Transmuting Pain into Beauty - A Story of Hope, Healing, and Reconnection with Nature
I began my journey to create almost nine years ago. The pain of my first heartbreak had thrust me into the open arms of Mother Nature as I wandered outdoors with conscious intent and purpose for the first time in my 25 years on the earth. Of course, I had been outdoors many times before; I remember fondly my childhood adventures searching for frogs beneath the plant pots in the greenhouse in the back garden of my grandparents’ home in Southwater, West Sussex.
Occasionally, I would wander through the gate at the bottom of the garden into the magical woodland that formed the borders of Southwater Country Park with my siblings, mother, cousins, and aunties as we went to play on the zipline, swings, and the slide that seemed to descend from heaven. Our route to the playpark was never a straightforward one. We were often distracted by the grass snakes and slowworms in the woodland, or by newts in the undergrowth. Plus, we had to pitstop to fuel our impending repetitions on the endless slide with the blackberries we foraged beside the footpaths on summer days.
In my teenage years, I also remember venturing to the summit of Cader Idris — once the home of a legendary Welsh giant named Idris — led by my friend and housemate, Rob, during my first year of university. It was my first ‘real’ hike and my maiden voyage to a height of over 400m on foot. I stood at the edges of the mountain during the descent in awe of the jets that circled the Mach Loop beneath me. The roars of their engines still echo in my eardrums to this day. The majestic views over the Mawddach Estuary, earlier on the hike, occasionally find their way into my dreams, too.
I certainly was not starved of Nature whilst growing up, despite being raised mostly in largely built-up environments throughout my childhood. My mother — raised entirely in the peaceful countryside of West Sussex — always seemed to see the value in finding us places of beauty that offered plenty of breathing room for four young children. She likely needed the escape, too. It couldn’t have been an easy task to raise my siblings and me practically single-handedly in tiny government-funded, social houses, whilst suffering frequent physical abuse from the various no-good father-figures who were present in body but absent in every other way for the first eleven years of my life.
It was during my late teen years that I began to lose my way in life and disconnect, almost entirely from Nature. In hindsight, I see how the examples of my father-figures and my dysfunctional youth impacted me. During my time at university, I became increasingly reclusive. Apart from the hike I referenced earlier, I rarely went outside, despite living in arguably one of the most beautiful parts of the country on the west coast of Wales. If I weren’t ‘out on the town’, sinking Admiral’s — a legendary Aberystwyth university drink containing four shots of vodka and a can of Red Bull — to hide my social anxiety and awkwardness to fit in, then I was likely sitting in front of the TV at my games console, disconnecting from the world and everyone within it.
For many years, I was terrified of connecting with another person, unless you count drunken exchanges in the smoking areas of Aberystwyth nightclubs, or conversations through a headset with people halfway across the world that I had never met in person, as I sat at my computer games. My home had been torn apart many times over when I was a child. My older sister and I would often wander downstairs in the morning to see that our living room had been turned into a bombsite. Ornaments were scattered across the floor, and glass was shattered from photo frames and ashtrays that had been launched across the room. On a couple of occasions, the violence had gotten so severe that my mum had no choice but to flee the home with us in tow to escape the prison of abuse that had been created. She had been left on the floor in a heap after being struck on the temple by my stepfather’s right fist. As she lay semi-conscious on the pavement, she could see that he was reaching for something in his pocket. If it wasn’t for the intervention of someone nearby, she fears the damage would have been much worse.
In the weeks preceding this assault, she was left fearing for her life. We had to leave our home on Manor Drive in Loughborough, almost overnight. There was no time for goodbyes. Connections were severed against my young will. I was thrust into the unsafety and uncertainty of a new environment: a block of flats called Cornwallis House just outside the city centre of Portsmouth. As a result of these chaotic and turbulent episodes throughout my childhood, I learnt to depend almost entirely on myself early on, withdrawing and disconnecting emotionally, notably from my mother, at the age of around 7 or 8 — a pattern that continued long into my early adulthood.
Despite my withdrawal, I always seemed to make friends quickly in new places; I was good at football and had a soft, dimpled smile, which meant the boys liked to have me on their team, and many of the girls thought I was cute — much to the embarrassment of the shy inner child in me who preferred to keep the innermost parts of himself hidden. Although I always seemed to make friends wherever I went, I never allowed anyone to really get to know me. There were corners of my heart I wouldn’t allow anyone to venture into. Truth be told, I was terrified to tread there myself.
I learnt early in my life that to be a man was dangerous. Men were volatile, full of anger, and would quickly erupt into a fit of rage without too much in the way of provocation. It took me until the age of twenty-five to find the courage to begin exploring long-forgotten footpaths into the darker corners of my inner landscape; to meet and integrate more of the masculine parts of myself, and to retrieve the anger that I had been led to believe was ‘wrong’ for so many years.
The pain of my first heartbreak back in 2017 had catapulted me forward on a journey of self-discovery — or ‘self-creation’ as I have later learned to call it. I had found myself lying on my bedroom floor one evening in a state of despair. The girl that I loved had broken my heart, and I was trapped stacking shelves in a supermarket to earn my bread. Not the kind of lives men led in the movies I had loved so dearly as a child. I had no vision for my future, and now I was alone; my dream of getting married and starting a family of my own was shattered.
For many years throughout my youth, my stepfather had projected his fairytale fantasy onto me: ‘You’re going to marry a beautiful blonde woman, start a family, and live happily ever after.’ That script had been torn up. ‘What happens now?’ I thought. I allowed myself some time to grieve my lost love and broken dream before peeling myself off the bedroom floor and picking up my mobile phone one evening to take a picture of myself, fictitiously smiling for the camera — a mask for my deep sadness and grief, that, I soon learned, ran much deeper than my recent heartbreak. This ‘selfie’ turned out to be the first photograph I ever took with the intention of telling a story. I had wanted to make something from my pain and show this girl what she was missing out on. I walked into a local gym and began turning this pain into my power.
There’s a saying that ‘breakups make bodybuilders’, and that is almost true in my case. In the same way that I used to hide away indoors and train the characters within the worlds of the computer games I was playing, I woke up, took control of my own world, and began to train myself, becoming the hero of my own game. Although my body was heavy and depressed, the same spirit that burned inside my mother’s heart and protected my siblings and me all those years ago had ignited in me. The immediate pain of heartbreak was my fuel, and there was a wellspring of further pain running deep into my childhood, and far beyond, I have since understood.
For a while, I shared my bodybuilding journey online, with a new dream of standing on a stage, lathered in fake tan and ‘flexing’ my biceps in attempt to impress the onlooking judges. I began uploading video clips of myself training and photos of the food I was eating. My physique was changing rapidly, so I would often upload pictures of my progress as I focused intently on my new dream. I had also developed a love of journaling through this creative chapter, so I would occasionally write about what I was learning, too: patience, discipline, consistency, and commitment.
Ultimately, I was learning what it took to be a man, with the dumbbells and barbells as my teachers. Interestingly, I was learning more about psychology than I was about bodybuilding. I became obsessed with learning about the mind, picking up every book I could find, and learning from everyone whom I deemed to be successful in their field: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo DaVinci, to name a few. I was a sponge throughout that period of my life, and I was hyper-focused on evolving into the greatest version of myself that I could be.
Through the process of creating myself, transforming my physique and uploading photos and videos to the Internet, I was also learning a great deal about the art of storytelling. Eighteen months into my transformational journey, I picked up my sister’s DSLR camera and ventured outdoors to one of Wales’ most sacred sites: the legendary Pistyll Rhaeadr, with a newfound curiosity, love and appreciation for life, and respect and reverence for the spirit of Nature, which was growing with each adventure into Wales’ most wild and untouched places. I have always had one of those mindsets that wants to improve and is never entirely satisfied. The camera was the next logical piece to my storytelling jigsaw puzzle.
During this soul-searching chapter, I began to recognise Nature as much more than just a place to go for a walk. The trees became my father, best friend, and therapist; many of my childhood wounds started to heal whilst I was held in the safe embrace of their branches. I began to see the natural world as a living entity and a mirror of my true nature and deeper self. My eyes were opening to my own place within the earth’s ecosystem; a sense of belonging that my broken homes (a word I use reluctantly) had stolen from me, and one that continues to ebb & flow as I wander along my creative path towards wholeness.
Following such a painful chapter of darkness and bleakness, I found sanctuary in the silence and stillness provided by the natural world. Rather than escaping into the made-up worlds of my computer games or getting so blackout drunk that I forget my own name, I experienced transcendence by awakening to the beauty of the natural world in which I walked. By turning the camera outwards to record what I was seeing through my once-again-curious eyes — wildly alive with renewed awe, innocence, and wonder — I began to unearth what was missing in the lives of my father-figures, and so many men whom I now observe wandering without aim through life, searching externally for things to fill the gaping void inside their hearts.
The art of photography has gifted me, so early in my life, something that evades so many people for the entirety of their earthly existence: a profound sense of purpose that invigorates my soul and awakens me from the clutches of my slumber in the mornings. The man I am today is unrecognisable from the boy who set out upon this journey nine years ago. My excursions into the world of Nature have been an initiation — a much-needed one for the spiritual evolution of man that has been long forgotten in our egocentric Western culture that places far too much importance on external metrics to measure one’s masculinity.
As I sit to write this, I can’t help but recall the acts of ‘initiation’ that sports societies at university encouraged where the amount of man you were was measured by how much alcohol you could drink in one night before you collapsed in the road for your teammates to perform publicly shame-inducing acts to you, recording them on their phones to ensure you were never able to forget your moment of ‘weakness’. My desire to be an inspiration and role model for young men grows stronger when I recall these disgusting, shameful memories that still haunt me sixteen years on.
The painful memories of my broken youth have become my greatest source of creative power; my adversity a catalyst for profound personal growth and transformation. Now, I exist to help others unearth their own source of power, awaken to the beauty of Nature, and find healing in the arms of ancient oak trees. The men who raised me became the Gods of their own worlds, and I observed innocently as their self-serving actions caused these worlds to burn before them. I made a vow to myself early on that I would not make the same mistakes as these men, so I chose to kneel and surrender, in service to the spirit of Nature, sharing messages whispered by the winds, and translating the wisdom entrusted to me by my friend, Solitude.
Whereas I was once obsessed with hiding away in my room, escaping reality, I now choose to spend my days out in the world, practicing my craft and telling stories of hope and transformation through my photographs and writings that have recently reached international audiences and lined the walls of the prestigious Welsh gallery, Plas Glyn y Weddw. I long for nothing more than to spend the rest of my life creating beauty from my deepest pain and sharing that beauty with others.
It is my mission and ultimate purpose to inspire, educate, and empower an army of storytellers through transformative workshops and retreats, as I attempt to help restore humanity to a place of balance and harmony with the natural world. During these desperate years, when all we seem to see are stories of two sides: black vs white, left vs right, and man vs woman, I hope my work can stand as a beacon of hope for a different future for humanity; one where we learn to integrate both halves of our psyche and find a place of wholeness, balance, and harmony within ourselves, so that we can begin co-creating that in the world outside of ourselves.
I have longed to exist in a world where beauty has the time and space that she needs to reveal herself to our eyes. I decided some time ago that I would begin creating that space within myself. I have witnessed many profound moments of beauty since then, both inside and out.
Through my transformative creative retreats, immersive Nature photography workshops, and private tuition & mentoring services, I create environments where these moments of beauty can emerge, facilitating non-exclusive, healing and integrative spaces for creativity to thrive, where the entire person is welcomed with open arms, and they can express whatever emotions arise and transmute their deepest pain and suffering through the cathartic creative processes of photography and writing.
Through my services, I work with people of all levels and abilities, whether they are just embarking on their creative journey or preparing for their first major exhibition and looking to create a cohesive body of work that speaks from their soul.
I have also recently produced my debut photobook, Finding Light, in which I share my story through a series of over 20 creative essays, weaving together more than 100 photographs of the natural world.
Please visit my website if you would like to learn more about me and my mission, work with me on a one-to-one basis, book your place on a workshop or retreat — including the Introduction to Mindful Nature Photography workshop at Woodhill Park in May 2026, or preorder my debut photobook, which is shaping up to be foundational for a lifetime of transformative and purpose-driven creative work ahead of me.
Thank you for reading my story.
In service to the spirit of Nature,
Brad W. Carr
