Grief Without Words
How and Why Men Grieve Differently
Chapters in this Guide
The Traps Keeping You Stuck
The Tools
Everyone experiences grief in their own way. What I share here reflects my own journey and the patterns I’ve noticed in working with other men. But life isn’t black and white, and neither is grief. While I’ll talk about men and women grieving differently—because those differences often matter— know that we’re all unique. Not every man fits the “strong, silent type,” and not every woman leans on connection. These are generalizations, not rules. Take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and know this: there’s no one-size-fits-all way to grieve. What matters is finding what works for you.
Where did I get the idea that grief, or expressing emotions, was weakness? on No one sat me down and said, “Drink the pain away.” No one told me outright that admitting to pain in the first place made me soft. No one ever said a damn word about any of it.
Still, I had strong opinions on how a man should handle tough shit. I never gave a second’s thought to where they came from.
Maybe it was the action heroes powering through every loss—or my dad, who grew up dirt poor with a war-broken father. He didn’t waste time crying. He got on with it. That’s what I saw, and it shaped me—like so many men of my generation.
And you know what? The world needs tough men. Men who can knuckle down, step up for their families, and take care of business. Men who can shoulder the weight, make the hard calls, and show up when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Men who can put their emotions aside and perform under pressure.
Who the hell else is going protect and provide for your family if not you?
The Need to Look Strong
When Cindy was sick, and after she killed herself, one thing mattered more to me than anything else. I needed people to think I had my shit together—to see me as a badass who came through hell without a scratch. I loved the compliments about how strong I was—and I wasn’t about to tell anyone otherwise.
But it wasn’t just about other people. I needed to see myself as strong. It was part of who I was—a man, a husband, a father. Life handed me a shitstorm, and I handled it—like a boss. I took a lot of pride in that.
Behind the scenes, I was drinking my face off, hiding it, and it was getting worse. I made an ass out of myself more times that I can count. And I lived through countless brutal hangovers. I was destroying myself and hurting the people I loved most.
The crazy part? It never even crossed my mind that my drinking had anything to do with Cindy’s death. Not once. But as time went on, I stopped being able to hide that that my boozing was spiraling into a huge problem. My new wife was losing her patience and losing it fast. I'm surprised she put up as much as she did.
Why didn't I ask for help when I needed it? There was way in hell that was going to happen. Nothing about my idea of a strong man involved asking someone else for help. In fact, I can remember sitting in my wife's office near the end of my drinking career. I'm sure she was explaining that she wasn't going to stay married to a drunk.
I was screaming in my head that I wanted to stop and that I needed help. But I could not make my lips say the words. It felt like a scene from a horror movie. All I could was scream in silence like a pathetic loser. I was too afraid of what admitting my weakness would say about me. I was terrified to make a commitment to stop drinking. I knew I was too weak to keep it. So I kept drinking.
I kept doing the thing I hated because I was too scared to face the truth. “I'm too weak to quit.”
I stopped drinking over ten years ago. To say it's made everything in my life a thousand times better is an understatement. That's a story for another day. Trust me when I say - if I can do it, you can too.
Disclaimer: I’m not out of the woods when it comes to addiction. As I write this on December 28, 2024, I was dreading—really dreading—our second Christmas without Chloe. So what did I do? Like Groundhog Day, I lit up to try and smoke the discomfort away.
Did it work? Of course not. Did I admit I was struggling right away? Hell no. I tried to downplay it—talked about it with my wife, but not the whole messy truth. I get so damn tired of talking about this stuff sometimes. The difference this time? I reached for weed instead of booze. And instead of spending five years lost in addiction, I leaned in and faced it after a few weeks.
Is that perfect? Not even close. But it’s progress. And when it comes to surviving the loss of my daughter, I’ll take every bit of progress I can get.
How many more times will I ride this merry-go-round to nowhere before I finally break free? I don’t know. But I do know this: one day, I will.
I’ll stop burying the lead—men and women often handle grief in their own ways.I'm sure that's not much of a shock. Women seem to find strength in connection. They lean on their friends, their families, and each other. Men? We go it alone. We put on our armor, grit our teeth, and keep moving forward.
For a lot of men, feeling weak, needy or dependent is worse than uncomfortable. It’s intolerable. It goes against our core ideas of being a man. You’re supposed to be the guy who’s got it handled, the one people can lean on, not the other way around.
Admitting you need help feels like having a giant tattoo on your forehead that says, "I can’t cut it." It’s not just about how other people see you—it’s about how you see yourself. Needing help? That feels like failure, like you’re letting everyone down, like you’ve lost your edge. It’s no wonder most of us would rather grit our teeth and suffer in silence than admit we’re struggling.
It’s wired into us—this need to be strong, to hold our place in the hierarchy, to avoid showing cracks in the facade. And yeah, there’s strength in that. But real strength? Real strength is knowing when to take the armor off. Knowing when to say, “I can’t do this alone.” That’s the lesson it took me years—and a ton of pain—to learn. I'm still learning it.
And now life has handed me the kind of do-over no one ever wants.
This time, I’m facing Chloe’s death differently. I know better now. I’m trying to lean on the people who care about me, to let them in, and to be honest about the pain I'm experiencing. But damn, it’s still a massive challenge. Even now, there are moments when struggling feels an awful lot like weakness. I still battle with the overpowering instinct to go it alone. (see disclaimer above)
There have been times I’ve been in the basement, clutching Chloe’s urn to my chest, bawling my head off. Letting myself feel and release that pain feels like progress—huge progress. But even in those moments, I still have the thought: If someone broke into the house right now, I couldn’t protect my family like this.
I’m much better out how to let those moments happen without fighting them. Strength isn’t about holding it together all the time. It's about taking a knee when you need to and knowing you'll get back up.
Those times in the basement, as brutal as they are, don’t make me weak. They’re proof of much I care and still do. And somehow, in letting the pain hit me head-on, I find a strength I didn’t know I had. The kind that comes from facing it, not running from it.
Behind all the toughness, men like you and me often turn to action. It's not because we don’t feel the pain, but because doing shit feels safer than facing it
Men Grieve by Doing
When grief hits, most men don’t turn to words—we turn to action. It’s not that we don’t feel the pain or that we’re incapable of deep emotion. It’s that for most of us, doing feels like a better option than talking.
Talking about grief feels foreign. Saying ‘I feel like shit’ doesn’t solve anything. Action gives us something tangible to focus on. It’s how we're wired. Fix it. Build it. Solve it. Take the hit, keep moving forward.
Grief fuels this instinct. When life falls apart, doing anything gives us a sense of control. Whether it’s pouring yourself into work, fixing things around the house, or helping others deal with their pain, action becomes a way to cope.
That's why I'm sitting at a coffee shop, writing this on a Saturday morning. I need to do something useful. The urge to do something is incredibly strong. It feels like I'm honouring Cindy and Chloe's lives and deaths by writing this. And that feels good to me.
For a lot of men, that’s how we express grief—by doing. Instead of tears, we work an extra shift to take care of our family. Instead of words, we fix the fence, mow the lawn, or dive into a project to keep our hands busy and our minds focused.
It’s not that we’re ignoring grief. We're processing it in a way that feels familiar, a way that fits with how we're wired. Talking about it doesn’t feel natural. Doing something does.
Of course, "doing" can go too far. It's damn easy for action to become an escape rather than a way to cope. There’s a fine line between staying busy to process grief and drowning yourself in tasks to avoid it. At some point, even the most relentless doing won’t be enough to outrun what you’re carrying.
Most guys don’t realize it until they hit the wall face first. You’re working 16-hour days. You're drinking or drugging and you know it's terrible for you and your family. You're pushing through exhaustion. You're trying like hell to convince yourself it’s all about keeping things together. But then the cracks start to show. You're snapping at your kids. Your health is taking a dive, and your relationship with your spouse is falling apart.
The weight you’ve been ignoring doesn’t disappear—it builds until it feels unbearable. And when that wall hits, it hits hard. The distractions that kept you moving leave you stuck, broken, and more lost than ever.
You’ve done everything you thought you needed to do. You've pushed yourself past every limit, and yet here you are—still drowning. You’re out of energy, out of answers, and out of hope. The pain hasn’t faded; it’s grown sharper, heavier, more relentless. It doesn’t just feel like you’ve lost the fight—it feels like the fight was never winnable to begin with.
When There’s Nowhere Left to Turn
And that’s where so many men end up—at the breaking point. Feeling like they’ve got nothing left to give and nowhere left to turn. You’ve tried everything you know how to do. But the pain is still there. It's eating you alive and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
For some, the breaking point feels final—no way out, no one to lean on, no way forward. They feel like an abject failure. This is the reality many men face, and it’s a dangerous place to be.
The hard truth is that men who’ve lost someone they care about are at a higher risk of taking their own lives. They’re carrying the pain alone, without the tools or support to process it. The instinct to ‘man up’ cuts us off until there’s no one left to reach out to. There's no lifeline strong enough to pull us back.
This is what grief does when it’s ignored, suppressed, or drowned in distractions. It secludes you, traps you in your own mind, and convinces you that asking for help is a weakness you can’t afford to show.
Believing that lie can be fatal. Too many men lose the fight—not because they lack strength, but because they try to fight alone. They think vulnerability equals failure. They’re told that admitting they’re struggling somehow strips away their manhood. It’s a brutal, bullshit narrative, and it traps so many of us in silence. But here’s the truth: you don’t have to bear the weight alone. The strongest thing you can do is have the courage to let someone in. Your life matters. You matter. And there is a way forward.
Grieving as a man isn’t about shutting down or muscling throug. It’s about balancing action with the courage to feel. Grief demands resilience, but it also demands connection. Letting others in doesn’t weaken you. It honors your loss and reminds you: even the strongest need help. It’s unbelievably hard, but the best things usually are.
Men and women grieve differently, but at the core, grief isn’t about following a script or fitting a mold. It's about honoring what you’ve lost and finding your way forward. Real strength isn’t in shutting down or toughing it out. It’s in facing the pain head-on, letting others in, and daring to live again, even when it feels impossible.
Grief can crush you, but it can also shape you into something stronger. A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure. Your journey doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s, but it does need to be yours. Step into the pain, brother. It’s the only way through, and you’re stronger than you know.
YOUR NEXT STEPS: Learn The Most Important Relationship Skill You Were Never Taught
Ever been in a conversation where someone was grieving, upset, or overwhelmed—and you had no idea what to say?
Maybe you tried to cheer them up, offered advice they didn’t want, or just froze, unsure of how to help. And afterward, you couldn’t shake the feeling that you could’ve shown up better.
💡 You’re not alone. Most people struggle with this—not because they don’t care, but because no one ever taught them how.
That’s why I created The LEAD Model Training—so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start being the person people turn to in their hardest moments.
Here’s What You’ll Walk Away With:
✅ A simple, repeatable framework (Label, Explore, Acknowledge, Decide) that works in any emotional conversation.
✅ Confidence in what to say (and what NOT to say) so you never feel awkward or unsure again.
✅ Proven techniques that make people feel deeply heard—without forcing them to open up.
✅ Real-world role-play scenarios so you’re not just learning, you’re practicing.
Most people:
🚫 Jump to fixing before someone is ready.
🚫 Say things that make people shut down without realizing it.
🚫 Avoid tough conversations altogether out of fear of saying the wrong thing.
But the people who get this right? They build deeper relationships, gain unshakable trust, and become the person others turn to when it truly matters.
🔥 If you’re ready to stop feeling helpless in emotional conversations, join the LEAD Model Training today.
Really enjoying this. Looking forward to the “ let the pain be big” chapter !