This episode is about what happens when a family loses a son and a brother to suicide after a long, exhausting fight with mental illness.
In this episode of the Man Down podcast, Jason sits down with Eric Fulmer, a husband, father of six, and technology leader who lost his 23 year old son, Nathaniel, in April of 2024.
For nearly a year before Nathaniel died, Eric and his family were living inside the chaos of severe mental illness. Hospitalizations. Diagnoses. Psychosis. Constant fear. Constant hope. Constant exhaustion.
They were still fighting for him when he died.
This conversation covers:
Watching your child unravel while doing everything you can to help
Living inside the mental health system and realizing how broken it is
The shock of losing a child to suicide while trying to protect younger siblings
What it does to a marriage, a family, and a father’s sense of identity
The moment life resets and the old version of you disappears
Why grief forces a man to re-evaluate what actually matters
This is a brutally honest conversation about parenting, helplessness, guilt, love, and how a man keeps going after the unthinkable happens.
This episode is for:
Parents navigating mental illness with a child
Fathers carrying grief they do not know how to name
Leaders trying to show up while their personal life is wrecked
Anyone learning that you do not go back to who you were before
If you have ever felt like your life split into a before and after, this conversation will feel familiar.
If this episode hit close to home, the 10 Realities Men Run Into After Loss (and No One Warns Them About) guide goes deeper.
