My name is Bryce Campbell. I’m a writer, and this is how I got here.
The path 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
Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, I always had a knack for spending days under the sun Out There.
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.
I was in school until the 2nd grade, when my mom made the incredible decision to homeschool my siblings and I — two older sisters, and a younger brother.
Though I may not have always been the best student at home, my parents’ dedication and enduring spirit made it possible for me to live a unique youth: one of near unparalleled freedom.
But freedom comes with responsibilities and choices.
During my teenage years, things began to change. The world started to grow dim — I had developed migraines, which came on with exercise and heat. Living in South Carolina, I was robbed of both soccer — my favorite sport — and days spent outside.
But that illness wasn’t the true culprit — I was.
I withdrew from everyone, even my neighborhood friends. 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.
And before I knew it, I had traded away the most valuable years of my life — for almost nothing.
By 16, I had edged my way into playing video games professionally — maybe you’ve heard of Counter-Strike or Team Fortress 2. I never made any real money like some others did, but I kept playing, hoping to find something fulfilling in it.
Instead, what I found was that fulfillment always felt a bit too remote. And as happens in those late teenage years, I went searching for something more.
A Labor of Love
When I was 17, I started working at Chick Fil A (as you do, being a homeschooler). But unlike my peers, I had opportunity: my flexible schooling schedule allowed me to work not late nights, but full shifts. Not 10 hours, but 40, 50, or even 60 a week.
I soon came to manage shifts in the kitchen — handling responsibility of running stations, tracking chicken, and working to gain the respect of people both older and younger than I.
Looking back, I’d have no shame in saying that spending so many years on the computer, effectively wasting away, had stunted my maturing. But making up for lost time, that job, my first job, made me grow into a young man in record time.
The Struggle
And I suppose there must’ve been something at play, because the timing was necessary.
At 17, I had first become 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, I received the second worst news of my life: my father had Stage IV pancreatic cancer. In layman’s terms, he had, at best, a few months to live.
I remember my parents sitting my siblings and I down in the living room — but, in what I now see as a physical example of where I had already mentally gone, I kept my distance, opting to stand in the kitchen.
I would occasionally drive my dad to his chemo appointments: he went through 16 rounds.
I remember my parents drawing up wills and, more potent, I remember the heaviest weight of my life descending onto my shoulders: “Well, I may have to become the man of the household.”
Though some may laugh at such a sentiment, I never did: 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?
To top it all off, during these terrible months, my childhood chocolate lab Buddy died… of cancer.
Not long after, 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.
And for a while, it worked.
My First Solo Adventure
That first trip ignited a fire in me — during it I rediscovered my deeply rooted love for, and the peace that is found in, Creation.
Coming home, I got another full time job and saved up to buy my first camera. Longing for something new, I ‘borrowed’ my dads truck, bought a bed rack, a rooftop tent, and saved a few thousand dollars for gas and food, and set my sights on the West.
Which is a place that every young American 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, I found —
A shocking jolt bringing me right back to the life I had temporarily escaped.
My mother called me crying, as I parked on the eastbound entrance ramp of I-90 in rural Idaho. She 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
In that chaos, and in that confusion, I found myself drowning. I had nowhere to turn to, and evidently running had failed to work.
I flew home for a few weeks — spending my 20th Birthday mourning my dead younger brother.
After that, I spent the following months in the only place of peace I knew: the wilderness. Camping in Florida or North Carolina or Tennessee.
And during one of those brisk night’s sunsets, I reached rock bottom and made a desperate plea. 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
Still lonely and dazed, I spent my days photographing life. Eventually I began to share them on Instagram: first, with no words — then, I’d title each photograph, with some hidden message I’d hope somebody would hear.
Before long, I began to write more and more — about my adventures and the things I was seeing, sure. But moreso about what I was feeling, and who I was becoming.
After three years, I gained a small following. A community had formed: people I had never met or heard of, messaging me and telling me that I put something into words they were feeling. I made friends — some very distant — and eventually began to travel with a few. To Alaska, California, Canada, and eventually New Zealand.
I had always struggled with finding purpose — most notably I had made the terrible error of equating ‘life choices’ (my peers going to university) for having discovered purpose.
Little did I know that through those miserable struggles, God had revealed to me my purpose.
And so that’s why I’m here:
I’m here to tell you to make the most of your life, because for many years I did not.
I’m here to tell you to tell people that you love them, because I rarely told my brother.
I’m here to tell you that you cannot live your life in fear — watching my dad struggle with death in front of my very eyes showed me that fear exists only to rob you.
I’m here to tell you that Someone crafted you with a purpose. At conception you were given a task, and I think, if you spend enough nights alone under the stars in nature, you might just discover what that is.
But most importantly, I’m here to tell you that 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 worked tirelessly to stay alive, and never once considered the fact that he may die. Now, he is 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 I 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.
In Closing
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.
So despite all that, I’m grateful that you’re here. Thank you for joining me on this adventure — hopefully I inspire you to live out yours.
— Bryce