A man’s perspective….
Most men misunderstand grief.
We think we are grieving the person.
We think the pain comes from their absence.
But grief does something deeper.
It reveals the places where
Our identity was tied to theirs.
A child cannot help but attach to a parent.
Attachment is survival.
It is how we learn safety and belonging.
There is nothing wrong with this.
The problem comes later.
When we carry that same dependency into adulthood.
When the parent becomes the holder of our emotional stability,
Our worth, or our sense of self.
When a parent dies,
It is the loss of the part of us we placed in them.
The part that never fully grew up.
The part that never learned to stand on its own.
There is pure sadness, which is clean.
And there is suffering, which comes from attachment.
The clean sadness says
“I loved them. I miss them.”
The suffering says
“I needed them to stay for me to be whole.”
This is where the real work begins.
Grief becomes a mirror.
A teacher.
It shows you what part of your identity
Was sitting inside that relationship.
The invitation is not to love less.
The invitation is to love freely.
To take back the parts of you that were held in someone else’s hands.
To honour your parent by becoming the man you were meant to be.
A man who can feel deeply without losing himself.
A man who can love without fear of collapse.
A man who has reclaimed his own centre.
That is the deeper journey of grief.
Not the end of love
And the beginning of wholeness.
With Love, Paul xxx
