The Cost of Becoming | Vulnerability as a Brand

Identity is a deeply personal subject for all of us.

I believe that identity is something we both discover and create.  In a very personal way, I have struggled a great deal in this department.  To be honest, I think that rings true for many of us.  My story is one of discovery.

It’s only through years of reflection that I’ve come to understand how the discovery process unfolded. Most of my childhood was spent in a fog of unawareness—I didn’t know what I didn’t know. When I discovered graffiti at 13, everything shifted. The more formative years of my life were then spent crafting a kind of pseudo identity. Graffiti, a world built on the anonymity of the individual, became the perfect refuge for a lost kid trying to make something of himself.

As the seasons of life moved forward, it became harder to ignore the growing divide between who I was as a person and who I was as a graffiti writer. The two identities—day and night—became nearly impossible to sustain. The lived experience of each pulled in opposite directions. In hindsight, the shift toward art was probably long overdue. But the momentum of that lifestyle, and the deeply ingrained habits that came with it, made change feel almost impossible.

The transition—from deciding to pursue an art career to feeling like I was truly at the beginning of one—took about five years. In a deeper, more philosophical sense, the hardest part was letting go. I had spent nearly two decades living and breathing this thing called graffiti, and in many ways, leaving it behind felt like a kind of death. And with any death comes grief. I still have my moments.

The most important thing this entire process has taught me is a real-world lesson in sacrifice. It’s true: to receive something of a higher and greater nature, we must first release what belongs to a lower one. This is the path of growth. Whether it was recovering from addiction, facing trauma, or building a family, a home, a career—a calling—every step required shedding the layers of falsehoods my old self was built upon. In the end, through the process of refinement, we’re left with only the purest parts of who we are. The way it was always meant to be. Union with God.

Each iteration of the artistic brand has been part of a larger process of this shedding. A peeling back of layers. The sacrifice of opening up—of allowing oneself to be seen—is the price and the reward of living an authentic life. For some, that comes easily. For others, it’s much harder. I’ve always stood in the latter category. And this… this was the final layer that needed to be released.

My name is Jared Haviland.  I am an artist, a builder and designer based in Tacoma, Washington.