When Men Grieve: Stories of Love, Loss, and the Courage to Heal

Reflective image used by ZaZa’s Legacy for the men’s grief article

Introduction

ZaZa's Legacy began with a mission to prevent choking deaths through awareness and education. As we walked alongside grieving families, we discovered something important: healing extends far beyond the moment of loss.

Through our community we noticed that fathers often carried grief differently. It wasn’t that they loved less or felt less pain, but that they received less support and understanding. Mothers were comforted, while fathers were expected to manage, lead, and stay strong. This imbalance wasn’t just hurting men; it was affecting whole families trying to heal together.

This piece explores those realities through Brian's story and the voices of other men who shared their experiences with us. If you are reading this while navigating your own loss, please know that your experience matters, your grief is valid, and the way you carry love through pain deserves respect.

Listening to Men

To better understand how men carry grief, ZaZa's Legacy created an anonymous survey. Fathers, partners, brothers, and sons were invited to answer thirteen open-ended questions about their experiences. For many, it was the first time they had put their grief into words.

Across ages and circumstances, the same themes appeared: silence, pressure, invisibility, endurance. Research mirrors these experiences. Fathers grieve with the same intensity as mothers, but their pain is often overlooked or minimised.

The Weight of Silence

Brian's love for his son was fierce and protective. Even after loss changed everything, that love remained, but finding ways to honour it while grieving proved more complex than anyone had prepared him for.

In the quiet of his home, Brian found himself whispering his son's name into the dark, carrying pain that felt too heavy to share. Like many fathers, he discovered that grief does not disappear when others expect strength, it simply hides in different places.

Other men described the same silence:

  • “As a husband and father, there is a whole family looking to me to be strong. To act any other way feels like weakness.”
  • “Boys don't cry, be the man of the house.”
Brian grieving quietly, part of ZaZa’s Legacy story


These experiences are deeply human. Boys learn early that emotions should be held in. Men are often expected to provide stability for others. Yet research shows fathers feel grief with the same depth as mothers. What differs is not the love, but whether there is space for that grief to be expressed without judgment.

The Early Days of Loss

The first days after ZaZa's death were chaos. Brian remembers the blur of it:

  • “I kept asking why God would take my child. I felt like I had failed as a father, that I should have protected him. There was guilt, even when I knew it wasn’t my fault.”

Other men recalled the same fog:

  • “It was disbelief. Part of me didn’t even believe it had happened.”
  • “Confusion, wanting answers, anger, frustration… then sadness, numbness, silence.”

Studies validate what these voices reveal. Shock, numbness, and guilt are natural responses to loss for both mothers and fathers. When grief is treated differently, it is often because of the support given, not because fathers feel less. For families, this difference in support can create distance right when connection is most needed.

Father at funeral reflecting, representing strength through grief

Redefining Strength Through Loss

At ZaZa's funeral, Brian felt the weight of expectation.

  • "In my culture, men are expected to carry the family, to protect, to lead. After ZaZa died, people looked at me as if I had to be the pillar. But inside, I was crumbling."
  • "Strength no longer means holding everything in. It means carrying the pain and still moving forward. It means honouring my son's memory by speaking, by sharing, by loving, even when I feel broken."

Grief forced Brian to rethink what strength means. True strength is not the absence of pain but carrying the pain and still moving forward. It means honouring the protective instincts that run deep in fathers, while also honouring the love that grief represents.

Other men spoke of the same change:

  • "Strength is being open, telling those you love you're not ok."
  • "Strength is endurance, one foot in front of the other when everything wants to go backwards."

Researchers describe this as "reorientation" – the slow rebuilding of life after loss. The men themselves put it more simply: strength is surviving through vulnerability and endurance.

Symbolic image representing imbalance in grieving roles

Unequal Space to Grieve

Brian noticed the imbalance after ZaZa's death.

  • “The women in my family were allowed to wail, collapse, and be comforted. As a father, I was expected to manage. My grief was invisible.”

Others in our survey echoed him:

  • “Women seemed to have more options to grieve.”
  • “It’s easier for women to be single parents. Less stigma. More positive reinforcement.”

Research confirms it: fathers and mothers grieve equally deeply, but fathers are too often overlooked in healthcare and social support. Equal suffering. Unequal care. When one parent’s grief is unsupported, it creates ripple effects across the family. Silence spreads. Support systems fracture. Healing becomes much harder for everyone involved.

Carrying Others While Carrying Pain

Brian reminds himself he cannot pour from an empty cup.

  • “Sometimes I need to step back to tend to my pain before I can be present for others. But being there for my family also gives me purpose, a reason to keep living.”

Other men described the same balancing act:

  • “I don’t balance. If someone needs me, I put my grief on the back burner. Helping others is one way I grieve.”
  • “I put my grief away when I need to show up for my kids. Later it all hits me, but being there for them makes me feel like I still have purpose.”

Grief does not pause when caring for others. It lingers and then comes back in waves. For many men, showing up for family is both the hardest part of grief and the thing that keeps them moving.

The challenge lies in recognising that caring for others and caring for yourself are not opposites. With the right support, they can strengthen each other.

Man in counselling session, symbolising speaking about grief

Speaking Up, or Staying Quiet

For Brian, words became survival.

  • “Silence almost killed me inside; words have given me some breath.”

But not every man felt the same:

  • “Speaking up hasn’t helped. It just made me feel stupid or weak. Silence is easier.”

There is no single right way to grieve. Some men heal by speaking, others by keeping quiet. Both deserve respect.

What Making Space Looks Like

Making space for men’s grief is not abstract. It is practical. It is lifesaving. It looks like healthcare providers asking fathers directly, “How are you coping?” instead of only focusing on mothers.

  • Friends who show up not just with food in the first week, but with presence in the long months that follow.
  • Workplaces offering fathers the same bereavement support as mothers.
  • Support groups that allow men to grieve in their own way, without pressure to fit a script.
Men supporting each other, symbolising making space for grief


When fathers are supported, families heal more completely. Children grow up knowing that love includes tears. Communities grow stronger when silence is broken.

Brian found healing in ZaZa’s Legacy because it gave him a community where his pain had purpose, where others understood without him needing to explain.

Messages for Other Men

Brian’s message is simple:

  • “You are not less of a man for crying, for breaking, for saying you are hurting. Grief does not make you weak; it shows the depth of your love.”

Other men said the same:

  • “Reach out to friends. A true friend will want to be there for you.”
  • “Surround yourself with people who support you, not ridicule you.”
  • “You are not alone, brother.”

For younger men, the hope is to break the cycle:

  • “It is ok to cry. It is ok to break down. Try every day to find something positive. Don’t give up.”
  • “Break the stigma. It is ok to grieve aloud, to ask for help, to be in pain. And it will pass.”
Symbolic image representing legacy and support

Breaking the Generational Chain

“Heart of a lion, blood of a king.” That is how Brian remembers his son. But ZaZa's legacy is not just memory, it is action. Through choking awareness, through speaking about grief, through refusing silence, Brian transforms his deepest pain into his most important work.

His story is not just his own. It echoes in the voices of other men and is supported by decades of research: men grieve deeply. Their grief is human, real, and deserving of care.

When fathers are silenced, sons inherit silence. Daughters inherit absence. Families inherit fractures that could have been healed.

When we make space for men’s grief, in homes, in communities, in healthcare, something powerful happens. Families heal together. The silence that lasted for generations finally breaks.

Men’s grief is not weakness. It is love in its rawest, most powerful form. And it is time we treated it that way.

Support Services

If reading this article has been difficult, we encourage you to reach out for support:

If you require immediate support and you feel at risk, please call 000.

Support services background image

Further Reading

If you'd like to explore more about men's grief and the research behind this story, these works are a good place to start:

  • Delgado, L., et al. (2023). Initial impact of perinatal loss on mothers and their partners. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(2), 1304.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20021304
  • Due, C., Chiarolli, S., & Riggs, D. W. (2017). The impact of pregnancy loss on men's health and wellbeing: A systematic review. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17(1), 380.
    https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1560-9
  • Moore, J. (2014). A phenomenological study of grief and mourning among heterosexual men in relation to the deaths of their spouses. Doctoral dissertation, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
  • Mota, C., Sánchez, C., Carreño, J., & Gómez, M. E. (2023). Paternal experiences of perinatal loss — A scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(6), 4886.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20064886
  • Stelzer, E.-M., Atkinson, C., O'Connor, M.-F., & Croft, A. (2019). Gender differences in grief narrative construction: A myth or reality? European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 10(1), 1688130.
    https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2019.1688130
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