On Sunday, October 19, the Fall Freedom Festival returned to the Sea Bright Beach public parking lot for its sixth year — a free afternoon of live music, speakers, resource booths, and families, built around a simple idea: recovery is easier when a community shows up for it.
The festival’s theme was Uniting Resources for the Courage to Change, and that is close to a literal description of the day. Organizations working across treatment, harm reduction, housing, and peer support set up alongside one another, so that someone walking the lot could talk to several of them in an afternoon without an appointment, a referral, or a phone call. For a lot of people, that informality is the whole point. It is far easier to ask a question standing at a table in the sun than it is to dial a hotline.
JBJ Soul Kitchen returned again this year, as did Sea Bright United Methodist Church and the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office Hope One program.
The afternoon included live music, speakers sharing their own experience of recovery, and kid-friendly activities that made the day work for whole families rather than only for the person in recovery. That matters more than it might sound. Addiction is rarely contained to one person, and a festival a parent can bring their children to is a different kind of invitation than an evening meeting in a church basement.
Admission was free, as it always is.
Hope Works at the Shore helps organize the festival each fall as part of our work supporting adults in recovery across Sea Bright, Long Branch, Red Bank, and Monmouth County. If you were there and want to stay connected — or if you missed it and want to know what we do the rest of the year — you can reach us here or see how we help.