Stop Urgently Reacting to Your Life

Hi, I'm Sara Walka, founder of The Sisters Enchanted. This summer I've been deep in a personal version of Good Witch, Bad Bitch Summer — river tubing, hiking, cooking over campfires, and also going back to some old roots. Pulling out Emerson and Thoreau, books I read as a teenager that really shaped how I see the world. And in that exploration, I kept coming back to something I've taught for years but am reconsidering in a new way: urgency. Specifically, where we use it and where we really, truly should.

This isn't a new topic for me. But something has been clicking into place lately about the difference between urgently reacting and urgently creating, and I think it's one of the most important distinctions a witchy woman can make about her own time and energy.

Why witchy women are especially prone to this

Women who are tuned into energy — into astrology, plants, the unseen, people, timelines, possibilities — tend to be deeply empathetic and highly sensitive. That's the gift. But the shadow side of that gift is a natural tendency to feel like everything requires an urgent response. And when everything feels urgent, you eventually hit a wall. You stall out. You procrastinate. You feel like a failure. Then you feel like you have imposter syndrome on top of that. It's a cycle, and it's a really common one for witchy women who are also high achievers.

Add in the caregiving, the work, the body care, the relationships, the spiritual practice you're trying to make time for, and it starts to feel like there's no winning. Like you're always behind and never quite enough. That feeling isn't a character flaw. It's what happens when urgency is pointed at the wrong things.

What a witch actually does with energy

I was at a Monster Jam show with my kids a while back. We were in line for autographs. The driver at the table was signing stuff for a long line of moms and kids. Every woman who walked up got a "hey, sweetie" or a "hey, hon." Over and over. And then I got up there and he looked at me and said, "Hey, boss. What am I signing today?"

And then the woman right behind me got another "hey, sweetie."

I've thought about that moment a lot. What was different about me in that line? I genuinely think it's energy. The presence of a woman who is fully aware of her own energy — who knows she can shift the environment by shifting how she's receiving it and how she's about to respond to it. That's a superpower. And I think that's exactly what a witch is, at the core. Not the tools, not the cards or the crystals. A witch creates energy. She doesn't just respond to it.

The urgency problem, named plainly

Here's what I see happening. We urgently respond to text messages. We urgently stop what we're doing to clean the counter, deal with the email, handle the thing that just popped up. Something shows up in our environment and we feel like we must react, right now, before we can do anything else. And that urgent reaction — to the floor dirt, the notification, the person who needs something — it eats up all the energy that could have gone toward creation.

Meanwhile, the things that genuinely deserve urgency go unattended. Your time on this earth is finite. That's urgent. Your body is the only one you get. That's urgent. How you want to feel today, what you want to build, how you want to live this specific day that won't come around again — those things are urgent. But we're not treating them that way because we're too busy urgently reacting to everything else.

What urgently creating actually looks like

I want to be clear: urgently creating doesn't have to look dramatic. It doesn't mean go out and spend money and manufacture experiences. Sometimes urgently living the hell out of a day looks like lying on your sofa with your favorite show on for the first time in too long, because you're urgently building the cocoon so you can rise tomorrow. That counts. That's creation, not collapse.

The question isn't about doing more. It's about redirecting the urgency you already have. Instead of "I must respond to this right now," the shift becomes: how do I urgently create the energy for myself here? How do I urgently prioritize how I want to feel? How do I use this moment to deepen into what I'm actually building, rather than reacting to what just landed on my doorstep?

Bad things still happen. This still applies.

I want to be real here: I'm not someone who believes everything happens for a reason or that we create every circumstance that comes to us. Some things are genuinely terrible, and they land on our doorstep without invitation. I'm a little too shadowy for the "it's all for highest good" approach.

But even in those moments — especially in those moments — the call is the same. Not to react from fear or the lowest emotion in the room. The call is to create your response. To decide what energy you're bringing to the circumstance, not just absorb the energy of the circumstance itself. That's the work. That's what makes someone a witch in the deepest sense of the word.

So here's my invitation: look at your to-do list and your day and your patterns, and find one place where you've been urgently reacting that doesn't actually need that energy. And then look at one place in your life where real urgency — the kind that belongs to your actual lived experience — has been sitting on the back burner. Shift it there. See what happens. Stay magic, Enchanted Sister.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about urgency, energy, and reclaiming how you move through your days.

What does it mean to urgently react versus urgently create?

Urgently reacting means responding to whatever just showed up in your environment — the text, the mess, the email, the person who needs something — as if it's always the most important thing. Urgently creating, according to Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted, means applying that same energy to what you're building and how you want to feel: treating your own life, rest, practice, and creativity as things that genuinely deserve your immediate attention. Most of us are in constant reactive mode and have never consciously redirected that urgency toward creation.

Why do witchy women struggle more with urgency and overwhelm?

Women who are energetically sensitive — tuned into astrology, the unseen, people's emotions, and possibilities — tend to feel the pull of urgency more intensely. Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted points out that this same sensitivity that makes witchy women deeply empathetic also makes them prone to feeling like everything requires an immediate response. When that overwhelm hits a tipping point, it can flip into procrastination and stalling, followed by imposter syndrome. It's a cycle, not a character flaw, and it's extremely common among high-achieving women in this space.

Is urgency real, or is it something we make up?

Both, in a way. Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted describes urgency as a constructed thing — we each get to decide what is actually urgent and what just feels that way. The problem is most of us have never consciously made that choice. We've defaulted to reacting urgently to our immediate environments while letting the things that genuinely deserve urgency (our time, our energy, our actual lives) get deprioritized. Recognizing that urgency is a choice is the first step toward redirecting it.

What does it look like to create energy instead of just respond to it?

Creating energy looks different depending on the day — and it's not always active or dramatic. Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted gives the example that sometimes urgently living your day means resting on the sofa with a show you love because that's exactly what your body needs to reset. The distinguishing factor is that you're making a conscious choice about how you want to feel and what you want to build, rather than just absorbing and responding to whatever the environment is throwing at you. It's the difference between deciding and defaulting.

How do I start redirecting my urgency?

Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted recommends starting with awareness before action. Look at where urgency is showing up for you — where you're stopping what you're doing and reacting before you've made a conscious choice to. Then look at where urgency is conspicuously absent: the areas of your life that actually matter to you but keep getting pushed to the back. You don't have to overhaul everything at once. Just shift one reaction to a creation and see what it opens up.

Does this still apply when genuinely hard or bad things happen?

Yes, and Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted is direct about this: she's not coming from a "everything happens for highest good" perspective. Real, genuinely hard things land on our doorsteps without invitation. But even then, the question is the same: are you going to react from the lowest emotion in the room, or are you going to create your response? You don't get to choose the circumstance, but you do get to choose the energy you bring to it. That choice is available even in the worst moments, and it's a central part of what it means to work with energy rather than just be at its mercy.