By now, many of you have heard the news about Sunny. For those who have not, it is with great sorrow that I report that Sunny has passed.
Sunny and her caretaker, Kevin, passed away after a fire at the Sunny Healing Center in rural County Galway. We don’t have many details at this time, but investigation is ongoing and our contacts in Galway are providing us with information as it comes in.
Sunny was a fierce advocate for justice and a guiding light for many. As someone who survived wrongful conviction – including five years in solitary confinement under a sentence of death, and 17 years of imprisonment total – she knew the difficulties of incarceration and the struggle to regain one’ s footing after being exonerated and released.
She and her husband Peter Pringle, himself an exoneree and death row survivor, established The Sunny Center to help other Exonerees through the difficult process of building new lives after being released from prison. Together, they brought many Exonerees to the Center in Ireland to help them process their trauma and move forward to the next steps of their healing. During and after the pandemic, they continued to support and counsel Exonerees remotely by video and phone.
After Peter’s passing in 2022, Sunny continued the work of The Sunny Center. She hosted Exonerees and started a training program for those who wanted to carry forward her vision to establish similar centers for Exonerees within their communities.
As a yoga teacher, Sunny always provided words of wisdom to help those around her when life seemed difficult. In 2020, she began putting that wisdom onto YouTube in a series of videos titled “Survival Yoga.” One of those videos was “Rules for Myself.” They came directly from Sunny’s experiences, and they may be a great help and comfort today.
Rules for Myself
by Sunny Jacobs
1. Don’t make too much of things, good or bad. That saves you a lot of energy.
2. Lead, teach, give examples, and then accept the results. You can’t make things or people be what you want.
3. Don’t try to be what you are not simply to please others. If it is a change for the better, then do it for yourself; but don’t make yourself lower.
4. A person must want to change before any lessons can be effective.
5. We are all doing life wherever we are. Every day must be lived to the fullest under the prevailing conditions, with an eye toward betterment. In other words, don’t wait until conditions are ideal, because you may never get there.
6. Everyone really knows what they should do. Even if they don’t allow that knowing to enter their consciousness. The object is to flow, not float, through life.
7. Do what you will be proud of. If you won’t be proud of it, then don’t do it.
8. Don’t risk what you’re not willing to lose.
9. It’s not how life treats you, it’s how you treat life.
10. Just because you have the right, doesn’t make it right.
11. Too much of anything is no good. Even love.
12. Your strength is your weakness.
13. All blessings are mixed. The older I get, the more I realize that’s true.
14. It’s better to be loved, not because you’re the ideal, but in spite of the fact that you’re not.
15. Nothing is lost; nothing is for nothing; there’s a price for everything; and a benefit as well. You may as well have a good attitude, because you pay the same price as you do for a bad attitude. (That’s the only one I have a date for: 1998)
16. Always do what you know or believe is right. So the consequences are easier to accept.
Fair winds and full sails on your crossing, Sunny. Your memory is a blessing to us.
With love 🙏🏼❤️ from all of us at the The Sunny Center Foundation.