This week CfL highlight the song Stay and Play written by young people for young people in conjunction with Connecting for Life Donegal and Donegal Youth Service. ‘
We spoke with the young singer song writer Ciarzo, the drummer Cahir and the lead guitarist Kyle about their Christmas message Stay and Play; what it means for them; and how music helps with the challenges in their lives.
“Stay and Play is a song about facing and overcoming a tough time in your life. It’s about the journey of how to deal with that time. Stay and Play is about showing up for yourself. Rather than running and hiding from a difficulty or using things to distract yourself from how you feel, it’s about staying and facing the difficulty. The song is about realising that it’s actually is ok to feel vulnerable when things in life are hard or confusing. We all feel that way sometimes. It’s ok to reach out and ask for help. By staying and facing the challenge, we have the opportunity to learn we can cope with life when it’s hard. Learning from challenges helps us be more confident in who we are. The process or creating the song helped us learn more about ourselves and taught us not to compromise our own personal values.
“We all face similar issues and insecurities. In the process of writing creating and performing music together we were able to express how we feel and look at things from a different perspective. Listening to music and to the lyrics of songs, happy or sad and playing music together has really connected us. It’s been great to be part of this creative process together and we hope others will connect with the music in the way we have. We hope it helps others realise they are not alone, we all face similar challenges.”
Frankie McGreevy of The Donegal Youth Service has worked closely with the HSE CfL Donegal to deliver mental health resilience projects that are created in partnership with young people.
DYS and CfL have worked together with young people to create inspirational songs with a mental health message at Christmas time in 2022 and now 2023.
The songs are of incredible quality and have emerged directly from the creative spirit of young people.
CfL also teamed up with DYS to deliver the successful Party in the Park 2023 giving a platform for self- expression to 20 young bands who performed at the Connecting for Life stage in front of 2000 people.
Frankie Mc Greevy of DYS stated “the DYS partnership with the CfL has been incredibly beneficial for young people across Donegal and we hope to continue to nurture the mental health of young people in Donegal through this partnership.”
For more information on accessing suicide prevention training contact CDLMSTraining at CDLMSTraining@pieta.ie and/or follow the link https://bookwhen.com/suicidepreventiontrainingcho1
For more information on CfL Donegal contact HSE Resource Officer for Suicide Prevention Donegal at Ciara.Wray@hse.ie
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