My name is Bryce Campbell. I write about loss, faith, and learning to breathe again.
The path that led me here wasn’t a straight line. For years, I felt completely lost — adrift without direction. There were detours, unexpected turns, and moments that reshaped me in ways I never saw coming.
Growing Up
I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. My earliest memories are of a simple life: pushing a toy dump truck through tide pools, walking barefoot through marsh, and never quite learning how to sit still.
My mom homeschooled my siblings and me from second grade on — two older sisters, and a younger brother. Though I may not have always been the best student, my parents’ dedication made it possible for me to live a youth of near unparalleled freedom.
But freedom comes with responsibilities and choices. During my teenage years, things began to change. I developed migraines that robbed me of soccer and days spent outside. I withdrew from everyone. I traded bike races around the park for a dark room and a glowing screen. I traded summer days on my father’s boat for late nights lost in video games.
By 16, I had edged my way into playing video games professionally. I never made any real money, but I kept playing, hoping to find something fulfilling in it. Instead, fulfillment always felt a bit too remote.
A Labor of Love
At 17, I started working at Chick Fil A. My flexible schooling schedule allowed me to work full shifts — not 10 hours, but 40, 50, or even 60 a week. I came to manage shifts in the kitchen, gaining the respect of people both older and younger than me.
Years of wasting away on the computer had stunted my maturing. But that job — my first job — made me grow into a young man in record time.
The Struggle
The timing was necessary, because everything fell apart at once.
At 17, I became a victim of sexual assault from an older woman. That pain crippled me — I spent my days working or sitting at home crying. There was seldom an in between.
Not long after, my father was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. At best, he had a few months to live. He went through 16 rounds of chemo. I remember my parents drawing up wills, and the heaviest weight of my life descending onto my shoulders: “I may have to become the man of the household.”
If my father was to die, who would look after my mother, or my sisters, or my younger brother? Whose responsibility would my family become?
During those same months, my childhood chocolate lab Buddy died — of cancer.
I booked a ticket to Geneva, Switzerland, and set off on a two-week trek through the Alps. I had worked endless overtime shifts in fast food to save $4,000 — not to see the world, but to escape from it.
My First Solo Adventure
That first trip ignited a fire in me. I rediscovered my deeply rooted love for, and the peace that is found in, Creation.
Back home, I saved up for a camera, borrowed my dad’s truck, bought a bed rack and a rooftop tent, and set my sights on the American West — a place every young man is called to, eventually.
I spent days doing nothing but driving. I found that nothing was actually everything. In the deserts of Arizona, I found beauty. In the rugged peaks of Colorado, I found stillness.
And in the vastness of Idaho — parked on the eastbound entrance ramp of I-90 — my mother called me crying and told me my younger brother, Heston, had taken his life.
I screamed, “WHAT?!”
And in true Hispanic motherly fashion, she replied softly, ‘Do not yell at me.’
Redemption
I flew home and spent my 20th birthday mourning my dead younger brother. Then I returned to the only place of peace I knew: the wilderness. Camping in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee.
During one brisk sunset, I reached rock bottom. Under the canopy of an Appalachian forest I prayed to Someone I wasn’t even sure existed.
From that moment on, my life was changed.
Who I Am Today
I began photographing life and sharing it on Instagram — first with no words, then titling each photograph with some hidden message I hoped somebody would hear. Before long I was writing more and more. Not just about adventures, but about what I was feeling, and who I was becoming.
A community formed. People I had never met messaging me, telling me I put into words something they were feeling. I made friends — some very distant — and began to travel with a few. To Alaska, California, Canada, and eventually New Zealand.
Through those miserable struggles, God had revealed my purpose.
I’m here to tell you to make the most of your life, because for many years I did not. To tell people that you love them, because I rarely told my brother. That you cannot live in fear — watching my dad struggle with death showed me that fear exists only to rob you.
Someone crafted you with a purpose. He has a name, and He’s been waiting for you to call it — Jesus.
Against all odds, my dad persevered. He is now in the 0.001% of survivors to make it past 5 years with terminal Stage IV pancreatic cancer. My brother’s suicide brought my remaining siblings and me closer together than we’d ever have been otherwise.
And only through having lived my life have I discovered what it means to actually be alive.
My story is probably a lot like yours — in that it isn’t pretty or polished. But that’s the beauty of them: there is something unique that each of us has to face. And through that struggle — through that refining fire — we are welcomed into our purpose, and a relationship with Jesus.
See you Out There,
Bryce C