reflecting to remember

Finally sitting down to reflect on the revelations that Electric Forest brought me this year. With the headspace that I have been in the last four months, there were several times, I doubted my want to go to the Forest this year — fearful that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it in the manner that I so desperately needed. I worried if I would be depressed, anxious, and questioning if I was having fun the entire time. Throughout my last couple of months of therapy, the forest has served as my “calm place”, in which I have thought about to suppress anxious feelings that flood out into my mind about where I “should be” in life by now, financial and job insecurities, and comparing myself to where others are in their lives. When I think of Electric Forest… I think about community, magic, beauty, playful freedom, and my authentic self. I value the beauty of the landscape, the smell of the pine tree forest, the magic of everyone feeling alive, unafraid of the judgment of the world, and the unapologetic liberty to be who they really are. I came back from EF this year feeling cleansed. It restored my feelings about the things I so deeply desire in my life to feel connected to my true self, to Chris, my friends, to nature’s abundance solitude, and the small joyous moments that add up to the wholeness of my life. Thank you, Electric, for once again restoring my faith in humanity, my strength, and my outlook on this wild and wonderful world. Here’s a glimpse of a few of my very favorite times, in which I stopped long enough to capture the magic around me.