An Introduction to Me & Finding Light

I remember the days when I woke up feeling completely lost and alone. Eight years ago, I journeyed through my first period of real heartbreak. This pain brought to the surface over a decade of buried emotions and a deep grief that I hadn’t previously allowed myself to feel fully.

My home life had been turbulent, and I was taught by my father figures that there was no place for sensitivity and emotions inside a man. Men were tough, strong, and never let anyone into their world. I quickly learnt to wear a smile or a tough, no-nonsense, Stoic mask to hide what I was feeling deep down.

Alongside the pain of the heartbreak, I was also trying to find my place in the world following eleven years inside a destructive and abusive home. I was never tested whilst growing up, but, having done my research, I know that I had been carrying the weight of childhood PTSD due to my formative experiences. The neurological difficulties that I have had throughout my life have not made existing in the ‘real world’ straightforward.

Although I made it through the fires relatively unscathed in comparison to many who experience such trauma, I certainly had my issues with myself, notably in knowing who I was and where I was going. This led me to follow the crowds for many years. I went to university because many of my friends were going, and I didn’t know what else to do with my life. I picked a course that I had not researched properly, and ended up switching to a new one after the first lecture, which confirmed to me that I was studying something completely different from what I had assumed.

These feelings of confusion and lostness continued until well into my twenties, until I found love and believed that I had discovered my ultimate purpose — to write a new story to the one that I had been told throughout my childhood years. I had little ambition outside the relationship; I stacked shelves in a supermarket, played computer games, football, and occasionally lifted weights in a gym.

In hindsight, the breakdown of my first relationship was the best thing that ever happened to me. Through my grieving process, I found solitude. In my solitude, I heard the whispers to turn to creativity and storytelling to give my pain a purpose. I found solace in the pages of my journal and began to reawaken my childhood love of writing. Later, I felt called to pick up a camera, which significantly improved and evolved my storytelling abilities.

The Profound Power of Creative Expression

It seems now to the adult version of me to be an absolute absurdity that anyone would ever want to be anything other than deeply sensitive; sensitive to beauty; sensitive to the pain that makes us so receptive to this beauty, and sensitive to the natural world and all its inhabitants, despite their mistakes, flaws, and imperfections. At one point in our formative years, we were all sensitive to the touch of our mothers’ soft hands upon our skin and the sound of her gentle voice in our ears. Why then, I ask, do we spend most of our lives desperately trying to abandon our true selves and forget our true nature? In a world quickly overrun by data and machines – machines that can now apparently ‘create’ art – maybe it is time that we doubled down on what makes us human. That means excavating and exploring the worlds we have kept hidden inside our fragile hearts for so long.

Creativity has given me a platform to open the walls of my heart to express many of the deep-rooted emotions that have been safely locked away in my inner sanctuary for as long as I can remember. Due to the turbulent nature of my younger years, I naturally developed an unusual (for a man in this modern world, at least) depth of emotional intelligence. The pathways of my inner landscape, it could be said, have been well-trodden since my birth.

Learning to Speak A Language Beyond Words

It is now around seven years since I first picked up my sister’s camera to begin exploring my inner world on my journey toward full expression. When starting out with photography, I quickly learned how to navigate the technical facets of the equipment, and I have since been using the medium to access and communicate from the depths of my soul.

What was interesting to me was the thought of being able to ‘say’ something beyond words — to have found a way to express the appreciation for the beauty that I have felt in the deepest corners of my heart since I entered this world. It seems to have come naturally to me to have found my source of fuel for creativity by drilling down into these corners. Despite my ego occasionally resisting the opening of my heart, my creations, I believe, are a further excavation of my inner landscape, revealing greater depths within myself.

The Wisdom of the Wound

For many years, I struggled with the painful memories of my childhood. I spent a long time blocking them out and hiding behind the masks of addictions in the form of computer games, football, and later, alcohol, and other substances that I needed to forget who I was so that I could let go and enjoy myself whilst being seen by other people. I was a victim of these early life events, giving myself an excuse for hiding from the world because ‘I had had a tough start to life’.

When I was unpacking Pandora’s Box back in 2017, I soon saw where I had been holding onto resentment and unforgiveness towards people in my life, and myself, as a result. This resentment and anger had kept me bound by chains of my own making. The heaviness of this anger, as well as the accompanying feelings of fear, guilt, and shame, was blocking the flow of love, joy, and peace from washing away my painful memories of youth.

As I started to create photographs and accompanying pieces of writing for the world, I began to see a purpose emerging from deep within my pain. With every click of my camera’s shutter and each full stop set down on the page, I felt an increasing sense of acceptance towards these early life events, my parents, peers, and myself, as a result.

My wounds, now exposed further to the light, began to heal. I could thank the demons that once haunted me for shaping me into the man that I am — a man with an open heart, grounded vulnerability, and a deep sensitivity and empathy towards the world and everyone and everything within it.

Without these early experiences, there would be no appreciation of Mother Nature’s pure beauty. Without the ugliness of the instances of domestic abuse that I witnessed as a child, I would not have such an intense receptiveness to stimuli that I believe is what adds depth and meaning to my creative works and the resulting stories that I share with the world.

With each photograph that I created and word that I scribed, I was writing a new story for myself. I welcomed everything that had ever happened in my life. Instead of the inner narrative that dictated that these things happened ‘to’ me, it became one that said that these things happened ‘for’ me. I became the victor over the victim.

Unearthing the Artist Within

It may have taken me over thirty years, but I realise now that I was born to be an artist; to share my inner world of thoughts and feelings with the outer world; to share my lived experiences; and to articulate what it means to be a human being living in this physical world, and existing, simultaneously, in the often forgotten and unexplored world of spirit. All the complex early life events that once caused me so much pain and confusion, I now understand, happened so that I could be here, doing this. That is a realisation I come to whenever I am undergoing my creative process of making photographs, or writing my essays or poetry.

Perhaps my increasing desperation to share such parts of my soul comes because of my unconscious decision to keep so much of myself hidden (and, therefore, safe) from the world following the years of psychological, emotional, and, occasionally, physical abuse that I witnessed and received in my childhood home — abuse that was often directed towards me for simply being myself.

For many years, I held back a fundamental part of who I was to remain safe and survive in a cruel and volatile environment. The art of photography is helping me to accept and embrace the other half of me who has always been in tune with his feelings, senses, and intuition. I have succeeded where my father figures failed and achieved something they could not, by making peace with and calling back the fragmented parts of my soul. I am more integrated and whole for having embraced the role of the artist and created maps of my inner world.

Creativity as Inner Alchemy

Though I often walked with a heaviness and lingering sense of listlessness throughout most of my early years, I had no idea of the heavy emotional baggage that I had buried down in the unconscious valleys of my mind. That is, until I began exploring my creativity with the camera and reflecting upon the things that I had created with my pen. Through creativity, we can express our most authentic selves. For many of us in the world, that ‘self’ is the one that we are so desperate to reveal, having spent many years hiding it in an unsafe world through fear of judgment, rejection, or shame.

Creativity, I believe, is the most powerful instrument for healing that we have in our inventory. Creativity has an unseen power to transform and transmute our greatest pain and suffering. By creating something beautiful from the place of our deepest struggles, we disarm our most frightening demons. By walking fearlessly into our darkest caves and shining our light from within, we face these dark forces head-on and learn how to tame them.

It is in this very darkness that we find the truest and most potent of all powers here on earth: creativity. To create from the source of our greatest pain brings the ultimate liberation. By visiting these frightening places within ourselves, we learn to wield the sword of darkness and bring it forth into the light of day, forcing our demons to yield before us.

By harnessing the power of our creativity and creating from this place of truth, we become alchemists of the modern world, transmuting our emotional pain and suffering. The ability to perform such inner magic brings the ultimate sense of freedom and the very healing that we need to exist fully as our soulful selves here on earth. Creativity leads us to a place of wholeness and integration. It gives us the ability to create light from our darkness and pure beauty out of the ugliness that we all have residing within ourselves.

To return to wholeness and find this place of true presence, a person must rid themselves of trapped energy and emotions that are often buried beneath layers of a false self that was created to keep oneself safe. In this modern world, however, we are rarely allowed the time or space for the kind of expression that leads us to emotional freedom. We fall into the rat race, chasing the new home and the white picket fence, numbing our feelings as we distract ourselves with the golden carrots that dangle temptingly in front of us, therefore, further burying the pain that we adopted throughout our formative years. Rarely do we tune into our bodies to ask the question, ‘What do I need?’ Creativity is quickly overlooked in our pursuits of more — our minds tell us that we are ‘too busy’ to pick up a paintbrush, a camera, a pen, or a microphone. My personal experience, however, has revealed to me the importance of making time for a creative pursuit. I can’t help but wonder how many other people might benefit from the conscious use of creativity.

Finding Light: A Mission to Bring Healing to the World — One Soul at a Time

In a recent workshop that I delivered alongside my Finding Light exhibition, I collaborated with the charity GISDA and a group of young adults over six weeks, introducing them to my creative practice, encouraging their engagement with Nature, and helping them express themselves in a safe environment. The young people explored the woodland at Plas Glyn y Weddw in search of self-expressive photographs, engaging in reflective conversation with each other, and writing in their journals to apply meaning and gain further understanding of their work and themselves. I was praised regularly throughout the project by attendees and GISDA staff for my non-judgmental approach, patience, and deep presence, which allowed the unfolding of the attendees’ true selves. I was told on more than one occasion that I would make an excellent arts therapist.

So, a few weeks after I received such wonderful words from attendees and staff on that transformational six-week workshop, I am proud and deeply fulfilled to introduce you to Finding Light. I am not an arts therapist — not yet, at least — but I have learned a thing or two about emotional healing through creative alchemy over the past eight years through my pursuits of creativity and personal development.

It seems to me as though, through such feedback from workshop attendees and my divine intuition, the Universe is guiding my soul towards its true path after years spent wandering through the darkness of the unknown. I have been feeling increasingly unfulfilled in recent times by the lack of depth in the work that I do as a photography tutor, simply teaching people how to use their cameras to make better photographs. My true place, I know, is outdoors amongst trees, working with people on a deeper, energetic, soul level. I am well aware of my intuitive gifts of seeing & sensing and of the deep wisdom I hold that needs to be shared with the world.

If you feel called to work with me to experience a taste of the sacred healing medicine that creativity and Mother Nature can offer, then I would like to invite you to check out my creative offerings. I currently offer private, one-to-one creative sessions and online creative sessions for those further afield. In the future, I will be launching group workshop experiences and healing retreats in locations across the world that will bring like-minded souls together to co-create a healing sanctuary on earth. You can submit your email address below if you wish to be kept up to date with all future events and experiences.

If you made it this far, thank you for showing interest in my story and the work that I am doing through my creativity. I wish you strength, peace, and grounded presence from afar.

Brad Carr