I don’t have to try to please someone else, to be anyone else.

I started going to community fires eight years ago. I only went occasionally, and I may have skipped a year in the first few years. Then I started warming up to it, realizing how much it really affected me, how much it resonated and made me want to be myself.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but as I kept going, it was like, “It’s okay. They don’t want to make you be anyone else.” All the masks fall away and I don’t have to try to please someone else, to be anyone else. It’s hard to put in words, but it’s something that it helps to experience, to be there. Just knowing other people who share their selves with you, it blesses you. When you feel blessed, you want to bless others. It has a snowball effect.

Now, I go anytime I can.

— Tim Reeves
Carrollton, GA (USA)
July 16, 2019