January 2026 Newsletter | Mentoring Through the Maze (Perth, Western Australia)
If you’re carrying grief, pressure, or a change that won’t shift with effort, this month’s newsletter gives you a usable distinction: power (what you can do) and control (what you can’t command) and what trust looks like after grief – drawn from lived experience, grief psychology, and my work with men through Mentoring Through the Maze in Western Australia.
Main Points
Power is what you can influence or change this week. Control is trying to influence or change what you have no control over.
When you’re grieving, trust often takes a hit. The aim isn’t optimism — it’s rebuilding trust through reliable action when outcomes aren’t guaranteed.
If you want one practical move, jump to the POWER/CONTROL exercise below and take one integrity-based action on the power side.
Male Grief and Trust in January 2026: Why Power and Trust Matter
Most men avoid grief for understandable reasons.
Men’s grief is often socially marginalised — not because men don’t feel, but because many environments reward emotional control and punish visible grief.
Some avoid it because grief feels overwhelming – as if stepping fully into it means you won’t get back out. Some avoid it because grief feels like weakness. Others avoid it because grief feels like it could dismantle who they’ve worked hard to become.
Many men have been trained to cope through control: fix the problem, manage the risk, stay competent, plan harder, hold your nerve, don’t burden anyone, keep going.
Some men don’t try to control things; they go the opposite way. They check out: numbing, scrolling, drinking, sleeping, disappearing. It can look like surrender, but it’s often another attempt at control – controlling exposure to pain and keeping the day manageable.
These approaches can work for many things in life.
Grief is not one of them.
Grief doesn’t respond to effort the way fitness does. Grief doesn’t negotiate with discipline. Grief doesn’t settle because you set a goal.
In some cases, grief doesn’t just hurt — it starts to function like a trauma response, where the nervous system keeps re-running the loss and control strategies intensify.
January tends to bring this tension into focus because the culture tells you to reset yourself through effort and control.
New Year Goals for Men: What You Can Control (and What You Can’t)
Early January is full of goals. New routines. New discipline. New plans.
Some of that helps. Structure and goals can be useful.
The problem is what many men quietly assume those goals will buy: certainty. A new body. Better performance. A calmer mind. A fixed relationship. An easier year.
That’s where January goals slide from the power side into the control side.
On the power side, a goal is about what you can influence this week: sleep, training, food choices, the next conversation you’ve been avoiding, the one admin task that stops your week from drifting.
On the control side, a goal becomes an attempt to command outcomes you don’t own, for example, that grief will lift on schedule, that other people will respond well, that nothing will fall apart, that your past won’t catch up, that effort guarantees safety.
Grief exposes this gap without mercy. You can do many things right and still lose what matters. That doesn’t make discipline pointless. It makes discipline more specific.
Use discipline where it belongs: as a tool on the power side. One or two actions you can repeat. Something you can sustain. Something that builds capacity.
When discipline is used to force certainty back into life, it becomes self-monitoring, harsher standards, and tighter rules. It doesn’t increase strength. It increases rigidity.
That’s the difference.
Grief confronts men with a truth that’s simple to say and hard to live:
You have power. You do not have total control.
That’s not a motivational line. It’s a reality check. And this is where grief becomes a teacher – not because loss is “good,” but because it forces clarity.
If you want a test for January:
Is this goal helping me act where I have influence — or is it trying to guarantee an outcome I can’t command?
This year, I’m beginning a 12-month series: 12 lessons grief can teach men. Not grief only about death, though that matters. Grief also includes divorce, redundancy, estrangement, aging, the end of a role, the collapse of certainty, and the grief of not becoming who you thought you would be.
January is Lesson 1.
The Key Point for January
If you read nothing else in this newsletter, read this:
One of the most challenging aspects of grief is learning to let go of the attempt to control what grief has proven you cannot control. Act with integrity where you still have power, and practise trust at the edge of what you can’t command.
That sentence is the key message of this month.
Now I will unpack this in a way that we can use.
Lesson 1: Powerlessness in Grief for Men
One of the major lessons grief teaches us as men is our powerlessness.
Lesson of powerlessness: Your power has limits, and your dignity doesn’t.
When Matthew died, I learned this the hard way. No amount of effort, intelligence, love, prayer, or bargaining could change what had happened.
And in that moment, something in me broke – not only the heart, but the identity of the man who believed that if he loved enough, if he was good enough as a father and worked hard enough, he could protect what mattered most.
A lot of male identity has been built around an equation:
If I can handle things, I’m okay.
Grief breaks that equation. You can still handle things and not be okay. You can still show up and feel broken. You can still be reliable and feel like your life has shifted underneath you.
This is why men often experience grief as a crisis of identity more than a crisis of emotion.
The loss is not only what happened.
The loss is who you were before it happened.
The loss is the belief that you were in control.
And here’s the crucial point:
Powerlessness is not shame. Powerlessness is the truth of being human.
Grief exposes the limits of a man’s agency. It strips away the fantasy that effort alone can guarantee outcomes. It forces a man to face life without the illusion that if he performs well enough, nothing will collapse.
That exposure hurts.
It also matures a man – when he doesn’t turn powerlessness into self-contempt.
Power vs Control in Grief: The Two Sides
Here’s the distinction that makes January’s lesson practical.
There is a power side in grief – where you can act.
And there is a control side in grief – where outcomes are not yours to command.
Control still matters in the lanes where it belongs: safety, legal or financial decisions, logistics, and daily responsibilities. The problem starts when control becomes the tool you use to manage grief itself.
Most men suffer unnecessarily because they try to manage grief on the control side.
- They try to control how long grief lasts.
- They try to control how other people respond.
- They try to control the impact of grief in their lives.
- They try to control how the story ends.
- They try to control the fact that the loss happened at all.
And because grief refuses to be controlled, men often conclude: I’m failing.
But the failure isn’t grief.
The failure is in applying control strategies where control is not available.
When men are dealing with grief, they often look for certainty. That search can show up as anxiety, over-checking, over-planning, and pushing harder than their body can sustain.
The fallout is predictable: disrupted sleep, reactive decision-making, tense relationships, over-effort, perfectionism, and rigid routines. These are attempts to reduce vulnerability and regain a sense of control after grief has shown what can’t be controlled.
Once you see that certainty can’t be bought, the question changes. It stops being, ‘How do I guarantee the outcome?’ and becomes:
How do I act with integrity in a life where outcomes are not guaranteed?
That’s where trust enters.
Trust Lesson 1: Trust and Grief: Acting Without Control
Lesson: Trust is acting with integrity when the outcome is not guaranteed.
Trust is not denial. It’s not positivity. It’s not pretending life will behave.
Trust is what you practise when grief has shown you the limits of power – and you choose to live with integrity anyway.
Trust is what you do when you cannot control the outcome, but you still choose to act.
That can look like:
- Telling the truth to one person, even when you can’t control how they respond.
- Getting up and doing the next right thing, even when you can’t control whether you will feel better.
- Setting a boundary even when you can’t control whether someone will approve.
- Taking care of your body even when you can’t control how long grief will last.
- Showing up as a father, partner, friend, or ma,n even when you can’t control what the future holds.
Trust, in this sense, is a practice: acting with integrity when outcomes are not guaranteed.
What if I don’t trust anyone right now?
Trust after grief isn’t blind trust. It’s verified reliability: one practice you keep, one boundary you hold, one clean decision you make – even when outcomes aren’t guaranteed.
How Grief Deepens a Man’s Life
Men often think grief will destroy them.
Sometimes grief does break a man – but not always in the way he fears.
Grief can deepen a man’s life – his humanity, his relationship with reality, his capacity for presence, his priorities, and his truth.
It often produces a different kind of joy, too – not excitement, not denial, not hype – a deeper capacity for presence.
- A meal you actually taste.
- A conversation where you are listening rather than talking or performing.
- A morning where your body isn’t braced.
- A relationship where you can be honest without turning it into drama.
That’s what “deeper” looks like: more contact, less bargaining with life.
How a Man Knows Grief has Deepened his Life
Men often ask this: How do I know this has actually changed me?
You know because your actions and beliefs shift in predictable ways. The point isn’t to become “perfect.” The point is to become more authentic.
Actions that show that Grief has deepened a Man’s Life
A man who is learning the lesson of power and limits starts doing things like this:
- He takes an integrity-based action without demanding that it fix everything. He stops trying to purchase certainty through over-effort and constant worry. He acts because it’s right, not because it guarantees an outcome.
- He stops micro-managing his life. He still plans. The plan no longer functions as an attempt to erase vulnerability.
- He stays with difficult facts without blame, numbing, or self-punishment. He can say, “This is real,” and remain intact.
- He chooses one reliable line of connection rather than isolation. Not a public confession. One honest sentence to one person.
- He makes decisions based on values and consequences, not on proving himself. He stops treating self-worth as something he earns through control.
Beliefs that show that Grief has deepened a Man’s Life
When grief’s powerlessness has deepened a man’s life, you’ll hear lines like these – even if he doesn’t say them out loud:
- “My worth isn’t measured by my ability to prevent pain.”
- “I can act with integrity without guaranteeing outcomes.”
- “I don’t need to dominate life to live well.”
- “Presence matters more than control.”
This is how you know you’re not just coping – you are beginning to integrate one of the crucial lessons of grief.
Trust Lesson 2: Trust and Grief: Selective and Practical
Lesson: After grief, the question isn’t “Should I trust?” It’s who can I trust with this, and how much?
Part of what makes trust hard after grief is the social risk. Many men learn the hard way that sharing pain with the wrong person can make it worse by making them feel minimised, judged, fixed, or repeated back in a way that leaves them exposed. So the safer move is to say nothing. You control the risk by hiding the grief.
But the cost of that strategy is that grief doesn’t move. It settles inside you.
Rebuilding trust is learning who is reliable, what they can be trusted with, and what level of truth is safe with them. That isn’t an all-or-nothing decision. It’s staged. It takes time, and it takes energy, but it’s how a man stops carrying grief alone.
A relational view of men’s grief recognises that trust is rebuilt through who you take it to, not through forcing yourself to ‘open up’ to the wrong person.
That’s why “one reliable line of connection” matters: one safe person, one honest sentence, at a level you can stand.
This is trust with boundaries. Trust with clarity. Trust without fantasy.
How Men Show Trust after Grief
This is how trust shows up when you’re living it, not talking about it.
A man shows trust when:
- He acts where he has power and stops trying to force outcomes he cannot command.
- He stays in contact with reality: no fantasy timelines, no bargaining, no self-punishment.
- He keeps promises he can keep and renegotiates what reality has changed.
- He invests in one or two relationships where truth is possible.
- He builds routines that support capacity, not routines that punish weakness.
If you want a single line that captures trust after grief, it’s this:
Act where you have agency. Practise trust where outcomes aren’t yours to command.
A Simple Power vs Control Exercise for January
Here’s a practical exercise to carry the lesson into your week.
Draw a line down a page.
On the left side, write: POWER.
On the right side, write: CONTROL.
Under POWER, list what you can actually do in your situation this week.
Examples: drink water before coffee; take a 10-minute walk; send one text; book one appointment; eat one proper meal; shower; go to bed 30 minutes earlier; turn off your phone at a set time.
Under CONTROL, list what you cannot command.
Then choose one item on the control side and write one sentence under it:
“I will stop trying to purchase certainty here. I will meet reality as it is.”
That’s not giving up. That’s trust.
Male Grief in Family Roles: Fathers, Responsibility and Limits
For fathers and men who feel responsible for stability, grief often lands as a particular kind of pressure.
It can feel like failure because it proves you couldn’t prevent what mattered most.
When a child dies, for example, it not only breaks the heart – it breaks the belief that effort and love can protect what matters. Men often respond by trying to “do more,” control more, manage more, work harder, and become tougher.
That response makes sense. It’s also exhausting.
Trust after grief doesn’t mean trusting that life will behave.
It means trusting yourself to remain a man of integrity in a life that won’t always bend to effort.
It means staying connected to the people you love without turning your grief into control.
That is strength that lasts.
I have written more on fatherhood and grief in the following articles:
- Father Grief After Child Loss: Daedalus Myth and Fathers
- Rebuilding Father Identity After a Child Dies: Laertes
- Continuing Bonds for Fathers After a Child Dies.
This article explains the concept of power vs control and trust. This Compass Guide makes it usable — especially when grief, stress, or major change is tightening your thinking.”
What’s Next: 12 Lessons Grief Can Teach Men
January is the foundation: limits of power, importance of trust.
In the months ahead, we’ll explore the other lessons grief teaches men – including meaning, time, responsibility, relationships, the body, and the way grief reshapes identity.
The Lesson to Carry Into 2026
The lesson to carry into 2026 is simple: act where you have power, and practise trust where outcomes aren’t yours to command.
This is how men rebuild a life that grief has changed.
Reflection Questions
- What are you trying to control that grief has already taken out of your hands?
- Where can you take one integrity-based action this week without demanding that it fix everything?
- Who is one person you could speak to?
- What would trust look like in your life in January, in practical terms?
FAQs on Male Grief and Trust
What does ‘power vs control’ mean in grief?
Power is what you can do this week. Control is what you cannot command – outcomes, timing, other people’s responses, and the fact that the loss happened.
What if I check out rather than control?
Checking out is often another attempt to control exposure to pain. Start with one small action on the power side, then reopen one reliable line of connection.
What if I don’t trust anyone right now?
Trust after grief is verified reliability: one practice you keep and one decision you make cleanly. Over time, that becomes the basis for choosing one reliable person rather than a crowd.
Related reading
- Navigating Male Grief: A Guide — https://www.mentoringthroughthemaze.com.au/navigating-male-grief-a-guide/
- Male Grief in Australia: How Men Reclaim Themselves — https://www.mentoringthroughthemaze.com.au/male-grief-in-australia/
- Men and Grief: Reclaiming Pathways to Honour Our Humanity — https://www.mentoringthroughthemaze.com.au/men-and-grief-reclaiming/
About the author — David Kernohan
David Kernohan is the founder of Mentoring Through the Maze™ in Perth, Western Australia. He works with men navigating grief, role fatigue, identity loss, and life transitions — offering practical structure that helps a man regain footing, make clearer decisions, and follow through.
David’s work is grounded in lived experience. When Matthew died, his life changed in ways discipline and effort could not repair. In the years that followed, he walked through divorce, the long work of rebuilding, and the move from inherited certainty to earned meaning. That experience now shapes how he mentors: calm, direct, and useful — focused on action and clarity rather than slogans.
Before launching Mentoring Through the Maze, David held senior leadership roles across the community, legal, mental health, and LGBTIQ+ sectors in Western Australia, including CEO roles and roles in organisational change management. He brings that same practical mindset to men’s inner lives: helping them name what’s real, reduce internal noise, and build reliable next steps.
If you’re in Perth (or supporting a Perth-based man) and want a practical map for what you’re carrying and what to do next, you can book a 30-minute mapping call via the Mentoring Through the Maze website.
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