Man Down: What to Do Right Now

You can’t fix this. But you can survive it.

May 31, 2025

The funeral’s over. The casseroles are gone. Everyone’s gone back to their life, except you. Now you’re waking up to face the rest of a life you never asked for. Can you even call it “waking up” if you only slept for fifteen minutes? If zombies were real, this must be what it feels like to be one.

You probably feel like you have to be the strong one. If your partner’s gone, who else is going to take care of what needs to be done? If it was your kid, then of course the burden falls on you. You’re the man. You’re supposed to hold it together.

Protecting and providing has always been your job. It’s vital to you as a man and you’ve always done your best. But brother, strength looks different right now. It’s not about having a plan. It’s not about holding everything together. It’s about getting through today. It’s about not destroying yourself and whatever you have left. And it’s about not turning into someone the people who love you no longer recognize.

That’s your job right now. That’s the bar, and it’s high enough.

TASK #1: BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF

You’re going to want to power through this. You’ll want to get to the “other side” as quickly as possible so you can get your old life back. You’ll want to keep producing and keep showing up so the people left behind see you as strong. You’ll tell yourself your strength will take some of their pain away and that’s your most important damn job.

Listen to me, brother. You’re not that guy right now and pretending you are will wreck you and drag everyone else you love down with you. You’ll forget things, drop balls and miss deadlines. You’re mentally, emotionally and physically unable to work like you used to. It’s not because you’re weak or a slacker. You’re injured, plain and simple.

Would you be able to perform the same way if you’d been run over by a truck? Imagine clawing yourself up off the road, battered and bleeding and say, “I can’t go to the hospital. I have to submit my expense report (or lay the drywall) first.”

There are going to be many, many days where doing a single thing takes everything you’ve got. Sending a text, answering another question about what happened or about how you’re doing, or mowing the lawn will send you back to bed at three in the afternoon.

Believe me, this part sucks. Not only have you lost someone you love, now you’ve lost a big part of your identity as a man. The last thing you need is to feel pathetic on top of feeling devastated. The temptation to grind through it will be immense.

This is the moment when most men double down. They try to outwork the grief and bury it in productivity. That doesn’t make you strong. It makes you a ticking time bomb.

So here’s the better path:

Own your limits. Say them out loud. “I can’t do what I used to.” “I’m not okay right now.” That’s not weakness, it’s the honesty that will save your life.
Be ruthless about priorities. Paying the bills? Essential. Looking after your kids? Essential. Making sure the fridge is stocked? Essential. Pleasing your coworkers or crossing off your entire to-do list? Not even close.
Use your time off if you have it. Sick days, leave, PTO. Whatever you have, take it. Let go of the fact that you’re letting your co-workers down or putting your promotion at risk. Your company will survive. You need to survive too.

And when the self-hate creeps in, when you feel like a failure for not being the man you were, remind yourself that you can’t be that guy right now. You’re this guy and that’s enough for now.

TASK #2: ACCEPT YOU CAN’T FIX OTHER PEOPLE

As much as you’ll want to, you can’t carry everyone. You’ll feel like you should but you can’t.

You can’t be their rock, their therapist, the provider, the planner, the one who keeps the fridge full and the lights on. You can’t bear the burden for your wife’s grief, your kid’s anguish, your parents’ helplessness and still pretend you’re okay. You’re not. And if you keep acting like you are, it won’t end well. For anyone.

This part is brutal because it hits right at the core of what it means to be a man. You want to protect your people and that’s honourable, brother. But grief isn’t a problem you can solve. It’s one of the hardest things to wrap your mind around. Trying to fix everyone else’s pain while ignoring your own is like trying to carry a burning building on your back.

You don’t have to have the answers for them. You can’t. You don’t need the right words. There aren’t any. You don’t need to hold it all together. What the people around you need most is the one thing you can offer: your presence. Not the stoic, composed version of you. Just the real you. The man who’s still here, even when he’s feeling the most crushing pain he’s ever experienced.

They won’t remember what you said. And they won’t remember what you tried to solve for them. They’ll remember that you were there.

TASK #3: FORGIVE THE PEOPLE WHO PISS YOU OFF

One of the hardest things about grief is the way the people who aren’t grieving act. They’ll do all kinds of things that will let you down, irritate you and make you want to burn down your relationship with them. The worst part is they’re usually doing it because they want to help.

People will give you all kinds of stupid advice you don’t want to hear. They’ll say dumb shit that they think will make it better. They’ll stop asking you how you’re doing two weeks after your loved one died. Or they won’t ever say anything at all.

You’ll want to shut them all out of your life. You’ll want to tell them to go screw themselves when they say, “At least they're at peace now.” You’ll want to scream at them to ask about it even though you don’t want to talk about it at all. You’ll feel bitter and angry about how they’re acting.

Every bit of that is understandable. And it’ll destroy you. Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Your job is to heal, not carry around the hatred and anger that will make healing impossible.

Here’s a truth that might be hard to hear. Every one of them is doing the best they can, even if their best sucks. Most of them have good intentions. They’re not asking you because they don’t want to force you to talk about something painful. They haven’t processed their own grief from a painful loss and yours brings it back up for them. They’re afraid of saying something to make it even worse for you.

People do and say, or don’t do and don’t say, things that make perfect sense to them in the moment. Even if they make no sense to you or don’t make common sense.

Your relationships with some people will change. You won’t be as tight as you once were. If someone doesn’t show up for you in your hour of need, it’s hard to continue to consider them a close friend. Even if you’re not angry at them, it’s still painful as hell.

Forgiveness isn’t about letting people off the hook. It’s about letting yourself off the hook. It doesn’t mean what they did was okay. It doesn’t mean you’re best friends again. It means you stop carrying their failure around like it’s your job to punish them. You don’t forgive because they earned it. You forgive because you’re the one carrying the weight, and you’ve already got more than enough to carry.

You didn’t lose the person you love so you could spend the rest of your life pissed off at people who said the wrong thing. You’ve got more important shit to do.

TASK #4: FACE IT

There’s only one way through this, brother: through it. You can’t outrun it. You can’t outwork it. You can’t drink it away or bury it under distractions. You have to face the thing. Look it dead in the eye and let it do what it’s going to do to you.

You’ll be tempted to move fast and to get back to normal. You’ll try to be useful and take on extra work so you can feel strong. You’re not being strong, you’re avoiding facing what must be faced. Avoiding will seem like it’s working, for a while. All you’re doing is making the crash even harder when it finally comes. And it will.

It might be a drunk driving accident, a fight with a stranger, the loss of your marriage, your kids no longer talking to you or a million other outcomes that are worse than knuckling down and dealing with your pain.

Facing it means letting the grief come when it comes. It also means accepting that you’ll never know when it’s coming next.

It means crying until your ribs hurt. It means screaming in the car. It means staring at a picture for an hour with your fist in your mouth because you can’t take what you’re feeling. It means being honest about what you’re experiencing rather than doing anything to escape it. They’re gone. It hurts worse than you could have imagined. You miss them.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll hate it when the tears come and won’t stop. You’ll feel weak, and pathetic. How can you protect your family when you’re curled up in the fetal position, bawling like a baby? Face it. Pain demands to be felt. And the longer you dodge it, the more damage it does.

Rethink your definition of strength and you’ll be better for it for the rest of your life. It’s not soldiering on and pretending you're fine. It’s stiffening your spine, squaring your shoulders, turning to face the pain and terror and refusing to look away.

TASK #5: CHOOSE NOT TO DESTROY YOURSELF

Every man comes into grief in their own unique way. Some are sober, some are recreational users and some are full-on addicts. Wherever your starting point, the death of a loved one can drag you down before you know what’s happened.

You don’t need a drink, trust me. You need to survive and surviving is going to take everything you’ve got. If you’ve ever struggled with booze, drugs, porn, pills, gambling, or anything else that helps you check out, you’re in the danger zone. You’re standing at the edge of a cliff. No one would blame you for wanting to jump. To do anything to feel something different than this hell.

I’m not your sponsor. I’m your mirror. And you need to take a long, hard look at yourself and you need to do it often.

So listen to me, brother. Chasing relief will make everything worse. That’s a truth that’s absolute. The escape hatch that looks so tempting only leads to a deeper hell. You think you feel broken, weak and hopeless now? Wait until you wake up three weeks from now in the aftermath of mistakes, shame and wreckage you can’t undo.

Imagine your kids, who have just lost their mom, seeing their dad laying on the couch covered in puke. Picture your wife, feeling devastated and alone, finding the empty pill bottle you’ve been hiding. You’ll still be grieving. But now you’ll be grieving while hating yourself. Don’t do that to the version of you who’s going to need every ounce of strength to keep going. And don’t do it to them.

You’ll try to convince yourself every which way from Sunday that what you’re doing is OK. Who is anyone else to judge you when they haven’t been through what you’ve been through? How much pain should anyone have to take? You’re already being the rock for the people you love. So what if you need a break from it all? These questions only lead to answers built on lies, brother.

Strength means staying sober when all you want is to forget. It means choosing presence over self-destruction, one minute at a time. It’s not about white-knuckling your way through eternity. It’s about making the next right decision. And then the one after that. You’re not trying to be perfect. You’re trying to stay alive.

It also means forgiving yourself when you give in. It happens to the best of us. There might be times where, despite knowing all this, you just can’t stand it for another second. If that happens, you have two choices. The first is to tell yourself you’re a piece of shit and a failure and reach for the crutch again. The second is to remind yourself that you’re human and get back on the path you know will take you forward.

You’ve already lost someone you love. Don’t hand grief the keys to your life too. You’re still here. Make it count, for yourself and the people you love.

THIS IS WHAT SURVIVAL LOOKS LIKE

You’re not climbing a mountain right now, you’re crawling through the wreckage of life as you knew it. There’s nothing pretty or easy about where you are and what’s coming next. This journey is yours. It’s your family’s. And it’s something you’re going to have to figure out together.

If all you did today was get out of bed, eat a sandwich, and keep yourself from blowing up your life, that’s a win. It won’t feel like one, but it is. That’s what navigating the aftermath of a devastating loss looks.

And if you fucked it up? Then tomorrow, you try again. That’s the win.

You can do this brother.

Leading Through Loss by Jason MacKenzie

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