We recently connected with Sunshine Grace and have shared our conversation below.

Sunshine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

Sunshine Grace, founder of Betting On Love! is a proud Austinite, two-step country dancer, and public speaker. She loves people and is passionate about reshaping our paradigm about mental health and schizophrenia. With an academic background in research psychology, military service, and corporate leadership, Sunshine uses her skills to focus on creating compassionate, honest dialogue around important issues affecting us all – mental wellness,
self-advocacy, artistic expression, self-love, and our right to live happy, harmonious lives. She is an avid promoter of meditation and mindfulness practices, which she credits to changing her life from one of despair to peace.

Sunshine’s defining moment came in 2022, when she began hearing a voice. This voice began speaking regularly to her in her dreams at night (which she calls “teaching dreams”; these dreams occur weekly and continue today, almost two and a half years later). In addition to “teaching dreams”, which always promote universal love and compassion, and gently show her her blind spots, she also receives regular messages from this voice, which she now calls “Spirit”. Spirit speaks to her when she’s in a relaxed, quiet state. Sunshine sees this “feminine, receptive state of listening to the divine, universal intelligence” as something that everyone can cultivate.

It took Sunshine Grace two years and an unbelievably bumpy road through a very dark season to identify as a spiritual medium. During this time, she became very mentally and physically sick. She describes coming out of this period as so much of a struggle that it was “like learning how to walk again”. Sunshine has become passionate about advocating for those who hear voices and reshaping the narrative about what it means to experience mystical experiences in our society. Sunshine sees herself as an advocate for mental health in general, and believes that mental health issues apply to everyone. After all, so much of our sense of wellness is rooted in our thoughts and beliefs, which she believes are mostly a conglomeration of our parents and society’s voices — not our own.

Today, Sunshine is honored to use her voice in a way that helps others heal and gain insight. She believes the support of healthy relationships and community; no one can do this journey alone!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I always believed that my thoughts and beliefs were my own. But during that “dark season”, which was excruciatingly disorienting from hearing a voice and not knowing what was happening, it felt like my mind broke into a thousand pieces. This was a very painful and confusing experience. Several times I had to come to terms with the fact that everything I thought “reality” was could not be true…how else could I hear a voice that wasn’t mine?

I had to admit that I didn’t understand how the universe worked, to adopt a sort of “beginner’s mind”. Many, many times, I would go through a logic exercise, asking myself, “Sunshine…what do you know FOR SURE?” Then I would pick up each belief about reality like it was a puzzle piece, and examine it. As I looked at each belief that didn’t seem true anymore, I would say, “Would it harm me to throw this belief out?” The answer was usually ‘No”. Then I would ask, ”Would it harm anyone else if I throw this belief out?” Again, the answer was usually ”No”. So I ended up casting out many of my beliefs that I had been taught about reality, in order to make room for my actual experiences. At some point along this humbling journey, I heard that Buddha used to say to his disciples, ”Don’t believe anything just because I say it or someone else says it. Don’t believe anything because it is held to be traditionally true. Don’t believe anything because you’ve read it. Believe it is truth from your own experience.”

Slowly, I rebuilt my belief system about what makes up reality. It took a year and nine months to complete this process, and it was really tough. But I also learned a lot during this season about my own strength, trusting myself over cultural memes and rules, and the strength of my own heart and mind to be truthful to myself first, and live from that place. And eventually, I came to understand the importance of deconstructing what we’re told is “truth”, in order to decide what we experience truth to be. This is a very powerful way to live — not power over others, but powerful in the sense that I can align my actions to my intuition. I believe it’s this “felt sense” experience reunites us with our own “North Star”, and brings us home into our hearts, full of compassion, clarity, and strength.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

I retired in my mid 40s. So, before all of these mystical experiences began to happen in 2022, I had every intention to lead a simple, quiet life. Everything in my life has changed since then. I feel connected to life because I have such a strong passion to help others. And I am committed to taking excellent care of myself, which includes my body and heart, so living a balanced, healthy life of walking the trail in the morning, meditating, reading, spending time with close friends and talking about our inner worlds and emotional challenges, working through my own pain and healing my trauma, and building out my YouTube channel (Sunshine_Grace) take up most of my time.

My goal is to speak at SXSW in 2025 on schizophrenia, and then use that opportunity to speak on a global stage as a launching pad to begin to use my voice at conferences, speaking about mental health and spirituality. Although I will probably write a few books, I am even more passionate about writing a screenplay so that the most beautiful experiences I’ve had, which are highly visual, can be captured on film. I feel this artistic medium is the one that best honors the lessons I’ve learned, and most capable of translating the truths of my experiences, which I believe all point to unity and non-duality, with the most integrity.

So to answer the question… No, I could not have imagined in a thousand years that this would be the career or life that I would be living. There is a pervading sense I’ve had since this all started that we co-create with the universe. Paradoxically, our co-creations ARE our destiny. And the best way I know how to create my destiny…is to follow my North Star. We have one life. What do we have to lose?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://BettingOn.Love
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betting_on_love?igsh=MmM3azU0aWZ0cTY%3D&utm_source=qr
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd421HK0NNB4qVhSOiAoOAw

Image Credits

Cabe Lindsay with Arise Video + Photo Studio
Camille Adriane Photography