Reflections From A Chapter of the Deepest Healing

This morning, I found myself taking a trip back to 2021 - 2022. It was a chapter of remembering, deep healing, grieving and awakening. I remember many occasions on which I was driving back from Eryri after a photography session in the mountains. I was usually listening to some deep, emotive and reflective pieces of music, and my eyes would be filled with tears. Sometimes, I was content to let my tears fall gently from my cheeks. Other times, I allowed myself to break open and bawled uncontrollably behind the wheel of my car as I journeyed through the Welsh valleys.

Only in hindsight, do I understand the depths of the work that I was doing inside of myself to heal - to bring previously unconscious pain into my awareness and release it into the rivers that guided me home. Only now, do I realise the importance of this work to unburden myself and lighten my load, so that I might be able to help others with theirs as we move forwards together and heal our collective pain and trauma.

There is a part of me that longs for a period like this to come again. I became somewhat attached to the deep feelings of catharsis that I was experiencing. One might say that it was a period of depression. I think that’s a term that is thrown around too easily these days. I remember it, quite simply, as an essential period of deep sadness and grief as I dug down into my core to learn about who I was. It was melancholic, and I think that those feelings reflect in many of the photographs that I created during that time.

I allowed myself to be alone in my solitude and do what so many men are afraid to do. I had to go into my own depths and ‘feel’ - a scary thought to many, perhaps. I have never been afraid to feel, albeit, for most of my life, I knew how to push my feelings down and suppress the emotions that were inside. I couldn’t hide and lie to myself, however. I knew the depths of my own emotions and sensitivity from a young age. Many others did, too. My stepfathers and many of my peers could easily pick up on my sensitivity, although I have never really let anyone see the extent of what is inside.

There were times as a child, when I would sit alone in my room and cry. Sometimes, I knew that I was longing for love - for the deepest kind of connection with another soul. Other times, I would cry because of the pain that I felt as a result of the abuse and violence that I was witnessing in my home. Sometimes, I would just cry without knowing why. It has, at times throughout my life, simply felt incredibly healthy to just allow myself to feel things in any which way I deemed fit.

I became numb to my feelings as I grew up. I disappeared into the worlds of various video games, and began to party - drinking and taking drugs in my early twenties. I sometimes escaped by seeking cheap, surface-level connections with girls in my less-than-conscious states. I switched off my deeper feelings for many years, although they were always ‘there’ somewhere in my subconscious mind.

Being alone with myself in Nature, there were no distractions. I had no escape from myself. I remember feeling like the walls of an almighty dam had crumbled to the ground at times throughout this chapter of my life. Emotions that I had held back behind the walls of my stiff, Stoic face burst out. Layers of my ego were stripping away quickly and the masks were falling off. I felt as though I was going out in pursuit of something much deeper than a photograph. The photograph was merely a disguise for what was really happening - for what I was really being guided to do. It was a spiritual quest more than anything.

I remember a time, whilst working at the electrical wholesaler around this period, when I was wishing that I could be more open and vulnerable with the world - that I could reveal more of my deeper self and talk about the things that I deemed to be of real importance… Not the weather… Not the weekend’s football results… Not how much money someone was earning. I delivered a presentation in front of an array of army veterans earlier this week telling my story of healing and transformation with my heart wide open. It turns out that I got my wish, albeit much sooner than I could have anticipated back in the wholesalers.

This chapter of my life reconnected me with the deeper side of myself that had been buried beneath layers of social conditioning and projections from others. It was a period of awakening, first to my deepest pain, and now to the deepest pleasure that is following as I reap some of the rewards of my laborious quest. The joy that I feel at times now is much more natural and authentic than the joy that I felt whilst under the influence of alcohol and emotionally-heightening drugs. I find myself feeling emotions that were, perhaps, buried throughout my turbulent youth.

The tears, in recent times, have dried up, although the walls of my dam are still flattened on the ground. I have done plenty of healing, and I have moved into a new chapter of my life. It appears now as though I am being guided to share my story with the world through presentations, interviews and exhibitions. Although I find myself sometimes longing to be all alone out on the road again, with nothing but my camera in hand and the trees for company, I am at peace with where I am currently in the story that I am writing. I know that where I am, is where I need to be. I have to remind myself of that frequently, as I can fall into the trap of resisting the present moment in pursuit of what was, or what is to be. My time to create will come again. I place my trust in the process. I know that I will feel the unrelenting urge when the time is right and everything is aligned. Until then, I’ll enjoy this period of deep reflection, and hopefully keep on making the world a better place by telling my stories and offering a source of light to others who walk along their own way.