In Celebration of our 2022 Recovery Festival
We’d been talking about wanting to put on a series of events to celebrate recovery in the widest sense for a good few years.
We heard about the money available from Devon Communities Together (DCF); called the Covid Outbreak Management Fund (COMF). We spent many hours discussing whether we had the capacity to offer a winter recovery festival at such short notice over a such a short time frame - the money had to be spent by the end of March 2022. Working wisely, making sure we don’t burn out from our passions for recovery and life, is a continuing conversation and focus. Addiction has a way of finding its way back into our lives in many different guises. Activity and work addiction is something I and others in R2F are recovering from. The need for ever increasing productivity in the world is one of the few addictions our society rewards with kudos and cash; it’s a hard one to kick and requires a fine balance to stay healthy and on track.
We got the COMF money; just over 20K. The intention behind the festival was to celebrate our work; to open the doors to the whole of the recovery community and reach out to the wider world; to build bridges and new connections.
Our community was heavily impacted by the pandemic. We stayed connected through online meetings and retreats. This worked for a time. After 2 years online, Zoom fatigue began to kick in.
The funding for the Recovery Festival was offered to support those of us impacted by Covid as we emerged blinking into the light after lockdown. The Recovery Festival celebrated this emergence and all the beautiful work we do on the ground. We’ve put on Experience Days, online meetings, gatherings on the moor and much more. The centre piece of the festival was our Recovery Conversations Weekend at the Ashburton Arts Centre in Devon. See here for recordings of the amazing conversations, artists and musicians who shared and performed over the weekend.
The emotional landscape we work with and support, by its nature has heartbreak and loss at its core. Healing can take many years. Emotional pain decides when it’s time to rise and call for attention. Support for these difficult times are at the centre of why we do what we do. Celebrating our recovery is also at the heart of it.
As the years roll on, our levelling out continues. ‘Normality’ becomes the predominant experience over the insanity of our addicted days. And we celebrate this; within and beyond our community. Sharing our talents and passion and commitment to recovery and life. This is a passion, a desire to create meaning out of our lives. More and more we find expression for our healing through our creativity. The Recovery Festival brought this vision together in a powerful and inspiring way.
Active addiction is about disconnection; from self and others. Recovery is about connection, to ourselves and others in recovery and the wider world. The Recovery Festival has been a way of marking what feels like the end to a deeply challenging time for the addiction recovery community. It’s been about connecting and celebrating the beauty of being alive and the shared wisdom and creativity of so many hard roads travelled so well.
Big thanks to DCF for trusting us with the cash and giving us a chance to show the world the incredible things that can be born out of challenging lives. These past few months we’ve grown a little more, found a good number of ways to reconnect and shine and let the world know that there is a way through addiction into a meaningful, nourishing life.
