This article is about continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies and how the Osiris and Horus myth gives language for how fatherhood continues.
An ancient myth of rupture and legitimacy — read as a structure for living after the world has split into before and after.
Continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies: what you need to know
- Fatherhood continues. A child’s death does not end fatherhood. What often collapses is the public script that tells a man how to speak as a father, and the private confidence to say what is true without silencing himself. When language collapses, a man can lose the sense of being a father. The bond remains intact. For men, the practical question becomes how to carry continuing bonds after a child dies without being corrected, rushed or managed.
- This myth is not a myth of happy endings. Osiris and Horus is a story of betrayal, rupture, dismemberment, re-membering, protection, contest, and legitimacy. It offers a structure for building coherence without pretending things haven’t changed, and without demanding that a father carry grief as a private life sentence.
- Love persists in changed form. Continuing bonds research aligns with what many fathers already know: the relationship can continue, but in a different mode (Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996). The task is to honour that bond, bringing depth, meaning, acceptance, and, in time, moments of joy. Joy here is not “moving on”. It is love becoming liveable.
- Some suffering is social. Many fathers are not only carrying grief; they are managing other people’s discomfort. That discomfort can drive silence, withdrawal, and over-functioning. Over time, it can narrow a man’s private world, because he keeps editing himself to keep the room comfortable.
- Structure matters, but it must fit where you are in the journey of grief. Early on, managing grief is often about triage: sleep where you can, eat when you can, keep the wheels on. Later, planned contact with memory and meaning is what turns containment into a liveable bond. The aim is integrity, not performance.
- In Perth and across Australia, I have seen how fathers carry continuing bonds in silence while life keeps demanding function and the impact this has on their wellbeing.
This article is part of a four-part series on fathers and grief, using myth to name what often goes unspoken. Links to the articles are below
- Daedalus (Father Grief After Child Loss), and the article on
- Laertes (Rebuilding Father Identity).
Each stands alone, but together they track the same terrain: how a man stays a father after the world has changed.”
“The dead do not return to the old world, and love does not end.”
Key Insight: Fatherhood continues through continuing bonds after a child dies
In this map, grief is not a task to complete. It is a relationship to carry.
Osiris’ names rupture. Isis names protection and pacing. Horus names legitimacy and forward motion.
Continuing bonds name the ongoing relationship. The Dual Process Model names the daily oscillation.
The aim is a life where love remains liveable—and fatherhood remains speakable.
When a child dies, and the public language of fatherhood fails
When a child dies, a man’s sense of himself as a father does not disappear, but often the ordinary language of fatherhood can collapse.
Simple questions such as “Do you have children?” or “How many children do you have?” stop being simple because they force a father into a split-second decision: tell the truth and manage whatever follows, or edit the truth to keep the moment socially manageable.
Ordinary reference points vanish too: school runs, milestones, weekend sport, the easy assumption of next year. A father is left holding a bond that remains real, while society’s language for recognising fatherhood after death disappears.
And it isn’t only the world that struggles to place your fatherhood. Sometimes you do. That is why a question can bring a pause: not because your love is uncertain, but because you are deciding how to speak the truth without being pulled into explanation, pity, correction, or silence.
I know this terrain. When my son Matthew died in 2009, people would ask the inevitable question – “How many children do you have?” I had a choice. I could say “three daughters” and keep Matthew unspoken — making the moment socially manageable. Alternatively, I could honour him and say, “I have four children — three daughters who are living, and my son, Matthew, who died.”
People meant well. They also wanted the discomfort to pass. Over time, I learned that the real question wasn’t whether I could survive grief. It was whether I could keep living as a father — in private and in public, with Matthew included — and keep my own life intact.
This piece argues three things most men aren’t told:
- the world taxes you for making grief manageable.
- memory needs a container you can live with; and
- fatherhood can be legitimate without pretending the old world pre the death of your child can return. By old world, I mean the life you were living before your child died — the ordinary assumptions, the family timeline, and the public script of fatherhood that used to make sense.
Why the Osiris and Horus myth helps fathers after a child dies
The Osiris–Horus myth is not an easy bedtime story. It is a story of betrayal, rupture, dismemberment, re-membering, protection, contest, and a restored legitimacy that does not include a return to the old world. For an overview of Osiris/Isis/Horus, see the British Museum: [Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses]
Read with care. It offers fathers a durable structure for living after a child dies — not by forcing grief into a storyline, but by naming the sequence many men recognise. First comes rupture: what was coherent becomes fragmented. Then comes re-membering: the slow rebuilding of coherence from what remains. Then comes legitimacy: the public claiming of what is true, even when the world has no clean place to put it.
Myth is useful when ordinary language fails. It gives a father a way to hold a truth the world often cannot: the dead do not return to the old world, and love does not end. The relationship takes a new form — and fatherhood continues in that changed form.
If you want another grief map through myth, the article “Understanding Male Grief: The Orpheus Myth and Mens Grief” provides another way to understand male grief.
A caution about myth: use what fits
Myth is a tool, not a template. Use what fits. Leave what doesn’t. The point isn’t to make every detail correspond to modern life. The point is to borrow a structure sturdy enough to hold what ordinary language fails to hold.
Restoration without return: what the Osiris myth teaches bereaved fathers
The Osiris story matters because its restoration is not a reset. By “reset,” I mean the pressure to get back to normal, as if the death can be absorbed and the old life restarted. The myth doesn’t offer that.
Osiris does not return to ordinary life, take up his old place, and pretend the rupture never happened. He becomes something else: ruler of a different realm, a different form of authority, present without returning to the surface world.
That is a hard truth fathers recognise. After a child dies, you do not “get your old life back”. You can rebuild a life. You can regain competence. You can feel warmth again. However, you do not return to the world where your child is alive. Any grief writing that promises a reset will eventually fail you, because it asks you to live in a story that isn’t true.
So the myth gives a workable frame: restoration without return. Fatherhood can become coherent again without pretending the old world can be restored. A man can live as a father now — not by denying loss, but by holding love in a changed form with integrity.
“Restoration without return is not defeat. It is adulthood after loss.”
Isis: protection and pacing for bereaved fathers
One of the most practical elements of the myth is Isis’s focus. Isis is Osiris’s wife and Horus’s mother — the one who searches, gathers what has been torn apart, and protects what is still forming.
She does not “move on” from Osiris. She gathers what can be gathered. She protects what is still forming. She creates conditions for what comes next.
Isis is the gatherer in this myth. She does not win by force. She restores by collecting what has been scattered, protecting what is still forming, and refusing erasure. Read psychologically, Isis represents a necessary capacity in grief: the ability to gather the fragments of a life without trying to overpower them. Many men were trained to default to the heroic mode — push through, stay useful, get back to output. But grief doesn’t re-form a man through force. It re-forms him through gathering: paced contact with memory, protection of his limits, and the slow work of making love liveable again.
In lived terms, that “gathering” capacity looks like protection and pacing. For fathers, this translates into a simple principle: protect what is forming in you. Often in the early stages, when grief is exposed, a man is easily flooded. That is why boundaries matter. Not because grief should be hidden, but because grief requires pacing. You don’t open everything in every room. You don’t hand your rawest truth to people who can’t hold it. You choose who has access. You choose the conditions.
Protection is not avoidance. It is how you keep your life intact while the bond remains real.
Horus: fatherhood forged under constraint
Horus is not formed in ease. He is formed under constraint — in a protected environment, under threat, in the long shadow of what was done to his father. That matters because many grieving fathers assume they should be able to “handle it” in isolation. The myth suggests the opposite: what is still forming needs conditions and protection.
If fatherhood after loss is something you must rebuild, then you need an environment that supports that rebuilding. This may mean fewer social engagements for a time, not out of withdrawal, but out of selectivity. It may mean one witness. It may mean one ritual. It may mean choosing one place where you can speak the child’s name without being managed.
Identity doesn’t rebuild through willpower. It rebuilds through conditions: what you repeatedly do, what you repeatedly allow, and what you stop allowing.
The Eye of Horus: repair without perfect symmetry
In some tellings, Horus’s eye is damaged and later restored. Whether you take the detail literally or symbolically, the meaning is clear: repair is possible, but it may not return you to a previous symmetry.
This is how many fathers experience their capacity to hold grief and the memories of the child who has died. You may become more able to hold memory without flooding. However, certain days may still cut deep, specific questions may still land with force, and certain places may still tighten the chest. This is the shape of reality after rupture.
The aim isn’t perfect symmetry. The aim is a life that is workable, coherent, and honest — a life where love remains real without demanding constant pain as proof.
What are continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies? What research confirms
Continuing bonds refer to the relationship with a child that continues after death—through memory, practice, values, ritual, and identity. The aim is not to erase grief, but to live in a way that keeps love intact and workable.
Continuing bonds research supports what many fathers already know: love persists (Klass et al., 1996). Put plainly, grieving fathers can maintain continuing bonds through stories, rituals, values, and how they choose to live.
People sometimes mistake an ongoing bond for “being stuck.” Continuing bonds means something else: you accept the death, and you keep the relationship present through the ways a father still can — name, story, ritual, and the life you choose to live.
How fathers keep the bond liveable
When the bond has a place to live, it can start to carry more than pain. Joy becomes a possibility; however, the word “joy” needs careful handling.
Joy does not cancel grief. It does not disrespect the dead. Often, it first arrives as guilt — as though warmth is betrayal. However, warmth is not betrayal. It is evidence that love is still alive.
If grief is love’s cost, joy can be love’s continuity — the moment the bond is no longer only a wound. It also becomes a source of direction.
“Pain proves love mattered. Joy proves love still matters.”
Continuing bonds under social pressure: the clean-answer tax after a child dies
Here is the claim underneath this whole piece: a lot of what wears bereaved fathers down isn’t only grief. It is the pressure to make grief socially manageable.
Most people aren’t cruel. They are untrained to deal with the grief parents feel with the death of their child. They want the moment to be simple. They want a clean answer. They want you to be the kind of father who can be placed quickly on a social map. Bereaved father doesn’t fit their categories — so they, without saying it, ask you to edit the truth.
That is a tax. And the man pays it in silence, in social withdrawal, in over-functioning, and in a private life that becomes harder and harder to live inside.
How the clean-answer tax erodes continuing bonds
Why does private life get harder? Because repeated public editing trains the father to edit himself. He skirts the child’s name. He avoids the photos. He tightens the lid on memory. What begins as containment becomes a permanent posture — guarded, braced, always watching for what might break through. Home stops feeling like rest; it becomes the one place where the unsaid presses up, where silence is loud.
Over-functioning can look respectable from the outside. Inside, it can feel like disappearance: a life organised around competence, with no place left to be a father in truth.
If you are a father carrying this pressure and you want a place to speak without being corrected or rushed, you can contact me here.
The social landmine: “Do you have children?” after a child dies
This question is a social shortcut. It tries to place you.
For many bereaved fathers, being asked ‘Do you have children?’ after a child dies becomes a daily decision about truth, privacy, and belonging.
A script is not performative. It’s protective. It prevents you from improvising under pressure, and it returns choice to you.
- Direct truth. “I have four children — three living daughters and my son, Matthew.” This honours the child and challenges the expectation of a clean answer. It also makes room for your child’s life to be spoken about without apologising for it. Use it when you can tolerate follow-up questions.
- Truth with boundary. “I have four children. One of them died. I’m not going into details today.” This keeps integrity while limiting exposure, especially at work or with strangers. It prevents the moment from turning into an interrogation or a therapy session you didn’t consent to.
- Minimal truth. “I am a father. It’s complicated.” This avoids lying without turning the moment into a conversation you didn’t choose to have. It can buy you time and protect your nervous system in the middle of a crowded room.
- Privacy without erasure. Sometimes you choose privacy: “Yes.” That isn’t betrayal; it’s strategy. The bond does not depend on strangers, and you get to decide when truth becomes public.
Rupture and dismemberment: why grief can feel like a life in pieces
One of the strongest truths in the Osiris story is dismemberment: the breaking of one life into fragments. After a child dies, many fathers describe something similar without using mythic language. Life becomes pieces: before and after; the public self that keeps functioning and the private self that carries the weight; the future that no longer exists in the same form.
After a child dies, life can feel dismantled. Not only emotionally — structurally. One part of you goes to work and answers emails. Another part of you is stuck in the moment you got the news. Time splits into before and after. Your mind runs the day’s tasks while your body carries a second reality underneath it.
That fragmentation has a cost. Sleep breaks. Concentration slips. Patience shortens. Grief shows up as pressure in the chest, agitation, numbness, anger, disbelief — sometimes a stunned competence that keeps you moving while you feel unreal inside.
This is where many fathers turn to containment. When life is in pieces, containment is how you keep the pieces from spilling everywhere. It’s how you stay functional when capacity is overloaded. I discuss how loss shapes a man’s strength and self-awareness in this article: Grief and Masculinity: How Loss Shapes Men’s Strength.
Containment has a purpose. The risk is when containment becomes a permanent identity — when the only acceptable version of the father is the one who never breaks stride.
Dual Process Model: why function and grief move in two directions
The Dual Process Model of bereavement puts language around something many fathers already do. Stroebe and Schut (1999) describe coping as a movement between two modes.
One mode is loss-oriented: contact with the reality of the death — memory, longing, sorrow, meaning, the moments where the body and mind meet the truth. The other is restoration-oriented: the work of keeping life running — tasks, roles, bills, parenting, employment, routine.
The model matters because it says coping is not “one right way”. It’s movement. A man can go to work, do what needs doing, hold a household together — and still be grieving. Restoration isn’t automatically avoidance. Often it’s how he stays upright.
But the model also names the failure point: oscillation can stop.
When functioning becomes a man’s only mode, he is no longer moving between the two sides. He is stuck in restoration because the loss side feels too dangerous, or because there is no social permission to touch it. He may not even call it avoidance. He calls it “getting on with it”. But inside, the grief has nowhere to go, and the bond has nowhere to live.
That is when work and competence become cover. He looks fine and stays productive, but he begins to feel cut off from himself. Home can start to feel harder than work because it is the one place the loss presses in. The result is not resilience; it’s containment that never loosens.
So the practical implication of the Dual Process Model is simple: restoration is necessary, but it can’t be the only place you live. A father needs some planned, contained way to touch the loss — not constantly, not publicly, not performatively — but enough that grief remains integrated rather than sealed away. That is what keeps it from turning into exile.
If you want the broader map of how men tend to carry grief — the patterns, pressures, and why men often look ‘fine’ while privately living under load — start with Navigating Male Grief: A Guide.”
Is it wrong to treat grief like an enemy?
No. When the system is overloaded, grief can feel like a force that threatens your ability to work, parent, drive, sleep, or think clearly. Stability is not avoidance; it is risk management.
Why do I feel pressure to “be fine” so quickly?
Because most workplaces and social systems are built for function, not grief, many men respond by over-functioning to prove they are still safe and reliable.
When does containment become a problem?
When it becomes your only mode — when there is no planned contact with memory, meaning, or relationship, and your inner world becomes something you can’t enter without flooding.
Vault vs archive: how bereaved fathers hold memory
Many fathers build a vault. The vault is sealed. It says: “If I open this, it will destroy me.”
An archive is different. An archive is organised. It says: “This is sacred material. I can access it with care and limits.”
The movement from vault to archive isn’t about becoming “more emotional”. It is about making memory liveable. It is the difference between being ambushed by grief and choosing contact with it on terms your life can hold.
In the Osiris story, what is torn apart is gathered. The image matters because it permits a slow process: you do not have to retrieve everything at once. You gather what you can gather. You build coherence in stages.
Re-membering: building coherence while the bond remains
There is an old truth in the word remember: re-member — bring the members back together. In grief, re-membering does not mean returning to the old life. It means building new coherence from what remains: love, memory, values, story, and a workable way to keep living.
A father re-members when he allows the child to remain real, not as a memory, but as an ongoing presence in his internal world. He re-members when he can speak the child’s name without collapsing. He re-members when memory stops being only an ambush and becomes, also, a source of orientation.
If you want a practical definition, coherence is when the relationship no longer requires either constant pain or total avoidance to feel real.
Naming fatherhood in public: how to speak the bond without performing
In the myth, legitimacy is contested publicly. For grieving fathers, legitimacy is often won in small, real moments: choosing how fatherhood will be named in public — truthfully, but with boundaries you can live with
This doesn’t require announcements. It can be precise and modest: speaking of your child who has died, letting one trusted person know the truth without minimising, building a ritual that marks the bond, setting a boundary when questioned.
Why does legitimacy matter? Because if fatherhood is kept entirely private, a man’s sense of his being a father can begin to feel unreal. A measured public claim can restore coherence — not for approval, but for integrity.
This is one of the deep injuries bereaved fathers carry: the world forgets quickly. To keep fatherhood real, the father often has to be the keeper of memory — not a man stuck in the past, but a man refusing erasure.
Instrumental grief in men: when doing helps and when it becomes avoidance
Many men grieve instrumentally — through doing, organising, building, fixing, protecting. Doka and Martin (2010) argue that men’s grief is often misunderstood because it does not always present as overt emotional expression.
Action can be a valid language. It can also become a refuge that turns into a prison.
A simple marker is this: if work is the only place you can breathe and everything else collapses, function has become your only shelter. The alternative is not collapsing into emotion. The alternative is building enough contact with memory and meaning that life stops shrinking.
When warmth returns: joy, guilt, and continuing bonds after a child dies
This is one of the hidden tasks of continuing bonds: learning that grief does not have to be ongoing suffering to be real. Love does not demand a lifelong punishment. Love can be honoured through presence, story, values, and the way the father keeps living.
Many fathers don’t fear sorrow as much as they fear what sorrow seems to prove. Sorrow can feel like proof that the bond is still alive, that the child is still close, that love is still loyal. And the mind makes a ruthless equation: less pain must mean less love. Not because that equation is true — but because it feels emotionally safe. Pain is familiar. Pain keeps the child present. Pain feels like fidelity.
That is why joy can arrive as guilt. Not because a father thinks he “shouldn’t” feel joy. However, because joy threatens a private vow many men don’t even know they’ve made: I will keep suffering so my love is never questioned — by me or by anyone else. The moment warmth returns, the nervous system reads it as danger. It can feel like the child is receding. It can feel like the world is winning. It can feel like betrayal.
Guilt here isn’t moral. It’s relational. It’s loyalty anxiety: If I’m not hurting, am I letting him go? If I laugh, am I leaving him behind? If I start wanting my life back, does that mean he matters less? These questions arise out of loyalty. They’re love trying to stay faithful in a world that struggles to hold loss.
However, warmth is not leaving. Warmth is one of the ways the bond becomes livable. It is love learning a different shape. It is memory becoming something you can carry without it cutting you open every time. It is the moment a father realises he can honour his child and still have a life that holds breath, meaning, and even joy — not as a replacement for grief, but as evidence that love is still alive.
And this is the hard truth: if pain is the only language you allow love to speak, your life will keep shrinking. Joy doesn’t erase your child. It refuses the idea that loyalty must be paid for with lifelong punishment. Joy is not forgetting. It is continuing — with your child included.
Hard dates: anniversaries, birthdays, and continuing bonds after a child dies
Even when daily life is functioning, grief returns through the calendar. Birthdays, anniversaries, Father’s Day, Christmas, school milestones, the age your child would be now — these days often don’t arrive as gentle reminders.
This is one of the reasons fathers dread the future. The world assumes time heals. The calendar proves time also reactivates. When hard dates are unplanned, they can feel like an ambush. When they are planned, they still hurt — but they stop being formless.
Planning is crucial because it provides a structure. A father chooses one action that honours the bond and gives the day somewhere to land: a walk, a meal, a letter, a donation, a service act, a visit to a place that matters. The action doesn’t fix the day. It prevents the day from swallowing him whole.
If you share grief with a partner: planning hard dates
Hard dates are also where couples can struggle. Two people may carry the same loss in different styles: one wants contact, one wants distraction; one wants ritual, one wants quiet; one wants company, one wants distance.
The practical task isn’t about agreement on emotion. It’s an agreement on logistics and limits: what the day will look like, what is expected, what is not expected, and how conflict will be handled when both people are raw. A simple plan protects the relationship by reducing surprises.
I have written further about the challenge of navigating different styles of grief within relationships in this LinkedIn article: When Partners Grieve Differently: How Men Navigate a Relationship When Loss Pulls Them Apart | LinkedIn
For partners, friends, and professionals: how to witness a father’s continuing bond
One of the most significant injuries bereaved fathers report is not only loss; it is being corrected, rushed, compared, or turned into an inspirational project. Many men withdraw not because they don’t want connection, but because connection arrives with management.
A witness is different from a fixer. A witness can hear the child’s name and stay present.
If you support bereaved fathers, the aim is not to engineer meaning. The objective is to reduce social pressure and strengthen capacity.
- Don’t demand performance. If a man copes through action, respect that as language. An invitation can help; pressure usually produces a shutdown. Men often return when they feel their way of carrying grief won’t be judged.
- Ask what helps. “What would make today more manageable?” often opens a door that “How are you feeling?” closes. Practical questions reduce threat and give a man something he can answer without being put on display.
- Name-avoidance can injure. If you’re invited, say the child’s name. Avoiding it can feel like social erasure, even when people mean well. A simple “Tell me about him” can carry more respect than any advice.
- Respond early to escalation signs. Sleep collapse, panic, rising substance use, or thoughts that scare him require early, practical support. Treat these as warnings, not character flaws — and don’t leave a man alone with risk because you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.
If you are a man in Australia and you want to talk it through with someone who understands how men carry pressure, you can contact [MensLine Australia]
Reflection questions: continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies
What sentence tells the truth about your fatherhood now?
Where are you paying the clean-answer tax — managing other people’s discomfort at the cost of your own integrity?
If your grief has been in a vault, what would a small archive window look like?
What would it mean to honour your child in a way that strengthens your life rather than collapses it?
If warmth is possible, what guilt rises when you imagine it?
Seen through the lens of the myth, continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies is not a theory; rather, it is the daily practice of staying a father in a changed world.
If you’re trying to rebuild your sense of identity as a father after your child has died in a way that keeps your child honoured and your life intact, and you need a space to get your bearings, you can contact me here.
Key takeaways: continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies
- A child’s death does not end being a father. The bond persists even when language collapses. The task is living the changed form of fatherhood with integrity, rather than hiding it or performing it.
- Myth gives structure, not comfort. Rupture, re-membering, protection, and legitimacy form a durable spine for understanding life after loss without pretending the old world can be restored.
- Continuing bonds are realistic. Love persists and can be honoured in a livable form (Klass et al., 1996). Relationships can continue without denial, sentimentality, or forced closure.
- Function has a place. Oscillation between grief and daily life can be adaptive. Over time, planned contact prevents competence from becoming exile (Stroebe & Schut, 1999).
- Witnessing matters. Support that corrects, rushes, or manages often drives men into isolation. A witness holds truth without forcing meaning, and helps a father keep his child real in language and life.
FAQs: continuing bonds for fathers after a child dies
What is the Osiris and Horus myth in brief — and why does it matter for bereaved fathers?
In broad outline: Osiris is betrayed and killed; Isis gathers and reassembles what has been torn apart; Osiris does not return to ordinary life but takes his place in a different realm; Horus is protected while he grows; and Horus contests Seth to establish legitimacy and restore order.
Read as a grief map, the myth names three realities many fathers recognise: a life can be broken into pieces, coherence can be rebuilt without pretending the old world returns, and fatherhood can be claimed again in a changed form.
What does continuing bonds mean?
It describes how many bereaved people maintain an ongoing relationship with the deceased in changed forms. The relationship doesn’t end; it changes (Klass et al., 1996).
Is action-based grieving valid for men?
Yes. Many men grieve through action, structure, and responsibility. The key is planned contact with memory over time so the function doesn’t become exile (Doka & Martin, 2010).
When should I seek more support?
If sleep collapses, panic intensifies, rage spikes, substance use rises, or you have thoughts that scare you, seek support early.
If you are in Australia and you want specialist grief support after the death of a baby or child, Red Nose provides dedicated services: [Red Nose Grief & Loss Support]
Will the pain of grief end?
Often, the raw edge changes over time, and surges may become less frequent. Fathers do not “get over” a child’s death. The aim is a life where grief is carried with integrity rather than avoided or performed.
About the author: David Kernohan (Perth, Western Australia)
David Kernohan is the founder of Mentoring Through the Maze (Perth, Western Australia), a mentoring practice supporting men navigating grief, identity disruption, and the emotional cost of holding it together.
He is a former community-sector CEO with decades of leadership experience across mental health, community legal, and social services. After the death of his son, Matthew, in 2009, David learned first-hand how bereavement can fracture fatherhood in public life — and how a continuing bond can be honoured without losing the man’s life in the process.
His work offers grounded, practical frameworks that meet men where they start: function first, then meaning. If you’re carrying grief privately and want a clear way forward, you can talk it through with David via Mentoring Through the Maze.
References
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Doka, K. J., & Martin, T. L. (2010). Grieving beyond gender: Understanding the ways men and women mourn (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203886069/grieving-beyond-gender-kenneth-doka-terry-martin (Taylor & Francis)
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781315800790/continuing-bonds-dennis-klass-phyllis-silverman-steven-nickman (Taylor & Francis)
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Red Nose. (n.d.). Grief & loss support: Overview. Retrieved December 28, 2025, from https://rednose.org.au/grief-and-loss-support/overview/ (Red Nose Australia)
Services Australia. (2024, December 12). Support services when a child dies. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/support-services-when-child-dies?context=60101 (Services Australia)
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/074811899201046 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
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