TLDR
- Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer is a Sisters Enchanted seasonal practice: tend the boring foundations that keep you steady (Good Witch), and say yes to the things that make you feel alive (Bad Bitch).
- I watched a room full of grown adults refuse to play at my kids’ trampoline party. One dad wouldn’t even put the socks on. That hesitation is the thing we’re working on.
- “What’s the worst that could happen?” is usually small: you fall in the foam pit, somebody helps you out, maybe you tweak your back. The cost of sitting out is bigger.
- Confidence isn’t something you’re handed and then act on. It’s the other way around: the self-coaching and the action come first, and the cool confidence follows.
- Self-coaching is the witchiest tool I’ve got. Being a witch means creating energy, not just responding to it.
Here’s the thing I can’t unsee. I recently took my kids to one of those giant indoor trampoline parks - trampolines, laser tag, go-karts, a ninja warrior course, the works - and I watched a whole bunch of grown adults refuse to do any of it. I’m Sara, founder of The Sisters Enchanted, and I’ve been helping women step into a cool, collected confidence since 2016 using tools like astrology, tarot, energy work, and self-coaching. So I notice this stuff. And what I noticed at that trampoline park is exactly what Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer is here to fix.
We’ve been running Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer for three years now, and this is my mid-season check-in: how mine’s going, and a nudge to get yours moving if you haven’t. Grab your coffee. Let’s do this.
DEFINITION: GOOD WITCH BAD BITCH SUMMER
Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer is a seasonal practice from The Sisters Enchanted with two halves. The Good Witch side is the foundation work - self-care, tending your body, whole foods, living in line with your values, reading with your kids, actually cooking and eating together. The Bad Bitch side is doing the things that make you feel alive and powerful in your body. You need both, and the work is keeping them in balance across one season.
What is Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer?
Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer is a three-month practice where you build the stable foundations that hold your life up and you say yes to the experiences that make you feel like a bad bitch. The Good Witch tends the roots. The Bad Bitch reaches for the fun. The point isn’t to pick one. It’s to feel supported and alive at the same time.
On the Good Witch side, I’m talking about the unglamorous stuff that creates a solid foundation in a chaotic world: prioritizing your self-care, eating whole foods, getting your body moving, living in alignment with your values, reading with your kids when you want to, making and eating meals together. On the Bad Bitch side, it’s the go-karts. The water slides. The hula hoop you have no business attempting in public. The stuff that reminds you you’re alive.
I’ll be honest with you: the Bad Bitch part comes easy for me. I live a pretty sweet life and I don’t have to stretch hard to feel like one. Where I lose the plot is the Good Witch side - the foundations - when life gets full. So that’s where my focus is this season. Yours might be the opposite, and both are valid.
Why do so many women hesitate to participate?
Most women hesitate because they’re afraid of looking like a fool, afraid their body can’t handle it, or afraid of what people will think of a woman “of a certain age” doing something playful. And here’s the part nobody says out loud: some of that fear is accurate. You might look a little silly. That’s not the problem. The problem is letting that stop you.
At my kids’ birthday party, the difference was night and day. My sister Anna, who works here at The Sisters Enchanted, got right in there. Her husband did too. My mother participated. And then there was a whole other group of grown-ups who would not budge. One dad was so committed to not participating that he wouldn’t even choose a pair of the grippy socks you need for the trampolines. We had a whole bin of them, every size. He was out on principle.
I see this everywhere once you start looking. Women hesitating to get in the water. Hesitating at the live outdoor music when the band tosses out hula hoops and jump ropes “for the kids.” There’ll be twelve hula hoops and two children using them, and I’ll walk right up and grab one. Now, I can’t actually use a kid’s hula hoop - they’re too small and too light for a grown woman (if you want to really hula hoop, you make one out of piping from the hardware store that comes up to your belly button and has some weight to it). But I’ll grab the little one and try anyway, because if nothing else, I’m showing my kids how to take the stage and be alive in their bodies.
There’s real research underneath this, by the way. Psychologists who study play in adulthood have linked playfulness with higher well-being and life satisfaction - and found that the adults who stay playful simply live more actively. So when you sit out, it isn’t neutral. You’re opting out of something your nervous system is actually built to use.
“What a bad bitch you will feel like when you gave it a shot. When you did not sit on the sidelines, let life pass you by.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
What’s the worst that could happen if you join in?
Honestly? Usually something small and survivable. You fall into the foam pit and someone has to give you a hand out. You might tweak your back and need a heating pad that night. Worst case, you catch a kid’s stomach bug. That’s the actual downside - and against it you’re weighing the feeling of having lived the day instead of watching it.
I’m not speaking hypothetically. I fell into the foam pit at that party and could not get myself out of the foam squares - my brother had to reach in and pull me out by the hand. I’ve hurt my back. Ask me how I know. But every single time, the tools were right there: someone helps you up, you crawl out, you go home and get on the heating pad. The disaster you’re imagining almost never shows up, and when a small version of it does, you handle it.
So when you catch yourself spinning out on “what if I fall, what if I get stuck, what if I can’t get off the ninja course” - finish the sentence. What’s the worst that could happen, really? And then ask the better question: what happens on the other side if you do it? That’s the math Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer asks you to run.
Why is self-coaching the witchiest tool you have?
Self-coaching is the witchiest tool you have because witchcraft is the act of creating your own reality, and self-coaching is how you do it on purpose. I know - “self-coaching” sounds boring and not witchy at all. It sounds like mindset work. But your mindset, your energy, your chakra system, your nervous system, the words running through your head and coming out of your mouth, the action you take or don’t take based on how you want to feel - that’s all witchery, because it’s a circumstance you’re creating with your own power.
When I hesitate - whether it’s hesitating to set a boundary on the Good Witch side, or hesitating to jump in on the Bad Bitch side - self-coaching is what I come back to. What I’m really doing is taking the shadow gunk that’s stuck in my nervous system (the stories about being embarrassed, the stories about what a woman my age is allowed to do) and transmuting it into possibility and into the energy that actually fuels me. That’s the work. That’s the witchcraft.
People look at me and assume I just have confidence. I don’t. Confidence isn’t the thing that comes first and makes everything else possible. It’s the output. The self-coaching and the witchery practice come first, and the cool confidence follows.
If that order feels backwards, it isn’t - it lines up with one of the most studied ideas in behavioral psychology. Behavioral activation, a core piece of cognitive behavioral therapy with decades of evidence behind it, rests on exactly this: action comes before motivation, not after. You don’t wait to feel ready. You act in line with what matters, and the feeling catches up. That’s the clinical version of what I’m describing in witchy language.
“I don’t just have confidence. I have a self-coaching framework that is part of my witchery experience.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
DEFINITION: SELF-COACHING, THE SISTERS ENCHANTED WAY
Self-coaching is the practice of working with your own energy, words, nervous system, and actions on purpose - transmuting the stuck “shadow gunk” into possibility instead of just reacting to it. At The Sisters Enchanted, it’s combined with moon work, chakra work, tarot, and astrology so you expand your energy in the moments you’re short on confidence, rather than contract it.
What does “creating energy instead of responding to it” mean?
It means choosing your experience instead of just reacting to the one being handed to you. When someone asks me what it means to be a witch, this is my answer: it’s creating energy, not responding to it. It’s landing in my body, on this earth, and deciding I’ll create my experience right now - which lets me take action in alignment with how I actually want to feel.
Here’s a concrete example from my own chart. I’ve got an Aquarius moon with Pluto transiting it right now, so all the upheaval in my life makes a lot of sense. I could just brace against that and respond to it. Or I can ask the better question: how am I going to work with this energy? What outcomes am I going to create out of what’s being presented to me? That second move - that’s a woman in her power. That, I’m fairly sure, is even what the word points to.
“When you ask me what it means to be a witch, I will tell you it is creating energy, not responding to it.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
FRAMEWORK: WITCH
WITCH = a Woman In Total Control of Herself. It’s the playful acronym I keep coming back to, and it captures the whole idea: a witch isn’t reacting to her life, she’s creating it - taking control of her energy, her words, and her actions on purpose.
How do you keep the Good Witch side alive when the Bad Bitch side takes over?
You name what’s slipping and you triage it on purpose, instead of letting it quietly fall off the table. This is exactly my work this season. I’ve got a packed summer of Bad Bitch experiences on the calendar, which is wonderful, but it’s leaving me a little disconnected from the Good Witch who takes care of me - and feeling scattered with my time and energy is very unlike me.
So I’m asking myself real questions. What’s my priority each day? Where is my time and energy going that isn’t the best use of it? What matters most at this stage of life, and what am I okay letting fall to the sidelines for now? And then the forward-looking one: what am I doing to set myself up for success when September hits? I want to enjoy the bad bitch summer while keeping one eye on the good witch vision for the fall.
How is my own Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer going?
Pretty full on the Bad Bitch side, honestly. So far this season I’ve ridden a sky rail up in the air (the kind where you’re in a climbing harness and you don’t hold on), done some water slides, survived the trampoline park, played laser tag, driven the go-karts - these are not little kiddie go-karts, by the way, they move; a kid actually rammed the back of mine while I was stopped - and hiked mountains in Acadia National Park in Maine.
What I haven’t done yet: gotten into a natural body of water. Where I am in New England, it only just got warm enough and the lakes and ocean haven’t caught up. I also still want to get out on my paddle board and take the kids out for a picnic on it. That’s the one I’m chasing next. Today my kids are making sushi to bring to my grandmother for dinner - I didn’t make it, but I said yes, handed over the grocery list, and made it happen, so I’m counting managing the sushi operation on the list.
On the Good Witch side, I’ve been holding my 10,000 steps a day, which keeps me feeling good in my body. I do a lot of audiobooks at this stage of life so I can keep my hands busy and get my steps in at the same time. And I need that movement - if I’m not in my body, I get a little feral.
“If I’m not in my body, I’m like a puppy that needs to be walked or I start to bite and chew things.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer?
Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer is a seasonal practice I run at The Sisters Enchanted across the warm months. It has two sides you hold at once. The Good Witch side is foundation work: self-care, tending your body, eating whole foods, living in line with your values, and the steady daily rhythms that keep you grounded in a chaotic world. The Bad Bitch side is saying yes to experiences that make you feel alive and powerful - the go-karts, the water, the hula hoop, the thing you’d normally talk yourself out of. I’ve run it for three years now. The whole point is balance: you’re not choosing between being supported and being alive, you’re building a season where you get to be both.
How do I start my own Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer?
Start by making two short lists. On the Good Witch list, name the foundations you want to tend this season - things like daily movement, real meals, reading with your kids, or a self-care rhythm that’s been slipping. On the Bad Bitch list, name the experiences that would make you feel alive: the water slide, the dance class, the paddle board picnic. Then, when one of those Bad Bitch moments shows up and you feel yourself hesitate, ask the two questions I keep coming back to: what’s the worst that could realistically happen, and what happens on the other side if I do it? You don’t need a perfect plan. You need to stop sitting on the sidelines and start saying yes, then protect the foundations that let you keep doing it.
Why do I feel embarrassed to play or join in as an adult?
That embarrassment is usually a protective story your nervous system is running - about looking foolish, about your body not cooperating, about being a woman “of a certain age” doing something playful. I’ll be straight with you: some of that fear is accurate, you might look a little silly, and that’s genuinely not the problem. The problem is letting the story keep you out of your own life. The research backs the cost: psychologists who study play in adulthood link playfulness to higher well-being and a more active life. What I teach is to use self-coaching to transmute that embarrassed story into permission - you feel the hesitation, you name it, and you choose the action that matches how you actually want to feel.
Is self-coaching actually part of witchcraft?
In my approach, yes - it’s arguably the witchiest part. I define witchcraft as creating your own reality on purpose, and self-coaching is the mechanism for doing exactly that. Your mindset, energy, nervous system, words, and actions are all things you’re actively creating with your own power, which is the heart of witchery. It also lines up with established psychology: behavioral activation, a well-studied piece of cognitive behavioral therapy, is built on the same principle that action comes before motivation. At The Sisters Enchanted I combine self-coaching with moon work, chakra work, tarot, and astrology so the practice is both practical and magical, helping you expand your energy in the exact moments you’re tempted to contract it.
Does confidence come before or after taking action?
After. This is one of my core teachings: confidence isn’t a trait you’re handed that then lets you act - it’s the result of doing the work first. People assume I simply have confidence, and I’m clear that I don’t. What I have is a self-coaching framework, paired with witchery tools and consistent practice with my own energy, and the cool, collected confidence comes out the other side. This is the same sequence behavioral activation research describes, where action reliably precedes motivation rather than waiting on it. So if you’re waiting to feel ready before you participate, you’ve got the order backwards. You act in alignment with how you want to feel, and the confidence follows.
What does it mean to be a witch?
To me, being a witch means creating energy rather than responding to it. It’s landing in your body and deciding you’ll author your experience instead of just reacting to whatever life hands you, which then frees you to act in alignment with how you want to feel. I keep coming back to the playful acronym WITCH - a Woman In Total Control of Herself - as a shorthand for the whole idea. Practically, that looks like working with your circumstances on purpose: noticing, for example, a hard astrological transit and asking “how do I work with this?” instead of bracing against it. I’ve taught this blend of practical self-coaching and magical practice at The Sisters Enchanted since 2016.
About The Sisters Enchanted
I founded The Sisters Enchanted in 2016 to help emerging witchy women at a crossroads reclaim their power and remember the magic they were born with. We do it by combining practical self-coaching with magical practice - astrology, tarot, moon work, chakra work, energy work - so you can build a spiritual practice that feels right without making you choose sides. The work shows up every week on the Stay Magic Podcast, and goes deeper inside our two core programs.
If you want self-coaching tools woven into a real witchery practice, that’s exactly what we teach. Our Holistic Witchery program is the place to learn the foundations, and the Enchanted Journey is our membership community for ongoing practice, ritual, and support. I’ve been running these programs for years and years now, and we’ve got the longevity to prove they work. Come hang out with us.
So tell me: how’s your Good Witch Bad Bitch Summer going? What have you done to build those stable foundations, and what have you done that made you feel like a bad bitch? Until next time, stay magic, enchanted sister.