The Cost of Handling Grief the Way Men Are Taught

What my wife's death taught me about my daughter's death

The cemetery receded in the rearview mirror with what I thought was my former life. It’d been six days since my wife Cindy died by suicide. As I looked over the heads of my little girls, I thought, “That chapter is over and it’s time to move on.”

If only it were that simple.

At the time, I told myself grief was something that only plagued the weak. Real men, like me, were the ones who carried it. The world didn’t stop turning because my wife died. I had girls to raise, bills to pay, and a life to rebuild. Crying on the couch about the past...

From the outside, it looked like resilience. I loved hearing people marvel at my “phoenix from the ashes” story. It fit perfectly with the kind of man I thought I was supposed to be. It helped me convince myself that my heroism was real. It also made it easier to believe the lies I was telling myself, and anyone who’d listen.

Behind the mask was a different story. I drank by myself at lunch. I drank on the way home from work. And I drank myself to sleep.

Somehow, I believed I was thriving. I had a great job. I was a loving father and husband to my new wife. As if that wasn’t enough, I’d made it through hell and emerged victorious. I’d earned the right to drink and no one could tell me otherwise.

It took years for that story to unravel. The helplessness and self-hatred metastasized into a constant dread that overwhelmed my denial. People stopped believing my lies. Finally, I did too, and put down the bottle for good.

Instead of feeling better, I felt worse. Sobriety forced me to confront the shame and guilt I’d been avoiding over the things I’d said and done. I relived the pain she and I had experienced with no way to look away. I replayed her last moments in a doom loop I couldn’t escape. I wept at her graveside as I mourned all that we’d lost.

I didn’t know what was happening to me and worried I was losing my mind. My wife looked me in the eye and said, “It’s grief, Jason.” Despite everything I believed about grief, I knew she was telling the truth.

I’d been avoiding it for almost five years without ever realizing it. Not because I was unaware, but because I was committed to a version of manhood that couldn’t tolerate the alternative. Grief had been there, patiently waiting until I was ready.

For the first time, I understood what grief actually is.

I had believed it was something you indulged in if you lacked the discipline to keep going. It was something real men didn’t have time for. I was wrong.

Allowing myself to grieve changed the direction of my life. It helped me reframe the past, not by minimizing what I’d lost, but by seeing more than tragedy and victimhood. It refocused my attention outward, toward other people. In time, it made room for the idea of a future again.

I didn’t know how fragile that future was.

Thirteen years after Cindy’s death, I lost our nineteen-year-old daughter Chloe. She died and almost killed four other people driving drunk and stoned. Her mother’s suicide left wounds she never recovered from. The same mental health issues that destroyed her mother eventually took my daughter. It was like living through a nightmarish version of Groundhog Day.

This time, I told myself things would be different. I was sober. I knew I couldn’t outrun the pain. I had language for what I was feeling, and a willingness to face it, come what may.

In other words, I thought I could “win” at grief this time. What I’ve learned has helped. After a few months of hardly being able to get out of bed, I gave up on the idea of winning. But I knew it wouldn’t break me.

Chloe’s death confronted me with a kind of pain I didn’t know was possible. Losing my wife had left a scar I’d learned to live with. Losing my daughter tore it open again and left a much deeper wound.

I couldn’t save two people I loved, and I’ve had to come to terms with that. I still haven’t figured out whether I’m the father to one daughter or two. I’ve wrestled with feelings of helplessness watching my younger daughter grieve her sister. I’d give anything to take her pain away, but I can’t and healing demands I accept it.

The hard-earned experience from my wife’s death has helped me navigate my daughter’s. I’ve been able to be more intentional about not making things worse than they already are. But it hasn’t spared me from the immense pain of losing her.

Experience hasn’t protected me. It’s helped me be more honest about what I was facing. I don’t waste energy pretending I can manage this loss the way I tried to manage the last one.

I struggle mightily at times. I’m just less likely to shame myself for it. Asking for help can feel like weakness. I do it anyway. Some things that used to be easy remain much harder than they used to be.

Grief doesn’t make you better at grief. It makes you more aware of its demands—and takes away the illusion that you can muscle your way through it.

That was true when my wife died. It was true again when my daughter did.

I no longer think grief is for weak people. I know it’s the price we all pay for loving someone deeply.

In the end, allowing myself to grieve hasn’t changed what I lost. It’s changed how I live.

If this hit close to home, I put together a short, free guide called 10 Realities Men Run Into After Loss (And No One Warns Them About).

It doesn’t try to fix you or motivate you. It explains why everything feels harder than it should — and how to deal with it without making things worse.

Grab it if you want it.