Three Lessons Grief Forced Me to Learn

Arrogance, Control, and Accepting I Couldn’t Do This Alone

I wrote a short guide that lays them out called 10 Realities Men Run Into After Loss (and No One Warns Them About)

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I tried to write this essay on the third anniversary of my daughter’s death.

I told myself I would turn a brutal day into something meaningful. Something intentional. I planned to write an inspiring piece about the lessons I’ve learned since losing her.

That’s not what happened.

Instead, I spent the day on the couch, stuffing my face and feeling sorry for myself. Which, ironically, is one of the lessons grief has taught me.

Grief does not care about my plans.

Nine days later, I finally feel ready to come back to this. Not because I found clarity or closure, but because enough of the fog has lifted to tell the truth without pretending it’s inspirational.

When the Pedestal Collapsed

Humility has never come easily to me, especially when it came to parenting. I’d convinced myself I was an exceptional father, whether that certainty was earned or not.

My arrogance only grew once I started running a business coaching other dads. They sought me out and paid me for my wise counsel. I happily gave it to them, and to be fair, it seems to have helped a lot of people. Before long, my identity was tangled up in being the dad expert.

Meanwhile, back in real life, I was busy judging friends and family for their parenting. I noticed their lack of discipline and bad behaviour. I kept score and also offered a lot of unsolicited and unwanted advice.

And here’s the real kick in the gut.

Every single one of their kids is still alive. Mine died, plagued by mental health issues, and almost killed four other people driving drunk and stoned.

I can’t imagine a more violent way to be ripped off a self-built pedestal.

It’s not that I was a complete asshole. I had grown. I had learned to keep my mouth shut. I’d mostly stopped telling people what I thought they should do. But the arrogance didn’t disappear. It just didn’t make it to my lips as often. I still believed I knew what was best and spent a lot of energy stopping myself from saying it.

That meant I wasn’t actually present. I was too busy fighting myself.

Not anymore.

The “dad expert” couldn’t save his own daughter. And the parents I silently, and not-so-silently judged? Their kids are mostly fine. At the very least, they’re still breathing.

I understand now that I don’t have a clue what’s best for another human being. I don’t even know what’s best for myself half the time. I don’t see that as a failure. I see it as a gift.

It freed me from the burden of thinking I’m supposed to save people.

The war inside me is over. I’m more curious and empathetic now. If someone asks for my opinion, I’ll offer it. But I’m no longer attached to what they do with it.

Mindset Has Its Limits

I put down the bottle for the last time on August 30, 2014. A few months later, I finally started grieving my first wife’s death. Almost five years after she died. Grief helped me dismantle the victim story that had kept me a slave to the past.

Realizing how wrong I’d been about grief forced a bigger reckoning. If I was that wrong about something so important, what else had I gotten wrong? The answer turned out to be a lot.

I plunged headfirst into personal development. I read everything I could. I started a business. I set massive personal and professional goals. I became obsessed with my own growth.

And I drove myself half-crazy in the process.

Nothing was ever enough. The targets had to be higher. The plate had to be fuller. If I didn’t have six-pack abs, I thought my life was falling apart. I was generally optimistic and positive, but I was making everything harder than it needed to be.

I knew I hadn’t always been this way, so I went to therapy to figure out what had happened to me. I learned some important things, but not much changed.

Then my daughter died.

I approached her death the same way I approached everything else. I decided I was going to win at grief. I told myself I’d royally screwed it up the first time, but this time would be different.

Within a month, I started writing a book about grief. Not long after, I had to stop. I had no capacity. I lived with near-constant anxiety. There were moments when I was genuinely afraid I was losing my fucking mind.

I used every tool I had. I did everything I knew how to do. I told myself I would leave no stone unturned. I only used empowering language. I committed to facing whatever grief wanted to show me. I went on retreats. I did guided psychedelic journeys. I went back to therapy.

I wrote. I made videos. I tried to help as many people as possible. I focused the full force of my mind on healing and moving forward.

And for the most part, it helped me not make things worse.

But it wasn’t enough.

I didn’t have unlimited capacity to weaponize my mindset. I still found myself depressed, exhausted, and wracked with anxiety. Again and again.

Eventually, I turned on myself. I started to believe I was weak. If mindset was the answer, why couldn’t I get my shit together? I had moments of real panic wondering if I was stuck with this broken-down pathetic version of myself.

That’s when I learned about my nervous system.

I discovered Somatic Experiencing and began to understand what had actually been happening in my body. I realized I’d been living in a state of chronic hypervigilance for nearly fifteen years. Like a fish that doesn’t know it’s in water, I had no memory of any other way of being.

For months, dropping out of my head and into my body felt terrifying. My mind was where I managed my experience. It gave me the illusion of control. Staying there felt safer than feeling what was actually happening. I knew it wasn’t working, but at least it was familiar.

Before this, I dismissed body-based work as woo-woo nonsense for weak-minded people who couldn’t think their way through problems. Why would you bother meditating if you could be out doing something productive?

Now I know better.

There are things you will never out-think, out-frame, or out-discipline. Some pain doesn’t need a better story. It needs presence.

And sometimes the strongest thing you can do is stay in your body when every instinct you have is screaming at you to escape it.

Strength Requires Help

I used to tell myself I was the rugged individualist. Someone who didn’t need help. Someone who could muscle through anything and bend the world to his will.

I told myself that story because I loved the way it sounded. I even convinced myself it was true.

I raised my kids through their mother’s mental illness and suicide. I was a single dad for much of that time. I kept functioning, producing, and caring for my girls. In my mind, that made me a winner who could tackle anything on his own.

Except it wasn’t true, even then.

I borrowed money from my parents and friends when my wife spent us to the edge of bankruptcy. My mom moved in for months at a time to help me take care of the kids. I drank far more than I admitted, trying to survive another day.

Even so, I clung to the idea that I was different. That I was uniquely able to face these challenges for good.

Chloe’s death shattered that lie for good.

There are some burdens that are far too heavy to carry on our own. If we try, we don’t become heroes. We get crushed.

I’ve relied on my wife far more than I’m comfortable admitting. Without her love, encouragement, and boundaries, I’m certain I would have been swallowed by addiction. Even with her beside me, I’ve stumbled. More than once. I’m grateful she helped me pull back before I did irreversible damage.

When my first wife died, I had no male friendships where I could be honest. Now I have a band of brothers who are unequivocally in my corner. They show up, they call me forward, and they lift me out of the pit. I still hate asking for help. It still feels like failure. I do it anyway, because it works.

Most unexpectedly, I’ve become open to Christianity.

I find the teachings of Jesus profoundly relevant and comforting. Believing that my wife and daughter are together for eternity brings me a desperately needed sense of peace. And looking to God as a source of strength and a loving partner to walk with me gives me the strength to get back up when I’m on my knees.

I don’t know where my faith journey will lead me, but I’ll follow it wherever it goes. I’m in a Bible study with some of those men I mentioned earlier.

Right now, it’s my most important daily reminder that I don’t have to carry this cross alone.

I didn’t write any of this because I’ve figured grief out.

I wrote it because I’ve learned some important lessons, and learned them the hard way.

There’s freedom in no longer pretending that strength means doing it alone, that mindset can solve everything, or that I know what’s best for anyone else.