Man Down - Introduction

How Facing Grief is Changing My Life - and Why It Can Change Yours Too

Chapters in this Guide

1. Man Down - Introduction

2. Why I’m Writing this No-BS Guide to Grief for Men

3. What the Hell is Grief Anyway?

4. How and Why Men Grieve Differently

5. What Grief Looks Like for Men in the Real World

6. The Traps Keeping You Stuck

   1. Shoulding All Over Yourself

   2. Trap #2 - Destroying Yourself by Avoiding the Pain

   3. Trap #3 - Locking Everything Away to Survive Another Day

   4. Trap #4 - Trying to Outwork the Pain

   5. Trap #5 - Playing the Victim

7. From Traps to Tools

8. The Tools

   1. How to Focus on What’s In Your Control

I’ve decided it’s time to start a project I’ve been thinking about for a long time. My hope is that this guide will help men learn to grieve, grow and rebuild their lives after a devastating loss.

I’m going to package all this up and sell it when I’m done. I’ll be donating half of any proceeds to a charity that I think will best honour Cindy and Chloe’s memories.

If you have any feedback please leave a comment or reach out to me. All is welcome and your insights will help me create something that is more impactful to more men who need it.

Thank you for all your love and support, friends. ♥️

One Life Lost

On March 26, 2010, Cindy MacKenzie parked her car in the garage. She turned on her favorite classic rock station, and ended her life.

The demons she’d battled for years finally won.

A few surreal days later, I drove away from the cemetery after burying her. In the rearview mirror, I saw the life I was leaving behind and told myself:

“Okay, dude. That chapter is over. Time to rebuild.”

But it wasn’t that simple. Grief doesn’t care about fresh starts or self-delusions. My so-called “rebuilding” began that same day—with a bottle in my hand and a blackout I’d worked hard to earn.

Drinking had been my way of surviving Cindy’s mental health struggles. After her death, it morphed into my blueprint for “rebuilding." Which meant forgetting, moving on, and pretending I was fine.

And on the outside, it looked like I was succeeding. I remarried a wonderful woman, moved to a new city, and built a picture-perfect new life with my daughters. People often commented about how well I was doing. They told me how remarkable I was considering all I'd been through.

I ate it up. It fed this idea I had about strong people and weak people. Grief? That was for the weak. The strong ones got shit done while the weak cried in their cereal. And I was one of the strong. A winner.

Except I wasn’t.

I was a weak, helpless addict. And my biggest fear was being exposed. Instead of facing it, I rationalized my behavior every which way from Sunday. As most addicts tend to do.

The weaker I felt on the inside, the more I tried to dominate the outside. I hit the gym hard, hungover or not. I played the alpha male at work, making sure everyone saw how “strong” I was. I laughed off my many drunken embarrassments like they were nothing.

But they weren’t nothing. I was starting to hate myself. I couldn’t stop drinking, no matter how hard I tried. I drank at lunch, on the way home from work, and poured a drink the moment I walked in the door. I woke up with brutal hangovers and made promises to quit that I broke a million times.

The years after Cindy’s death blurred together in a haze of alcohol and avoidance. I was running as much as I was rebuilding.

After 1,620 days of drowning myself in booze, I quit drinking.

It was one of the most important decisions of my life, but at first, it didn’t feel like much had changed. Sure, waking up without a hangover—or a pissed-off wife—was a win. And saving money didn’t hurt. But beyond that, nothing seemed different.

You might be wondering what the hell my drinking had to do with grief.

It took me years to realize the answer was pretty much everything.

As the months passed without drinking, I found myself thinking about Cindy a lot more often. Visiting her grave. Writing about our life together. Feeling shit I'd never let myself feel, like sadness, guilt and regret. Good times.

To be honest, the whole process was excruciating. There were times I wondered if I was losing my mind. What happened to the calm, cool, and collected alpha I’d been trying to be? Sobriety seemed to be turning me into a sniveling, emotional, and confused wimp.

One day, annoyed from battling the intense emotions, I had this exchange with my wife:

Me: “Do you think I’m going crazy? I can’t stop thinking about Cindy. I’m crying more, talking about her more—what the hell’s wrong with me?”

Her: “You’re grieving, you moron.”

And there it was. Grief. The thing I thought only weak people did. As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. It was five damn years after she died. And now what? I had to grieve?

Shit. Whose got time for that?

It wasn’t some bold, heroic decision to finally face grief. It was more like grief cornered me when I got rid of the biggest crutch I’d been using to avoid it.

What Happened Next

Facing my grief didn’t just change my life—it opened my eyes to how many other guys were stuck, like I'd been. Trapped in pain and addiction, convinced they had to go it alone.

Here's what didn't happen:

• I didn't become a broken loser by allowing myself to grieve.

• I didn't become obsessed with crying about and reliving the past

• I didn't become an emotional, unpredictable mess who couldn't handle his shit

Days, months and years passed and I started to see the life changing impact of facing what I needed to face.

One of the biggest shifts was realizing I wasn’t a victim. Yes, Cindy’s death was a tragedy—a beautiful wife and loving mother was gone. But I’d been framing my past to make it sound as horrific as possible, just to prove how strong I was for surviving it. That’s victim-level shit right there.

Grief helped me see that Cindy's death, while a tragedy, was also something more. It was a crucible that reshaped my life and set me on a different, more meaningful path. It was both a tragedy and a gift, coexisting in a way that took me years to fully understand.

Allowing myself to grieve also helped me let go of a lot the shame and regret I'd been burying. The five years leading up to Cindy's suicide were a nightmare by any definition. During that time, I did a lot of things I was proud of. I also did some awful shit. Being unfaithful while she spent a few months locked in a psych ward is one that stands out.

Working through all that wasn’t exactly a blast.

I started talking to people about my experience. Cindy was a cop, so I did some events to try to help other first responders. I started learning new skills and teaching them to others. I met some incredible people who I am still in business with. None of it would have happened had I not allowed myself to grieve.

Grief, and being alcohol free, also helped me see something that became the idea for this guide. While, I was drinking, here's something that never occurred to me. And when I say never, I mean not a single time:

I drank to drown the pain from Cindy’s suicide. It seems obvious now, but back then, I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—admit I was hurting. I thought I'd "moved on"...whatever that means.

It never crossed my mind that the two things were related to one another.

As I look back on that time, it seems incredible to me that I couldn't see the connection between addiction and pain. But it's not incredible at all. It's all too common. I've talked to countless guys in similar situations. Very few are able to see their addiction for what it is; a desperate, futile attempt to make the pain go away.

Allowing myself to grieve is what allowed me to understand this.

I started to wonder how to help other guys struggling with loss. I started thinking about writing some kind of guide like this. Life kept getting in the way and I put the project on the back burner. I figured I'd get around to it one day.

And Now, Another Life Lost

On February 1, 2023, around 8PM, the cops showed up at my door. The only words I remember are, “terrible car accident” and “Chloe didn’t make it.” My beautiful, nineteen-year-old daughter was gone.

At 7:20PM, she caused a head-on collision that killed her and nearly killed four others.

What’s it like to find out your child is dead? It feels like the universe unholstering a taser and blasting you in the forehead. Then, at your most helpless, soccer-kicking you in the balls for good measure. I fell to my knees, repeating, “Oh god, oh god.” I didn’t know pain like that was even possible.

I had a brief but very intense thought as I was on all fours staring at the floor. "This experience will make me a better person. I don't know how or when, but I know it will." The thought lasted for a second or two before the agony pushed it out of my head. But it was there and it's been something I've hung onto (for dear life).

I knew it was true because I’d already lived it once. Losing my first wife had changed me. I wasn’t the same person I’d been when she died. I’d gained new skills. I'd developed a better vocabulary to describe what I was going through. And I'd surrounded myself with higher-quality people.

In spite of all that, the last two years have been, by far, the most difficult of my life. I didn't know it's possible to miss someone as much as I miss Chloe. I've cried much more than the rest of my life combined. I've watched my family suffer and tried to figure out how to support them. I've questioned who I am now and what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Addiction has reared its ugly head in my life again. Thank God I haven’t picked up the bottle—and I won’t. But I’ve found myself wrestling with using pot as a crutch. It’s nowhere near the level I was at with drinking, but the addictive thought patterns? They’re the same, and I see them for what they are.

The difference this time is, I know I’ll overcome. I’m not the helpless victim I was when Cindy died. I’m a man and a father who’s been gutted by the loss of his wife and daughter—but I’m doing the work to heal. I’m moving forward. My life is different in ways I never could’ve imagined. And it’s still worth living. Still worth rebuilding.

I'm doing my damn best. Sometimes that looks like me getting after it, grinding and taking on the world. On other days it takes everything I have to drag my grieving ass out of bed. That's what grief is like. There are days it absolutely sucks.

From One Guy to Another

I’m not a grief expert. I don’t have a psychology degree. I’m not a therapist. Hell, I went to college for computer programming. And I wasn't very good at that either.

What I am is a guy that's been through some tough shit. I have things I’m good at, things I’m terrible at, and a mix of habits—some that help me and some that don’t. I wrestle with stuff I wish I could leave behind for good. I have days I'm sad, days I'm angry and days where life feels almost normal. I imagine that describes you too.

We're in good company.

I'm writing this for myself as much as I am for you. Writing all this down will help me organize my own thoughts. It gives me a reason to spend time dedicated to thinking about grief and moving forward. And doing something that's useful to other people helps me find a sense of purpose. Doing something to honour Cindy and Chloe's lives and deaths is important to me.

Losing someone you love is one of the hardest things life can throw at you. The ways to avoid that pain are endless—but every one of them makes things worse. And the deeper the pain, the more tempting those escapes become.

This guide isn’t about avoidance. It’s about facing grief head-on and turning it into growth. My goal is to give you tools you can use right now to rebuild, grow, and honor the ones you’ve lost.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been carrying your own shit for a long time. You might be stuck like I was. This guide isn’t going to solve everything—but it’s a start. A way to begin facing the things that scare you the most.

What follows isn’t a magic fix or a one-size-fits-all answer. It’s a collection of ideas, tools, and perspectives that worked for me—or that I wish I’d had sooner. Use what helps. Leave the rest. But start.

You need to heal. Your family needs you to heal. The world needs you to heal.

You’re stronger than you think, brother.

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.