Thank you for sharing this. I've been curious about the subtle details of what you've been through, attempting to piece it together from parts. I figured it was all in the stack somewhere, but lacked the initiative to find it.
I can only imagine what this must have been like to live through. I've tried to imagine how I would cope with losing my wife, a prospect that may yet come to fruition, but we have no children to lose. I don't know if that's a better reality. Doubt it.
"Finally, I did too, and put down the bottle for good... Instead of feeling better, I felt worse."
I appreciate the honesty about sobriety not being the easy off-ramp some folks sell it as. We imagine that if we tell folks sobriety makes it harder at first, and for an indefinite period of time, they won't consider it. These days, I'm less sure it matters. Truth matters. That I'm sure of.
But this part...
"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."
Yes. This is the center of the bullseye for so many of my concerns for men. Vulnerable is such a non-starter for so many of us. The very medicine we need is the one we're most averse to.
1) 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. (What a beautifully in-tuned, compassionate moment)
2) I still haven’t figured out whether I’m the father to one daughter or two. (This sounds so raw and gutting)
3) 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. (Doubtful many people who know realize that this is what you put upon yourself as a parent and protector)
4) 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.
5) This was powerful. I hope more men (and more people) learn from what you generously dug deep to share.
First, sorry to hear about your spouse. That really bites.
That’s a good question, because most people hear “wall” and think barrier. Something you hide behind or keep others out with.
That’s not what I mean.
A load-bearing wall isn’t about separation. It’s about support. It’s the part of the structure everything else quietly depends on. You don’t decorate it. You don’t move it. You don’t notice it until something starts to fail.
Grief becomes that.
When you lose something that mattered, your internal architecture changes. Not temporarily. Permanently. The way you hold joy, stress, love, responsibility, even silence now rests on something that wasn’t there before. You don’t pass through it and leave it behind. You build around it.
That’s what makes it unforgiving.
Not because grief is cruel, but because it doesn’t tolerate denial. You can’t pretend it’s cosmetic. You can’t rip it out without the house buckling somewhere else. If you refuse to acknowledge it, the strain shows up anyway. In the body. In the temper. In the fatigue that has no clear cause.
Unexpressed grief doesn’t disappear. It concentrates the load.
Expressed grief doesn’t remove the wall. It lets the weight distribute.
So no, grief isn’t a barrier you hide behind.
It’s the thing holding the rest of you up now.
And whether you learn to live with that truth or keep pretending it isn’t structural determines where the cracks eventually appear.
We teach people to handle grief the way you handle something that might explode. Carefully. Quietly. Preferably somewhere out of sight. We reward those who keep moving. We distrust those who slow the room down.
That’s the test.
Contain it, and you’re called strong.
Let it spill, and you’re corrected.
Grief becomes an illegal tenant.
Everyone knows it’s there.
Everyone pretends it isn’t.
But grief does not leave when it’s ignored.
It studies the layout.
It finds new entrances.
It moves into the body.
Into the jaw.
Into the chest.
Into the kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch.
We call that resilience.
It’s just grief that learned how to hide.
Here’s the part no one says out loud.
Most people aren’t afraid of grief.
They’re afraid of being asked to witness it.
Because witness requires stillness.
And stillness ruins the illusion that everything is under control.
So we teach people to grieve privately.
Efficiently.
On a schedule.
We tell them they’re healing when what we really mean is they’re no longer interrupting us.
Grief carried alone doesn’t shrink.
It warps.
It turns inward.
It turns sharp.
It starts speaking through other things.
Anger.
Numbness.
A life that looks intact and feels evacuated.
Grief is not something you move through.
It’s something that gets built into you.
A wall.
Load bearing.
Unforgiving.
Ignore it, and the structure fails somewhere you didn’t expect.
Usually when someone else needs you to be present.
Some losses do not want closure.
They want permission.
They want to be allowed to exist without becoming lessons, or content, or proof of growth.
They want one other person willing to sit in the room and not try to renovate it.
That kind of witness doesn’t fix anything.
It keeps something from breaking.
And maybe that’s the only honest form of care we have left.
Can you say more about this please? How it's something that gets built into you, is load bearing.
My initial thought of a wall is wall as a barrier, but I can't tell if that's what you mean, or if you're referring to the load-bearing nature of a wall. And the unforgiving aspect - of unexpressed grief, or grief generally?
I'm asking not as critique but for greater understanding of grief and of my own possible road ahead after the recent death of my spouse. Grief sucks.
"Ignore it, and the structure fails somewhere you didn’t expect.
Usually when someone else needs you to be present."
My spouse carried unexpressed grief, and I believe it led directly to their chronic health condition and eventually contributed to their own premature death. Which has left me now experiencing the tsunami of grief.
I have suffered two suicides in my immediate family - my mother and my brother. I can imagine the tremendous grief you experienced from your wife's choice to leave. I cannot imagine losing your daughter as well. To lose a child like that - from what you might call "accidental" suicide - my heart breaks for you. Thank you for your honesty. I am glad you are beginning to find your way again after so many years of pain. Keep at it. I know it will make a difference to your younger daughter as you model healthy grief to her - and honor her grief as well.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m truly sorry about your mother and your brother. That’s a heavy road to walk. I hope you've had people to walk it with you.
You’re right about the modelling piece. One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that grief doesn’t need to be “solved,” but it does need to be faced. When we don’t, the cost shows up anyway, often in the people closest to us. The harm I caused people I love took a long, long time to heal.
My hope in writing is simple: to give people, especially men, language and permission to stop pretending they’re fine and start dealing with what’s actually happening. If that helps even one family navigate loss with a little more honesty and less isolation, it’s worth it.
I appreciate you taking the time to write such a heartfelt note.
Grief sober sucks! But I would not trade sobriety for anything in the world. Not anything, friends. Life is real and I am accountable and loving today. I loved deeply and thus the sadness. And now my relationship with the God of my understanding is so strong. That’s faith that works.
You’re right. Grief sober is brutally real. There’s no numbing, no shortcuts, no escape hatches.
What I respect in what you shared is the accountability piece. You're facing the pain instead of trying to outrun or outwork it. That’s where grief actually does its work, even though it doesn’t feel noble or spiritual in the moment. It blows.
It hurts because the love is so real. And staying awake to that pain, without numbing or running, takes guts. I respect you for naming it.
Thank you for sharing this. I've been curious about the subtle details of what you've been through, attempting to piece it together from parts. I figured it was all in the stack somewhere, but lacked the initiative to find it.
I can only imagine what this must have been like to live through. I've tried to imagine how I would cope with losing my wife, a prospect that may yet come to fruition, but we have no children to lose. I don't know if that's a better reality. Doubt it.
"Finally, I did too, and put down the bottle for good... Instead of feeling better, I felt worse."
I appreciate the honesty about sobriety not being the easy off-ramp some folks sell it as. We imagine that if we tell folks sobriety makes it harder at first, and for an indefinite period of time, they won't consider it. These days, I'm less sure it matters. Truth matters. That I'm sure of.
But this part...
"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."
Yes. This is the center of the bullseye for so many of my concerns for men. Vulnerable is such a non-starter for so many of us. The very medicine we need is the one we're most averse to.
This feels like madness.
1) 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. (What a beautifully in-tuned, compassionate moment)
2) I still haven’t figured out whether I’m the father to one daughter or two. (This sounds so raw and gutting)
3) 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. (Doubtful many people who know realize that this is what you put upon yourself as a parent and protector)
4) 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.
5) This was powerful. I hope more men (and more people) learn from what you generously dug deep to share.
Hi Copernicus,
First, sorry to hear about your spouse. That really bites.
That’s a good question, because most people hear “wall” and think barrier. Something you hide behind or keep others out with.
That’s not what I mean.
A load-bearing wall isn’t about separation. It’s about support. It’s the part of the structure everything else quietly depends on. You don’t decorate it. You don’t move it. You don’t notice it until something starts to fail.
Grief becomes that.
When you lose something that mattered, your internal architecture changes. Not temporarily. Permanently. The way you hold joy, stress, love, responsibility, even silence now rests on something that wasn’t there before. You don’t pass through it and leave it behind. You build around it.
That’s what makes it unforgiving.
Not because grief is cruel, but because it doesn’t tolerate denial. You can’t pretend it’s cosmetic. You can’t rip it out without the house buckling somewhere else. If you refuse to acknowledge it, the strain shows up anyway. In the body. In the temper. In the fatigue that has no clear cause.
Unexpressed grief doesn’t disappear. It concentrates the load.
Expressed grief doesn’t remove the wall. It lets the weight distribute.
So no, grief isn’t a barrier you hide behind.
It’s the thing holding the rest of you up now.
And whether you learn to live with that truth or keep pretending it isn’t structural determines where the cracks eventually appear.
Jason,
Grief isn’t dangerous.
What we do to it is.
We teach people to handle grief the way you handle something that might explode. Carefully. Quietly. Preferably somewhere out of sight. We reward those who keep moving. We distrust those who slow the room down.
That’s the test.
Contain it, and you’re called strong.
Let it spill, and you’re corrected.
Grief becomes an illegal tenant.
Everyone knows it’s there.
Everyone pretends it isn’t.
But grief does not leave when it’s ignored.
It studies the layout.
It finds new entrances.
It moves into the body.
Into the jaw.
Into the chest.
Into the kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch.
We call that resilience.
It’s just grief that learned how to hide.
Here’s the part no one says out loud.
Most people aren’t afraid of grief.
They’re afraid of being asked to witness it.
Because witness requires stillness.
And stillness ruins the illusion that everything is under control.
So we teach people to grieve privately.
Efficiently.
On a schedule.
We tell them they’re healing when what we really mean is they’re no longer interrupting us.
Grief carried alone doesn’t shrink.
It warps.
It turns inward.
It turns sharp.
It starts speaking through other things.
Anger.
Numbness.
A life that looks intact and feels evacuated.
Grief is not something you move through.
It’s something that gets built into you.
A wall.
Load bearing.
Unforgiving.
Ignore it, and the structure fails somewhere you didn’t expect.
Usually when someone else needs you to be present.
Some losses do not want closure.
They want permission.
They want to be allowed to exist without becoming lessons, or content, or proof of growth.
They want one other person willing to sit in the room and not try to renovate it.
That kind of witness doesn’t fix anything.
It keeps something from breaking.
And maybe that’s the only honest form of care we have left.
— Chris
Grief is not something you move through.
It’s something that gets built into you.
A wall.
Load bearing.
Unforgiving.
Can you say more about this please? How it's something that gets built into you, is load bearing.
My initial thought of a wall is wall as a barrier, but I can't tell if that's what you mean, or if you're referring to the load-bearing nature of a wall. And the unforgiving aspect - of unexpressed grief, or grief generally?
I'm asking not as critique but for greater understanding of grief and of my own possible road ahead after the recent death of my spouse. Grief sucks.
Thanks.
"Ignore it, and the structure fails somewhere you didn’t expect.
Usually when someone else needs you to be present."
My spouse carried unexpressed grief, and I believe it led directly to their chronic health condition and eventually contributed to their own premature death. Which has left me now experiencing the tsunami of grief.
What you wrote is beautiful and painfully true.
I have suffered two suicides in my immediate family - my mother and my brother. I can imagine the tremendous grief you experienced from your wife's choice to leave. I cannot imagine losing your daughter as well. To lose a child like that - from what you might call "accidental" suicide - my heart breaks for you. Thank you for your honesty. I am glad you are beginning to find your way again after so many years of pain. Keep at it. I know it will make a difference to your younger daughter as you model healthy grief to her - and honor her grief as well.
I’m just so sorry Lori 😔
Thank you so much!
Hi Lori,
Thank you for sharing this. I’m truly sorry about your mother and your brother. That’s a heavy road to walk. I hope you've had people to walk it with you.
You’re right about the modelling piece. One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that grief doesn’t need to be “solved,” but it does need to be faced. When we don’t, the cost shows up anyway, often in the people closest to us. The harm I caused people I love took a long, long time to heal.
My hope in writing is simple: to give people, especially men, language and permission to stop pretending they’re fine and start dealing with what’s actually happening. If that helps even one family navigate loss with a little more honesty and less isolation, it’s worth it.
I appreciate you taking the time to write such a heartfelt note.
Grief sober sucks! But I would not trade sobriety for anything in the world. Not anything, friends. Life is real and I am accountable and loving today. I loved deeply and thus the sadness. And now my relationship with the God of my understanding is so strong. That’s faith that works.
You’re right. Grief sober is brutally real. There’s no numbing, no shortcuts, no escape hatches.
What I respect in what you shared is the accountability piece. You're facing the pain instead of trying to outrun or outwork it. That’s where grief actually does its work, even though it doesn’t feel noble or spiritual in the moment. It blows.
It hurts because the love is so real. And staying awake to that pain, without numbing or running, takes guts. I respect you for naming it.