Navigating Male Grief: A Map for Men on Silence, Strength, and Healing

Navigating male grief is not a straight path. It’s a slow crossing through silence, pressure, and the weight of what’s never spoken.

For many men, grief doesn’t follow the usual accepted pattern. It comes as sleeplessness, chest tightness, overworking, and the second drink that becomes the third. It hides behind competence and the need to stay composed when everything inside feels fractured.

We mistake this for strength, but often it is survival – a man doing what he has been taught, when the scripts fail, grief becomes a private exile.

Navigating male grief begins not with words, but with permission to feel what’s been buried, to name what has gone and to stop performing when what’s needed is honesty.

This is not a guide to fixing grief. It is a map for men learning how to live with loss, not as weakness, but as evidence of love.

“Most men aren’t avoiding grief – they are surviving it the best way they know how.”

Reflect

Where in your life have you mistaken endurance for healing?
What might it mean to let grief be seen rather than hidden?

Navigating Male Grief

• Navigating Male Grief means learning to face loss without losing yourself.

• Many men express grief through action — working harder, drinking more, withdrawing — because culture trains them to equate emotion with weakness.

• Unspoken grief doesn’t disappear; it lodges in the body and shapes identity.

• Healing begins with permission — to feel, to speak, to move grief through rather than around.

• Anchors like embodied movement, brotherhood, ritual, and meaning-making help men carry grief with dignity, not defeat.

• The goal isn’t “moving on.” It’s learning to live honestly with what remains.

Navigating Male Grief: When the Ground Splits Beneath You

Navigating Male Grief isn’t a straight road. It’s a territory marked by silence, endurance, and the quiet weight of what’s unsaid.

For many men, grief does not arrive as tears. It comes as tension behind the ribs, sleepless nights, or the relentless drive to keep moving when everything inside has stopped. It shows up in overwork, short tempers, the extra drink, and the numb scroll before bed.

“Grief is not the opposite of strength. It’s where strength learns how to breathe.”

We call it strength because we don’t have another word. But what most men are really doing is surviving — trying to protect others from their pain and themselves from breaking.

This article is not about fixing grief. It’s about mapping it, about naming the invisible rules that tell men not to feel, the body’s rebellion when sorrow is swallowed, and the slow, human work of finding words again.

As one man in a bereavement study put it: “Everyone kept telling me to be strong. But what they meant was: Don’t you dare fall apart where we can see it.” (Lee & Neimeyer, 2020, p.112). Strength becomes a script, not a truth. The problem is not strength itself—many men need every ounce of it to keep children fed and life moving—but it leaves no place for pain to be named. When grief loses language, it leaks into the body, the workday, the late-night scrolling, the numb sex or no sex, the perfectly composed life that feels hollow from the inside.

This post is not a fix. It is a map tracing the landscapes many men cross when loss tears open the ground beneath them. It names the forces that silence grief, the ways the body carries what the mouth cannot say, and the identity shocks that come when roles collapse. It honours difference—race, class, queerness, generation—because grief is never a single-issue experience. And it offers anchors for healing that respect how many men actually process emotion: through doing and moving, through quiet brotherhood and ritual, and meaning-making that is authentic for them.

It is important to emphasise from the start that we will all experience grief at some point in our lives. Our choice is whether we handle it in healthy and supportive ways or whether we suppress it and pretend we have it under control. Recognising grief in our lives does not make us weak or broken. You are not alone in your grief. You are not weak or broken. If you cannot cry, we will start where you are. If you cannot speak, we will begin with breath and movement. If you blame yourself for not ‘doing grief’ properly, consider this your permission slip. There is no one correct way to do grief. There is only honesty.

“When you stop performing strength, healing finally begins”

If you prefer a short, practical guide, download the Male Grief: 6 Patterns – Mentoring Through The Maze (PDF) and use it as a one-page reset when things feel like they are beginning to spin out of control.

1) Navigating The Inherited Silence of Male Grief

Grief is not gendered. Love and loss cut through every human life. However, the expression of grief is shaped by culture—especially by the stories we tell boys about manhood. From early childhood, many boys are trained in a performance of control: “Big boys don’t cry.” “Man up.” “Don’t be a girl.” These aren’t throwaway lines; they are micro-lessons in what counts as acceptable emotion. They form what psychologists call a gender display rule: sadness becomes private, anger remains permissible.

Silence in male grief is not simply personal—it is structural. Several forces converge:

Hegemonic masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity or the culturally dominant story sets the tone for what it means to be a “real man” in many cultures—rewarding dominance, control, and the suppression of vulnerability. Within this framework, grief is not seen as a natural human response but as a failure of masculinity. Many men, therefore, mask their sorrow, turning pain inward or converting it into anger or silence.

Disenfranchised grief

Not all losses are socially recognised or validated. When a man grieves a miscarriage as a father, the end of a career, the fading of physical strength, or even the quiet death of a friendship, the world often offers little acknowledgment. Without permission to name these losses, men feel foolish for hurting, and so they tuck their grief out of sight.

Privatisation of grief

The decline of shared mourning rituals has shifted grief from the public square into private spaces. Where once communities gathered to carry sorrow together, men now often find themselves alone in their pain. In the absence of collective support, withdrawal can feel like the only acceptable option.

Cultural norms and class

Different workplaces, industries, and social classes shape how men are “allowed” to grieve. In environments where stoicism is prized—such as trades, law enforcement, or corporate leadership—emotion quickly becomes a liability, equated with weakness or unreliability. The result is that men learn to mute their grief for the sake of survival within their community or profession.

Erosion of ritual

Rituals once gave structure and permission for grief, guiding mourners through communal acts of remembrance and release. Today, many funerals have been reduced to logistical efficiency—a brief service squeezed between work obligations. Without these sacred spaces, men lose culturally sanctioned places to weep, speak, and be held in their mourning.

Stripped of ritualised spaces for mourning, many men default to the only scripts left available—the silent codes of masculinity that demand protection, provision, and proof of strength. Psychologist Martin Seager describes a three-fold male code: protect, provide, prove.

These are not defects; they are genuinely prosocial instincts. But grief exposes their limits. A father cannot protect a child from death. A husband cannot provide for a partner who is gone. And there is nothing to prove when your insides feel like ash. The result for many men is not catharsis but shutdown: emotional numbing, hyper-function at work, irritability, or retreat into screens and substances.

I went back to work after my son died. I felt I was holding it together, while inside, it felt like I was alone on a battlefield surrounded by death, the mud and ash of my life. I couldn’t feel anything.” This was not resilience; it was survival.

When grief goes unseen—by families, workplaces, or the men themselves—it does not evaporate. It infiltrates. Blood pressure rises, sleep fragments, relationships thin, meaning drains away. The grief is not only the loss; it is the invisibility of the loss.

2) When the Body Carries What the Mouth Cannot Say

Grief denied does not disappear—it relocates. The body becomes the translator for what the mouth cannot say.

Men in intense grief often report chest tightness, shallow breathing, insomnia, gastrointestinal issues, back and neck tension, and a baseline irritability that makes daily life feel like walking on a frayed electrical cord. Some turn to alcohol or cannabis to sleep; others rely on stimulants to get through the day. Older widowed men face significantly higher risks of heart events and suicide. Even younger men describe a persistent fog or sudden panic attacks in places like the hardware aisle.

These are not random malfunctions; they are messages. The nervous system tries to keep you safe by turning down emotional volume—dissociation—or by keeping you on high alert—hyperarousal. If crying feels impossible, your body may seek other exits: rage, restlessness, compulsive scrolling, sex as anesthesia, work as morphine. None of this makes you a bad man. It makes you a grieving man without a language that feels permitted.

The way forward starts with permission to notice the signals from the body without shame. To replace auto-judgment (“What’s wrong with me?”) with curiosity (“What is my body asking from me right now?”). Slow breathing, walking until the mind softens, warm showers, heavy blankets, stretching the back of the heart—these are not soft options. They are somatic doorways that let grief move through rather than harden within.

3) Navigating Grieving Without a Role: When Identity Collapses

For many men, identity is braided tightly with function. Historically, manhood has been conferred less by inner qualities than by outer roles: producer, protector, fixer, leader. Industrialisation rewarded output; wars rewarded endurance; many religions rewarded sacrifice. The result is a felt equation—I am what I do for others. When death or loss strikes, it removes not just a person but a mirror in which we saw our goodness and purpose.

This is why even non-death losses fracture male identity: the end of a marriage, redundancy at work, a diagnosis that steals capacity, sexual dysfunction, a son who will not speak, leaving a faith community, the closing of a business built with bare hands. Each loss erodes a role. Each role carried a story about who he is. Take enough roles away, and the man looks in the mirror and cannot find himself.

This is the bridge to disenfranchised grief. When the role-loss is not publicly recognised—when there is no funeral for a career, no condolence card for a marriage that died three years before the paperwork, no ritual for the desire that slowly went numb—men feel foolish for aching. They tell themselves, ‘Real men wouldn’t feel this.’ So, they silence it. The grief remains, but it becomes formless. It shows up as flatness, as avoidance, as restlessness that no new project satisfies.

Clarity helps. It is essential to name the role that died. Name the skills it let you use and the dignity it gave. Name what you miss. Separate your identity from your function. You are not only a job title, income level, bedroom performance, or role in a hierarchy. These matter, but they are not the total of you. Men who survive role-collapse with integrity learn to rebuild identity on deeper ground—values, relationships, contributions that fit the man they are becoming, not only the man they were.

How long does male grief usually last?

Grief has no timetable. For many men, the world moves on while they are still standing in the wreckage.  You might function again within months, working, providing, showing up, but the emotional repair and rebuilding your identity takes much longer.

Grief is not something to ‘get over’. It is something to learn to live with. Over time, the pain changes shape. It becomes a quieter companion instead of a wound.

Reflect

What if the goal isn’t to stop feeling, but to stop hiding what you feel?

What if: Instead of asking “how long will this last?” you asked “How can I carry it more honestly?”

4) Masculinity, Grief, and the Cultural Lie of Strength

It is tempting to talk about masculinity as if it were one thing. It is not. Across cultures, men have wept publicly, sung laments, and carried grief in ritualised ways that honoured both sorrow and strength. In Māori tangihanga, men openly cry during ceremonies that invite community witness. In many Latino families, familismo frames shared mourning as a masculine obligation to the living and the dead. In African diasporic communities, grief is braided with survival. Men of Colour, in particular, navigate the double bind of needing to stay strong for family while knowing that public emotion can be misread through a racist lens.

In contrast, white Western professional culture often equates masculinity with a single rule: ‘Don’t show weakness’. In such environments, men face penalties—either formal or informal—for expressing grief openly. This isn’t because men lack tears, but because the culture has no safe outlets. When the only accepted male emotion is anger, grief often disguises itself as that emotion.

A father whose son was murdered said, “I wanted to scream. But where I come from, men don’t scream. So I swallowed it. And it burned all the way down.” That burn is unexpressed grief. And it brings us to the next truth: grief always intersects with who you are and where you live your life.

“When the only emotion men are allowed to show is anger, grief will often wear that mask.”

5) Navigating The Landmarks of Male Grief

Grief is not a staircase; it’s a territory. Men often move through recognisable landmarks, not in sequence but in cycles. Naming them reduces shame and increases choice.

The Practical Fortress — The first weeks can drown in logistics: certificates, banks, casseroles, flights, “How are you?” on repeat. Being useful feels safer than feeling broken. The fortress is not wrong; it’s a breathing space. The danger is turning it into a permanent address. Set a date to step outside the Fortress—ten minutes of unstructured time where you allow yourself to feel rather than to fix.

The Numb Season — Life happens behind glass. You function but cannot be reached. Families misread this as either ‘he’s coping well’ or ‘he does not care’. In reality, numbness is the nervous system’s way of protecting itself against overload. Treat it like winter: less sunlight, fewer decisions, simple food, honest check-ins.

Rage Detour — Anger explodes over small things. Society permits male anger; it often forbids male sadness. If rage is the only exit, grief will take it. Learn to catch the early signs—jaw clench, hand fidget, heat rising. Exit the room. Move the body hard for two minutes. Return and name what’s underneath.

The Research Rabbit Hole — The mind tries to make a map: medical journals, theology, accident reports. This creates an illusion of control and delays the free fall. Set boundaries: research hours, then ritual. For every hour in the head, offer ten minutes to the heart.

The Shadow Economy — Workaholism, alcohol, porn, gambling—short-term relief that compounds long-term pain. In dealing with the shadow economy, it is essential to ask yourself the following question: “This may numb me for tonight, but what would a safer version look like”? Who can hold me accountable without shaming me—someone who won’t rush to fix my grief but will sit with me in it, steady and unafraid? Sometimes, the real work is not in answers but in finding the kind of company that makes vulnerability survivable.

The Quiet Yearning — You smell their T Shirt or the jumper they wore. You hear their voice in a dream. You talk to them in the car. You are not crazy. You are attached. Attachment does not end; it changes form. Keep a continuing bond practice: letters, a bench you built, a recipe you cook on their birthday, a playlist that holds your story.

Each of these is grief. Each of these is normal. None of them makes you less of a man. These are common patterns, not prescriptions; your path may differ.

“You are not ‘broken’. You are responding to something that broke your world.”

Why does anger come before tears for so many men?

Because anger is allowed, sadness so often isn’t.

Most men were taught that rage is acceptable, but tears are a weakness. So when grief hits, the first outlet that feels “safe” is frustration, temper or irritation. But under that anger is pain, and under that pain is love. When you can name the loss behind the anger, the body begins to loosen its grip.

Reflect

What’s your anger protecting you from right now?

What if: You treated your anger not as an enemy, but as a signal that something deeper wants to be seen?

6) When Grief Intersects with Race, Class, and Queerness

Grief is never just about what is lost, be it a career, a relationship or death; it’s about the griever’s location in the world.

For Working-class men, grief is on the clock. Bereavement leave is short or nonexistent. Therapy is expensive or feels culturally alien. One bricklayer buried his dad on Saturday and came back to work on Monday: “Missing a shift means missing rent.” Grief gets processed in pubs, footy, or the quiet drive home—spaces that can heal or harm depending on the company.

For Men of Colour: grief can feel like compounded surveillance—a Black man who cries at work risks being read as unstable or threatening. Many carry grief and the performance of invulnerability simultaneously. They protect loved ones from their pain and protect themselves from misinterpretation. The result is isolation inside a crowd.

For Queer men: grief is often disenfranchised loss. Partners are called ‘friends’. Families will not acknowledge the relationship. During the worst years of the AIDS crisis, men grieved in the shadows; echoes of that erasure remain. Contemporary queer men still encounter rituals and language that do not fit their love or their families. Dignity requires accuracy in the language we use: say partner, say husband, speak the truth.

For Immigrant men: grief is often without a cultural context. Mourning traditions may be far away. Time zones and visas block funerals. Shame and pride mix: “I came here to be strong; how do I ask for help?” Digital rituals help—Zoom memorials, shared photo galleries, the smell of a familiar spice blend cooking on the stove—but the body still longs for touch.

Then there are Generational scripts. Men of the Silent Generation often carry the deepest prohibition against visible emotion, shaped by Depression-era scarcity and wartime stoicism. Boomers challenged some of that but kept the provider ideal. Gen X absorbed mixed messages—be open, but don’t be soft. Millennials hear that vulnerability is courage, yet many workplaces still punish it. The result is intergenerational misunderstanding: fathers and sons grieving the same loss in incompatible dialects.

These intersections are not theoretical. They determine access to time off, to culturally safe support, to spaces where a man’s grief is not a spectacle. If support hasn’t been there for you, it may be the container, your workplace—not you—that needs changing.

How does culture or identity affect how men grieve?

Culture sets the rules for which emotions men are ‘allowed’ to show. A tradesman might be told to just get on with it. A gay man might have to grieve relationships that others refuse to acknowledge. A man of colour might fear that public emotions will be misread as instability or weakness.

These layers shape how safe a man feels to grieve. True healing begins when grief can exist without performance, when each man finds a language that fits his life, not society’s script.

“Grief doesn’t just belong to individuals; it belongs to the worlds that shaped them.”

Reflect:

How has your background taught you to hide or harden your pain?

What if: You could honour your culture and your humanity at the same time?

7) Navigating The Conversations Around Male Grief – What Not to Say and What to Offer Instead

Most people mean well. They simply don’t know how to be close to pain. So they reach for phrases that tidy what cannot be tidied. To a grieving man, these words can land as erasure.

“Be strong for your family.” Translation: hide it. A man hears that his tears are a risk to others. He disappears from his own grief to remain useful.

“At least they are not suffering.” True, perhaps, but mis-timed. It jumps to meaning before bearing witness. It tells the body to stop feeling what it still needs to feel.

“Time heals all wounds.” Time passes, but it doesn’t heal. Healing requires attention, support, and practices that metabolise sorrow.

“He’s in a better place.” Your theology may comfort you; it may not comfort him. Don’t use belief to bypass pain.

Why do these phrases hurt? Because they put the speaker’s comfort over the griever’s truth. They signal, “Please edit yourself so I can feel okay.” Men hear that and go silent—again.

What helps instead are presence statements and permission statements:

• “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
•  “Tell me about her/him/them—what do you miss most this week?”
• “You don’t have to hold it together with me.”
• “If words are hard, we can just sit or walk.”

If you love a grieving man, try this structure: Notice (what you observe), Name (that it makes sense), Offer (one concrete support). Example: “I notice you’re not sleeping much. That would wreck anyone. I’m free Thursday night to cook and be with the kids if you want space.” No platitudes. No fixing. Just proximity with dignity.

Reflect

Who has taught you how to stand with a man who is grieving without trying to fix him?
When have you felt most safe to tell the truth about pain?

What if: support meant not solving anything, but just staying when it hurts?

8) Anchors for Healing: What Helps (and What Doesn’t)

Grief cannot be solved, but it can be anchored. Anchors don’t remove waves; they keep you from drifting so far that you cannot find shore. Below are practices that respect how many men actually process emotion.

a)     Meaning-Making (without rushing the story)

After loss, the narrative of your life fractures. The goal is not to plaster over it with purpose slogans, but to slowly build a truthful story that can hold both love and absence. Narrative journaling, letter-writing to the deceased, and quiet conversation with a trusted friend or mentor help integrate the rupture.

b)     Embodied Practice (movement before words)

Many men first access feeling through the body. Lifting weights with deliberate breath; running until the mind unclenches; martial arts that combine discipline and discharge; yoga or stretching that softens the armour around the ribcage; cold-water immersion that interrupts spirals and resets attention. These are not escapes if paired with reflection. There are ways to metabolise sorrow. Always notice your limits: if body practices trigger overwhelming responses, seek a trauma-informed therapist or support.

c)      Peer Witnessing (genuine support over advice)

Men’s groups, whether formal or two mates who agree to tell the truth, reduce isolation and suicide risk. The rule is simple: no fixing unless asked; no one-up stories; say the thing, then breathe together. Many men discover that hearing another man speak unvarnished love for his dead partner unlocks their own voice.

d)     Creative Expression (make, repair, restore)

Woodwork, metalwork, gardening, music, cooking, and car restoration—creation answers destruction with dignity. One widower built a bench from reclaimed timber: “Every nail was a prayer.” Another learned his wife’s favourite recipe and cooked it for their children each month: continuing bonds in edible form.

e)     Ritual (secular or sacred, but embodied)

Ritual is simply a repeated act that assigns meaning. Light a candle every Sunday night and speak their name. Plant a tree each birthday. Keep a small altar with photos and objects. Walk a particular route on anniversaries and tell the story out loud. Ritual gives grief a rhythm; rhythm gives the nervous system safety.

f)      Male-Friendly Therapies.

Traditional talk therapy helps many, but some men benefit from formats that match how they engage: cognitive-behavioural strategies for sleep and intrusive thoughts; narrative therapy to rewrite identity after role-loss; somatic therapy for the panic housed in the chest; coaching framed as optimising function under stress while smuggling in emotional literacy. The modality matters less than the fit and the trust.

g)      Micro-Boundaries and Energy Accounting

In the first six months, reduce nonessential commitments by 20–30%. Create a ‘grief budget’: three hours a week reserved for movement, ritual, or rest. Say ‘not this month’ without apology. Grief demands energy; budgets honour that reality.

h)     Continuing Bonds, Not “Moving On”

You don’t get over deep love. You learn to carry it differently. Keep the relationship active in ways that serve your life: talk to their photos, write updates, steward their values, and tell the funniest story about them at family dinners. Love changes form; it does not vanish.

What actually assists men in healing after loss?

What helps is movement, not escape.

Working the body, building, fixing, running, walking, these let emotion move without words. Being with other men who tell the truth and provide psychological safety without trying to fix you. Meaning-making also helps, writing, building something that holds memory and finding ways to keep bonds alive.

“Healing happens when grief is given a shape, not when it is buried under control”.

Reflect

What has helped you stay steady when you can’t express what you are feeling?

What if: Healing wasn’t about feeling better, but about feeling real again?

9) From Survival to Integration: A Practical Arc

Survival is doing what it takes to get through the day. Integration is learning to carry grief without abandoning yourself or those you love. Below is a gentle arc many men find applicable—not a rule, a rhythm.

First 30 Days: Stabilise the Basics — Eat actual food, even if simple. Hydrate. Sleep whenever you can, not only at night—delegate paperwork where possible. Choose one daily body practice (walk, lift, stretch). Create a five-minute ritual—candle, breath, name. Tell two people the truth about how you are, not the polite version.

Days 30–90: Build Containers — Set grief appointments in your calendar (two 20-minute windows each week) where you intentionally remember, cry, write, or sit at their graveside. Join a peer group or start a two-man check-in. Reduce alcohol or numbing behaviours by 25% and replace that time with movement or making. Schedule one practical adventure that reintroduces competence you enjoy—fix something, learn a skill, take a short trip with purpose.

Days 90–180: Meaning and Re-entry — Explore a project of legacy: a scholarship, a garden, a cookbook of their recipes for the family, a letter you’ll give the kids when they’re older. Review your roles. Which needs to be released? Which needs renegotiation? Which new roles are asking for you now? Revisit therapy or mentoring to target what still hijacks your days—sleep, anger, guilt, flashbacks, or isolation.

After Six Months: Ongoing Integration — Anniversaries, holidays, and random Tuesdays will still catch you. Keep your anchors. Allow new love, new work, new laughter without apology; your living does not dishonour the dead. Teach younger men what you were not taught: that feeling deeply is not the opposite of strength—it is its soil.

10) Myths vs. Realities of Male Grief

To close, a concise reality check you can share with those who don’t ‘get’ male grief.

Myth: Men don’t feel grief as deeply.
Reality: Many men feel grief somatically—in the body, in shutdown, in rage or restlessness. Tears do not measure depth.

Myth: Talking is the only way to heal.
Reality: Talking helps. So do doing, moving, making, and ritual. Most men need a blend.

Myth: Real men bounce back quickly.
Reality: Rushing grief creates long-term injury. Courage often looks like slowing down on purpose.

Myth: “Moving on” means letting go.
Reality: Continuing bonds—ongoing connections expressed in healthy ways—are associated with resilience. Letting go of *pain* is different from letting go of *love*.

Myth: If he is not crying, he is not grieving.
Reality: Absence of visible emotion may signal numbness, cultural caution, or private processing. Check the body, the sleep, the energy, the behaviour—not just tears.

Do men ever fully recover from grief?

Recovery isn’t the right work.

You don’t recover from love, so you don’t recover from losing it. You integrate it. Over time, the sharpness softens, but the connection remains, carried through ritual, memory, story and presence.

The measure of healing isn’t forgetting. It is being able to live fully again while keeping love intact.

Reflect

What part of your story still deserves a place in your present life?

What if: Grief wasn’t a chapter to close, but a doorway to live more honestly?

The Invitation Forward

Grief is not an enemy to defeat. It is a landscape to learn. Some days you will walk; some days you will crawl, and some days you won’t move. Some days you will laugh and think you’ve betrayed the dead; you haven’t. You are proving that love still moves in you.

If you are a grieving man, hear this without argument: You are not required to carry this alone. Start where the words run out—with breath, movement, or one honest conversation. You don’t have to pass any tests to be worthy of help. You do not need the perfect words. Start where the words run out: with breath, with movement, with one honest conversation. Name one role that died. Name one value that remains. Choose one anchor you will keep this week.

Strength might sound like this: “I loved them. I lost them. I still feel it. And I’m still here.” May your here-ness become a home again—slowly, truthfully, in your own way.

“Healing is not the absence of grief, it is the return of presence.“

If you would like to get a better understanding of your pattern of grief, download this PDF Male Grief: 6 Patterns – Mentoring Through The Maze, which is a companion to this post.

Recommended Reading – Exploring Men’s Grief More Deeply.

If this article spoke to something you’ve been carrying, these related reflections may help you see your own experience in new ways.

Male Grief in Australia: Understanding How Men Grieve and Rebuild

Why men’s grief often stays invisible and what cultural silence teaches us about strength, control and disconnection.

The Father Wound – How It Shapes a Man’s Relationship with Vulnerability

Explores how a man’s early relationship with his father shapes how he grieves, loves and connects later in life.

Men, Divorce and Grief – Healing After Love Ends.

Looks at how separation and family loss create a distinct form of male grief – one that often hides beneath responsibility or restraint.

The Complexities of Grief in Men’s Lives

Unpacks the emotional and social barriers that make men’s grief harder to name – and the small shifts that open space for recovery.

Fathers and Grief – The Silent Sorrows of Love

The hidden grief of fatherhood – distance, silence, and the ache of love that has nowhere to go

Key Takeaways

• Navigating male grief in Perth, Western Australia, means learning to honour loss without performing strength.
• Men heal through movement, meaning and creating connections as much as through talking.
• Culture, class, and identity shape how grief is carried and expressed.
• Healing is not about moving on. It is about living honestly with what remains.

References

Boss, P. (2006). Loss, trauma, and resilience: Therapeutic work with ambiguous loss. W.W. Norton.
Frankl, V. E. (1946/2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press.
Lee, S. A., & Neimeyer, R. A. (2020). Rituals for resilience: Perspectives on the aftercare of grief. Death Studies, 44(2), 110–120.
Mate, G. (2008). In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction. Knopf Canada.
Palmer, P. J. (2000). Let your life speak: Listening for the voice of vocation. Jossey-Bass.
Seager, M. (2019). The male code and men’s mental health. Journal of Men’s Studies, 27(2), 133–150.
Worden, J. W. (2009). Grief counselling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (4th ed.). Springer.

Author

David Kernohan

Mentor & Writer – Mentoring Through The Maze

Guiding men to reclaim their inner wisdom, rebuild authentic identity, and reconnect with their place in the world with clarity, courage and grounded action.

www.mentoringthroughthemaze.com.au