comfortable, just getting them to talk and admit can sometimes be all that's needed.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. So you just talked about the ability to read energy. How has this, how did this ability shape your experiences, perhaps in the spiritual world and maybe even in the corporate world?
Speaker 2:Um, being able to read energy. It's a beautiful gift to have. It's a beautiful gift. But this is what I tell people. When people ask you know, and I say I'm a psychic or I talk about my psychic abilities, it's often quick to respond with like oh, that's so cool, right. But people don't realize that every single thing that we have comes with its. You know its shadow as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:And so being able to read energies though, you know, in my spiritual life, it helps in my practice because I could sit and I can read and understand how to shift and change, whether it comes with a client or even what's within my business. Right, this past eclipse season I got, like about four weeks beforehand, I got this huge, you know, energetic shift like push to like shut everything down, to close everything and to go quiet. Well, thank God I did, because the amount of other things that ended up coming out after it were just pretty mind blowing, right, and so it helps me benefit and that helps me be able to navigate things in a corporate space. It can be incredibly beneficial, but this is where the detriment comes about, because you know what, if you're dealing with someone that's open and willing to receive feedback, it's okay, but I can't tell you how many times I've had to bite my tongue with an. I told you so because I can feel an energetic shift into something and people don't wanna listen and answer to it. I'll give you a really good example of it. You know I still work in corporate.
Speaker 2:Last year, the role that I had in that job at that time was, as like a within organizational excellence and so I helped establish, like, really good operations. I was asked and I'm also a great meeting facilitator so I was asked to step in and facilitate our executive leadership team's yearly strategy session. Right and cool First session went good. Second session okay. Third session, it started going off the rails because I could hear everyone agreeing out loud to the CEO but disagreeing in their thoughts and like not caring, and like aptly so I, needless to say, when I left, I sat down with the CEO and had a conversation with him about it. So it's, it's, it's a blessing, but at the same time, it's like it really sucks to sit in the room with people and have people agree with you and then like in their mind, not right, or, um, I once upon a time, uh, was in the lunchroom and I had on a rainbow dress and you know I'm, oh, I'm a weirdo and I don't have a problem with it and uh, this guy, you know, vp, walks in.
Speaker 2:He's like, oh, wow, rainbow dress. And I was like, yeah, I was like I was like I wasn't, I wanted some, you know, something bright and sunny out today and, you know, made some comment of like I was like I was hoping I didn't look too ridiculous, and in his head he was like, oh no. But in his head it was like, yeah, you do. And it was just like God dang it Right. And so as an adult now I recognize these things. Now, as I've been in this practice, I can start to understand this. But as a child I didn't understand this. In my twenties I didn't understand this. In my thirties I didn't even understand this. And I am. I am now. I look back and I know and understand that my inability to understand and recognize these gifts was a huge factor in me drinking 100%, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's almost like you probably needed an outlet to either shift these energies, shift the feelings, to decompress, to maybe not even be present Numb, oh yeah. To maybe not even be present Numb, oh yeah, numb, yeah. Like the corporate world is can be very hard, and you are like myself and I'm also in a leadership role and it's like there's a lot of things like you have to do. My new practice is shielding up every single day before I go in. It's like, okay, shields up. Who's going to try to attack me today? Yep, yep, which is not fun, but anyway, before I ask you the last question if anyone is interested in booking a one-on-one reading about your programs, anything like that where's the best place for them to go to?
Speaker 2:You can visit me on sunshine readingscom. That's going to be the best place to find me. I love that.
Speaker 1:And then for those who are just beginning their spiritual journey, what advice would you give them to help them to start exploring their spiritual gifts and path?
Speaker 2:The number one piece of advice that I love to give people is you know, we kind of touch it. Just be curious, be open, right, if something interests you or sparks an interest, just explore it. I call them intuition trails. You never quite know why, where it's going to take you, but just follow it. Follow, allow your curiosity to lead you down that path.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you another question. With your intuition trails from where you started to where you are now, are you surprised at where it led you to where you are now, are you?
Speaker 2:surprised at where it led you. Not a surprise as in a shock, but a surprise as in very delighted.
Speaker 1:I love that. Oh, that's amazing. I love that. Oh, that's a beautiful note to end this on Sunshine. Thank you so much for coming on Spiritual Spotlight Series.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Rachel.
