The Fall Festival and Halloween Harvest 2025

Yay! Hooray! and booooo!

In keeping with our meeting traditions, and with the promise of learning to ‘play and have fun in our lives’, the Strengthening My Recovery meeting offered to our members, a fun-filled few days of introspection, creativity and communal experience.

The Festival schedule included a variety of activities, including pumpkin carving, inner family puppetry and much more:

Pumpkin Carving

Wandering by the lake in Toronto on a cold fall day and this beauty struck me – Lori N

Release & Remembrance Meeting

A small altar for our beloved departed
A fire ritual
Offerings to Santa Muerte
Remembering the Dead
That is a photo of my Dia de Muertos altar that I made when JJ led us in the activity. I have kept it up for several days. There was a bowl of candy and cake which I brought for an offering to all my ancestors to express gratitude for all they went through and suffered in their lives to make it possible for me to be born on the earth. I also lit candles for some of my closest departed relatives.
I wrote 3 things: 1)what no longer serves me; 2)what I want to let go of; and 3)what I want to let die. Then I went outside and burned the pieces of paper on which I had written them. Many thanks to JJ for leading this activity for us! – Jane H
This was a wonderful reparenting exercise. I was able to honor many loved ones, my mother, father, fiancé (who passed many years ago) and also my husband.

The adult child meditation was amazing!! I am extremely grateful to all the wonderfully talented Fellow Travelers in our group.
– Anon
A candle, incense, flowers and homemade pumpkin butter – offered to Santa Muerte in honor of the recently departed, Gloria and Ruth, and for someone who will be making the journey. – Jim R
Ashes remained after burning away that which I intended to let go. – Jim R

Our story telling time together included these wonderful books being read to the group:

Thanks for letting me do the service of reading kids books for the festival. I feel grateful I got to participate. I feel blessed to be a part of this fellowship. The Monster Parade reminds me to allow and love my feelings and the other book sparked creative fun for me and my inner family.

I appreciated the session on the body and skeleton.
My inner family was surprised at how deeply healing this is.
Thank you
Angel T glow (Tammy) aca

In My Heart

Thank you, Tammy for creating and providing that safe, supportive group experience.

My inner child loves sitting and listening to stories, especially when I get to do all the voices — we always have so much fun with it. – Clara

A Part of a Poem by Wordsworth

Our BRB mentions the “soul rupture,” p.60 and the “soul wound,” p. 124 – this poem explores the inevitable nature of that human tragedy. This part of the poem only gets up to the “Man” who is totally ruptured and accepts it as his “common” lot. But we! we are the lucky ACAs who are not only accepting the ruptures and wounds but with our Higher Powers’ help we are finding the community, the patience, and the love to heal them. Hallelujah! Here’s the poem part:


“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come! From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.”
– Jane H

Anatomy

A studious meditation focused on exploring all the elements of our bodies: bones, muscles, ligaments and soft tissue organs.

If you would like to offer an image of something you created during the Festival, you may submit it here. And if you would like to write about any of your experiences, the lyrics of a song we sang or inspired poetry, you can leave a comment at the bottom of the page.

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Thank you friends for being a part of our Fall Festival

2 thoughts on “The Fall Festival and Halloween Harvest 2025

  1. Jim R says:

    My childhood song:

    Thanksgiving day is coming,
    Mr. Turkey said, “If I’m not careful I’ll grow fat
    and I will lose my head!”
    Mrs. Pumpkin heard him,
    and said, “Oh me, oh my!
    They’ll cook me up with sugar and spice,
    And I’ll be a pumpkin pie!”

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