SoulKind: A journal was born
Life can change in the blink of an eye. I learnt that the hard way on the morning of the 12th July, 2018 whilst returning into Cheltenham after dropping my dogs off at the kennels. An oncoming car carelessly crossed into my lane and in a split second, the resulting 50mph head on collision turned my world upside down, literally.
The sheer force of the impact caused my neck to break at vertebrae C2 and C5. My lower back was fractured, both legs broken at the ankles, shins and my right thigh shattered. My left arm fractured from the wrist upwards, the shockwave causing five ribs to break, one of which punctured my right lung.
“After three agonising hours I was finally cut free from the wreckage”
In that moment, I was left sipping on what I believed to be my last breaths, drifting in and out of consciousness using every ounce of strength left within me to try and remain calm. After three agonising hours and the efforts of the air ambulance, fire service and two heroic passers-by who collectively saved my life that day, I was finally cut free from the wreckage and rushed to Bristol Southmead Hospital. Hours of complex surgeries over the next two days stabilised my condition and I finally came around to an audience of specialist nurses, doctors’, family and friends in the unforgettable ICU ward, my life hanging in the balance.
I’d met Chris Boulton a year or so prior to my accident after receiving a canvassing email asking if any local creative agencies would be interested in meeting for a coffee. He was reinventing himself as a commercial photographer and his growing portfolio had a unique quality that for me spoke volumes. Out of the 120 emails Chris sent, I was the only person to reply and after connecting, it was clear we were both kindred spirits when it came to our love for design, photography and storytelling. It soon became evident that we both yearned for a creative project without client restraints. Something that fuelled our very desire for creativity, personal to us, which could showcase our combined skills.
After many more meetings and countless flat whites, the idea for an independent magazine began to emerge with thoughts of artisan makers, adventure photographers and storytelling all in the mix as a focus. But with such a saturated market, and probably with hindsight, overthinking it, we found it difficult to pin down exactly what our niche was going to be. What would give us a point of difference and a face to stand out in the crowd?
Whilst lying in my hospital bed in the sterile environment of the ICU ward, unable to move, the enormity of what had happened to me hit home. With tubes connected to and from every orifice, and my body broken all over, the hardest times were always after 8pm when visiting hours had finished. I was left cocooned inside my own mind, dark thoughts wrestling to take over emanating negative visions of what my future might look like.
“I was scared and I was going to need help to get through whatever lay ahead”
I remember one of my lowest points after a particularly sleepless night, tormented by morphine induced nightmares, freaked out by my own inner struggles. As the morning broke and the nurses began to re-emerge on their morning rounds, I lay there exhausted merely grateful to have made it through the night. Something changed in me that morning. Maybe I’d hit rock bottom and there was nowhere else to go, but the realisation of the extreme journey ahead of me suddenly became very real. Deep down I knew I had a positive mind, but the reality was I was overwhelmed with fear. ‘I was scared and I was going to need help to get through whatever lied ahead’.
Whilst I relied heavily on my immediate support network for emotional support, I also decided to seek out stories of people who have beaten the odds and overcome trauma to thrive again. Stories which in turn would give me the foundations to believe that I could do the same. I came across an incredible guy called Matty Long, a firefighter from New York who had been crushed by a double decker bus whilst cycling to the station one morning, but somehow survived to rebuild his life and eventually complete his first Ironman. And the incredible Aaron Baker, who after surviving a motocross across accident, taught himself to walk again despite being told he never would due to the severity of his spinal cord injury.
I spent the following weeks trawling the internet with my one good arm, reading, watching, and marvelling at how incredible the human body and mind actually is. And it wasn’t just people overcoming a traumatic experience, there were people simply out there fulfilling life, doing extraordinary things and realising their dreams. Not only did the stories make me feel good, they also gave me hope when I needed it most of all. I thought ‘if they can help me feel this way, maybe they could do the same for other people on their own journey’.
Around a year later, Chris and I heard about a guy who had decided to walk the length of the Zambezi River to mark turning 70 years young. Although still heavily in recovery, I was gaining strength, so we arranged to meet David Lemon in the Cotswold village of Sheepscombe, a few miles up the road where he happened to be housesitting. His story of achieving the unthinkable, putting himself out there for self-fulfilment to prove the naysayers and internal demons from an early age wrong, was just what we were looking for.
It felt like we had struck gold in the ‘why’. What was this unseen trait that drives people forward and could it be harnessed to help us all do extraordinary things too? As Chris deepened himself into his photography groove, there was moment where he stepped in close, his lens inches from David’s face. He said “Look directly into the lens David and I’m going to look into your soul.”
Although ‘somewhat forward’ I thought, there was something about the idea of soul searching, learning from one another, and in that moment the idea of SoulKind was born. What if we could delve deeper into the mindset of inspirational people and learn from them. By taking time to meet people and get to know them, we could really listen and gain an insight into what drives them on.
Simply put, the SoulKind Journal shares tales of human endeavour, exploration and resilience. It is an independent printed publication built on integrity and good will, which spreads positivity and inspires others, demonstrating that with the right mindset we can achieve quite extraordinary things.
SoulKind is currently self-funded, but as our readership grows, so does our exposure. And with two issues behind us, we are beginning to attract sponsorship from like-minded brands who genuinely want to try and make a positive difference in the world.