You can experience Glastonbury Festival in many different ways because it is so vast in size and varied in entertainment. For some, it might be a drunken five days and hazy memories. For me, it is the most awake five days I spend in a year because all my senses are on fire.
Glastonbury Festival you see is much more to me than just a music festival. It is a place in which I have gone through profound changes. I have attended the festival ten times, four of those times I was drunk, stoned and living a life that wasn’t mine. The last six times I have attended sober and as a completely new person, as a transgender man.
Glastonbury Festival as A Spiritual Experience
People ask how I do this sober. However, I now cannot image, nor would I want, to dull my senses in any way to stop from feeling this incredible place with every sinew of my being. Besides, there are three AA meetings a day at Glastonbury Festival (yes really!) so I am always safe. In fact, attending a recovery meeting at Glastonbury is one of my highlights
Over my time attending this incredible festival, I have grown and changed profoundly, in every way imaginable. Therefore for me, the festival is a very spiritual experience, it provides a marker on which to measure myself and gives me a chance to reflect on time gone by. On my tenth visit, I found myself with a lot on which to reflect.
Reflecting on My Previous Years at Glastonbury Festival
I attended my first Glastonbury festival in 2007. At that time, I was in the thick of active addiction, I was battling with an eating disorder and refusing to engage proactively with my mental health management. Of course, I would not have agreed with that last statement at the time. My firm belief then, that the reason I wasn’t getting better, was because people were not giving me the right help.
However, the truth I had not yet accepted was that the only person who could help me, was in fact myself. I could be offered all the support in the world, but until I took responsibility, nothing was going to change. Therefore, when I returned to Glastonbury in 2008, 2009, and 2010, I was in an even worse and more confused state.
Having a Break from Festivals
Then, by a miracle I thank the universe for every day, in late 2010, I finally saw the truth. I admitted I was an alcoholic and that my excessive drinking was largely why my mental health was not improving. Engaging with recovery through the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I finally found ways to begin to manage my poor mental health.
I also, now sober, was able to get to the bottom of some of my issues. The main one being that I was transgender. I came out as Finn in early 2011. With all this going on, I didn’t feel strong enough to return to Glastonbury in 2011. My sobriety had to come first and so I missed a year.
Attending Glastonbury Festival Sober
After attending a couple of small festivals with good support around me. I discovered that my love of music and dance was not just alcohol fuelled. In fact, without alcohol, I had an even greater heightened passion for music. I could feel the music deep within my bones and dancing on nothing but the joy was a bigger buzz than alcohol had ever given me.
Therefore, on feeling more confident, I decided it was time to return to Glastonbury Festival. In 2013 I walked through the gates as a completely new person. Being there, being sober, and being Finn, was the most incredible experience of my life. From that time on, Glastonbury has been a place where I process everything that has been going on and reflect on where I am in my own personal development.
My Tenth Time At Glastonbury Festival
This year, on my tenth visit, the biggest thing I found myself processing, was grief for my mum. I often find it difficult to cry. Something that hasn’t been helped over recent years by taking sertraline, which completely stopped me from crying.
However, there is something about music, which stirs something incredibly deep inside me and always opens the way for tears. I wouldn’t describe them as either sad or happy tears. They are passionate tears, from a deep place of connection between myself and the music.
Music as A Catalyst for Healing
I experience music and movement as something quite tribal. I let myself go at a festival and I dance in an almost unconscious manner where I just let the music move me. The combination of this and the music is a euphoric feeling for me that cuts through any layers of denial and lets out raw emotion. It’s beautiful and its powerful and as huge catalyst for healing. This year, I found myself in tears frequently and they were wonderful to experience.
Glastonbury Festival as a Marker of Personal Change
I have a routine at each Glastonbury Festival, which I started in 2013 on my first sober Glastonbury as my true self, Finn. Every year on a Wednesday, I walk up onto the hill which overlooks the whole of Glastonbury Festival and across to the Tor. There, I take a snapshot of myself, arms spread, head held high. It’s incredible to see the change, from my beginning testosterone to having top surgery, through to completing my entire surgical transition in 2019.
Reflecting on The Parts of Me I Have Found
Upon this hill, I stop and reflect on the parts of me I have found, and the parts that I have lost. I have found a great deal in the two years since my last Glastonbury (2018 was a fallow year, a year off for the ground to recover). During the last two years, I have returned to my childhood home and transformed it from a place of bad memories to new happy ones. I have spent a difficult but fulfilling and healing final year with my Mum before dementia took her from us. Also, I finally discovered and admitted I am gay. Then, to my great surprise, I fell in love with a man and moved in with him. Additionally, I’ve completed my gender transition journey and I’ve started my own business.
Reflecting on The Parts of Me I Have lost
I have lost a few things too, namely my mum, which has left me in a peculiar position. At forty-five years old, I find myself without any parents. I am only six years into my transition, and I feel so young, so my loss of parents is something I am really struggling with. I’ve lost a little of my passion too. I realised this in how connected and alive I felt at Glastonbury, compared to how I’ve felt of late. Understandably, I have been limited to what I could do over these last couple of years looking after mum and completing my surgery. However, I realise I want to get back to some deeper self-exploration and to reconnect with the spiritual aspects of my life that I feel are lacking.
An Emerging Theme of Acceptance
The most significant thing I felt at Glastonbury this year was self-acceptance. I’m getting older, I’m grey, my body is scarred, and I’m rather on the round side. However, I didn’t care, stood just in shorts (rather dirty ones!) with my belly out and my scars on show, I felt a deep love and acceptance of myself. This feeling was echoed repeatedly across the week by various artists, also speaking about self-acceptance and overcoming societies view of them.
The Importance Of LGBT Representation in Music
Grace Petrie sang about her Year 11 self, struggling with gender expression and identity and vocally defended transgender people’s rights. Anne Marie played inspiring clips from people speaking about coming to terms with themselves as she sang Perfect to Me. Olly Alexander from Years and Years sang defiantly about being gay, whilst showing comments on the viewing screens from his social media about his being “Too gay”. Chris from Christine and the Queens spoke about giving up trying to fit in and told us to, “fuck the norm!”.
Through all this, a rainbow flag, high on a windswept flagpole, danced aloft the crowd. It was as if they were singing about everything I personally had gone through over the few years and I cried and cheered with them. I felt such a deep sense of being seen, and of being represented. For once, my identity, as a gay trans man, was here, alive, and valid, in the middle of Glastonbury festival. Never have I felt so proud.
Growing in Tandem with Glastonbury Festival
Leaving the festival on Monday morning, I also felt proud of how far the festival has come. In banning single-use plastic, limiting camping outlets on-site and increasing awareness, this year saw a dramatic decrease in the litter, and equipment left behind. As I walked slowly past the Pyramid stage towards gate A, I smiled as I reflected upon how both myself and the festival, have learned to take better care of ourselves and our environment. We are both growing and maturing in tandem.
Every year I attend, I leave renewed and reawakened, to my inner world and to the social issues around me. This is why Glastonbury festival is so much more than the music, it’s my spiritual pilgrimage and retreat.
Check out my Ultimate Packing Guide for Festivals
Hello! My name is Finn and I have a passion for creating honest content, that inspires personal growth and promotes well-being.
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[…] following list contains various items that I have found helpful over my many years attending Glastonbury and other UK festivals*. For the entire packing list, scroll to the bottom of the […]
[…] When I first began to admit that I was an alcoholic, the idea of never being able to drink again, terrified me. However, I was told not to give up alcohol, but instead, commit to not drinking for the 24 hours ahead. Every day I awoke, I committed to those twenty-four hours and then repeated the process. These twenty-four hours have added up into nine glorious clean and sober years and a life that I often cannot believe is mine. […]
You’re such an inspirational Finn! We can see how much you’ve changed here mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You realised what needed to be done, with some prompting, and took to it. You’ve come so far and using Glastonbury as a way to actually document just how far that is, is genius!
Keep going and don’t stop no matter what!
Ah bless you! Thank you so much for your kind words, I hit the right rock bottom to wake me up and now I just love the journey of self improvement!