When you lose someone to depression and suicide, there’s an emptiness that lingers inside oneself that never seems to go away. The grief and sadness have a way of taking over and one can become consumed by them.

In August of 2009 we lost a love one to depression and suicide, and in March of 2010, we decided not to be consumed anymore! This website and the “Labor of Love Music Festival” was created by four individuals, and a community who were a huge part of Jamie Leigh Wilson’s life, who choose to honor Jamie’s memory and all those lost to this illness. Two days after Jamie’s death, another local girl also took her life and a year and two days after last year’s festival, we lost another family member to suicide. We created this festival as a healing process for us as survivors to show our dedication and devotion to our loved ones and this cause, and to say that it will be our “Labor of Love” to work endlessly as a community, to end this illness, so that they will not have died in vain.

Like all 21 year olds, Jamie was just beginning a whole new exciting part of her life. She was a compassionate woman that liked to spend time surrounded by family and friends. Her vacations were normally spent at a family cabin in Wisconsin or fishing in Alaska. Jamie will always be remembered for the warmth that she brought with her where ever she went and her contagious smile. Her memory lives on in the hearts of those that gather every year in New Munster not only in her memory, but in the memory of all those lost to depression, suicide and other mental illnesses.

It was Jamie’s love for family and music that made a music festival a fitting idea to raise money for suicide awareness. Last year’s festival was an outrageous