Mental Wellness

Soil & Sky Fest is grounded in three pillars: mental wellness, earth care, and community connection. Today, David and I were reflecting on the mental wellness pillar and noticing the extent to which so much of our planning and hope for the festival comes down to that core value.

For him, it’s the entire motivation to write music and then get up and bare his soul on stage… it’s that he wants other people to hear (and repeat back singing!) the things he has needed to hear himself:

“I deserve to be well.”

“This year I am becoming my own home.”

“I’m living on a spark of hope.”

And for me, I see the way that this beautiful land—Benzai Bloomstead—embraces people on their mental health journeys. It’s a big reason I invite people here: my awe for the land’s power to companion people through anything—times of grief, of joy, of rebuilding trust, of finding solid footing, of feeling lost, of feeling tuned in… all of it.

While we don’t have answers for anyone on their own mental wellness journey, we do offer community connection, earth care and music as medicines. We are excited to announce (soon!) a lineup of incredible musicians as well as speakers and workshops focused on mental wellness, earth care and community connection. And we hope you’ll enjoy this flashback to last year’s Medication Listening Booth and the prescriptions you each wrote and shared with us.

— Morgan

“From the hollow shadow that is pulling at my reigns
to the psycho-babble that is feeding me my pain,
do i have to grapple just to step out of this rut,
cuz i really need a spark to be enough.
There is a spark of hope that’s fighting in my veins.
I’m giving all I know to make it light into flame.
And though it’s getting cold trying to hide from the rain,
I’m living on spark of hope.”

Spark of Hope, The Collection

If there are lyrics that have supported you on your mental wellness journey, we’d love to hear them. Put them in the comments, to point us to new music <3