E16: Grief Is A Companion for Life ft. Hashim's Dad (Azher Rubanni) part 2

Grief doesn’t end when the world stops checking on you. Sometimes it waits, quiet and contained, until another loss cracks the container and everything rushes back. This week concludes my conversation rich conversation with Azher Rubanni, a dad who has lived with infant loss for two decades, and he shares the moment he realized that staying in “loss” wasn’t serving him and that growth can live in giving, purpose, and remembering his son, Hashim, as a gift.

We explore what resurfaced grief for Azher years later: business collapse, identity loss, divorce, and the shock of losing a parent. The conversation gets painfully specific about triggers that many grieving fathers recognize but rarely say out loud: birthdays that line up with the day your baby was born, pregnancies in the family, and watching kids grow into the age your child would have been. We also name a stigma that keeps dads isolated and then flip it with one clear reframe: grief is love. Tears are not proof you’re failing. They’re proof your bond is still real.

Then we get practical. Azher shares the benefits of expressive writing for grief and trauma. You’ll hear a structured letter-writing framework built for dads who want a purposeful process: name the loss, name what you want, decide who walks with you, choose a next step, and write directly to your child. We close by discussing the STILL method, a method developed by Azher, and a set of resources for those interested in learning more. 

You can find these gifts here.

If you’re carrying miscarriage grief, stillbirth grief, or infant loss grief, come listen, share this with another dad, and leave a review so more fathers can find a way to move with grief rather than trying to move on.

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If you are a bereaved dad who's quietly struggling to cope with baby loss and you'd like to talk one-on-one, let's have a FREE private 30-minute conversation. 

Go to dadalways.com for more information. 

Theme Music: "Love Letter” was created using AI as a creative tool, with lyrics and direction shaped by the personal experiences and emotional intent of the host.

Show Music from Soundstripe

Ocean Blue & Belvedere by Cody Martin

Transcript

Finding Purpose Through Giving

SPEAKER_03 0:00

One of the ways that we talk about, you know, the 20 years, I realized if I was to make any kind of improvement in my life and changing my the frame of thinking about my son, because for a very long time I sat in a space of loss, which doesn't serve. It doesn't serve you. And the only way I realized that I could make a difference to myself and grow and reframe is by giving. Growth is in the giving. This this idea of the word you used, a gift, is so central to the way now that I see my son. My son was a gift to me. Those that day and a half that he was in this world, albeit he was dead, it's a gift to me. He's up there, somewhere up there, and he's looking down, and he's saying to his friends, that's my dad. That's what he's doing. He's fulfilling his promise. He because I promised him and myself that I'd do something worthwhile. And he's saying to his mates, his friends up there, said, That's my dad. And and that makes me feel good. That makes me feel that I'm, you know, not nothing that went on was was worthless and futile, and that everything has a purpose. You just have to find it.

Welcome To Dad Always

When Grief Resurfaces Years Later

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Hi, I'm Kelly Jean-Feliz, and welcome to Dad Always, the podcast exploring what it means to be a dad even after baby loss. So you've spoken about, you've mentioned uh repeatedly that your grief started to resurface two, three years ago. What was the catalyst for your grief resurfacing?

Comparing Mother Loss And Child Loss

SPEAKER_03 2:11

It's a really, really great question. So fast forward to roughly around 2018, and that's when the other losses started kicking in. Loss of my business, 2018. We had a cyber attack on our systems, and we were ransomed. 250,000, pay up, or your business is gone. We didn't have the money, we didn't pay up. So over six months, it just crashed. Okay. Through that, the loss of my house, my marriage, the the falling out with my kids, you know, and this identity. Grief, and grief is not only a loss of a child or loss of a person, grief is loss of a work, loss of a business, loss of your identity as a man, as a father, as a husband. It's strips. It just strips you. And it was stripping me. One and it wasn't all. I mean, when I say it was a perfect storm over a four or five year period, and each each one was just stripping away. And each one I had to recalibrate. You know, okay, you know, uh acceptance, accepting this is gone, accepting this is gone, this is gone. You know, I love cars, for example. Um, I had, you know, I had I've driven all sorts of cars. Those cars were my identity. I've had to disassociate myself from cars, from money, all the things that interested me in my life in my previous life. I have had to disassociate myself. So, and and one of the biggest losses was the loss of my mother. So she died four years ago. All of a sudden, in hospital, she went in for routine operation and she didn't come back out. She walked in, didn't come back out. They killed her, they basically killed her. Okay. And she died alone. So it was this is after COVID. She died alone, and they told us four and a half hours after she died that she's gone.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Wow, I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

It's one of those things like the what I call the curveballs of life. Now, here's the here's here's the the kind of the silver lining of that cloud. It allowed me to really sit and think, okay, I've lost a son, I've just lost my 81-year-old mother. How does that marry up? How does that compare?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Grief-wise. Yeah, what's the relationship? What's the relationship, right? Because this is the this is the person that said to me, move on from him. Right? Now she's gone. And so, and I and I and I sat down and I thought about what did I miss about her? What was I angry about her? What was I, you know, and it made me realize the richness of the life that I had with her, right? In the in the I don't, I was, I think I was in my mid-50s when when she when she passed 56, 57. And my mourning of her, my grief of her is very different to the grief of Harsham. Because I had a full life. I don't miss her the way I miss him. And she had been with me for all of my life. I came through her. I don't like saying come out of her. I our kids come through us. It's it's it's it's a profound thing for me. That it it it that works. So I came through her, and I can I still nowadays I I hear myself saying things that she used to say.

unknown 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

I used to get upset about, you know. You know. So and then and then it I reflected back on my loss with Hashem. I got none of that. I got I got no richness of life with him. I got no opportunities. I could not be his dad.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

In the way that you had envisioned.

Triggers Inside Family Milestones

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Uh the way I had envisioned, envisioned. And so my memory of what am I grieving? I'm grieving the opportunity of living a life with my son. My grief, and I again I do not want to compare this, but I'm forced to. I remember and honor my mother in a very different way to honoring my son. My mother's legacy is a very different legacy. My son's legacy cuts deep. I'm not saying my mother's doesn't, but it's a different, it's a different cut and it's a different deepness. It's a fulfilled deepness, if I want to put it that way. My son's grief is unfulfilled. It's an unfulfilled grief. Unfulfilled. You know, and so my remembrance of those two individuals are totally different. My grief is totally different. And that was the catalyst. When I started thinking about her, things started coming up. Things she said, things you know, people did. I mean, give me another example. So two of the things that are I think profound. One, my I mentioned that obviously he was born on on the day that my sister's son his birthday. So every year I'm reminded. And then when Harshim was, when my wife was pregnant with Harshim, my younger brother had just got married, so they were pregnant with their first. So they were four months behind Harshim. When we lost Harshim, you know, they were walking on eggshells. They were like, we don't know what to do. And I felt it. And then this is the this is, I guess this is the sixth sense I've got. And and you know, what I'm telling you is this is this this thing of now I'm very conscious of giving, about giving and growth and that giving. So I realized that they were, and I could just, you know, sometimes you could hear somebody's brain. Yeah, yes, yes. I I I was hearing the the internal voices that they were going through. You know, should we be happy? Uh-huh. You know, should we celebrate?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

You know, should you know what what you know, how do we do this?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah. Should we talk about our pregnancy in front of him?

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Should we go and show the the the the scans that we you know? Yes, yes, yeah. Right? So I did I did the one thing I you know, I pulled my wife in and I pulled my brother in and his wife into a room. And I said, Look, I know that you are very sensitive about our loss, okay? But I need you to enjoy this. Because I did when what when I first came, and I need you to do the same thing. I don't want you to worry about us. I don't want you to walk on eggshells, I don't want you to tiptoe, I I want you to be happy. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yeah.

Letting Others Feel Joy

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Now that goes against a lot of fathers I've come across and saying, why are they mentioning this? Why are they mentioning their child? Don't they see it? Especially family, right? But for that moment, I thought that's where my that's where I can fill my cup. And and and I tell you, Kelly, when I go, my gut instinct generally it's right, right? I've I've noticed this. At the beginning of this year, my brother called me up, and it was his son's 21st. And this year was his 21st. So he's born you know in May. And and so we're talking, and I had just started talking on social media about this project. And so he said to me, Hey bro, what's going on? Everything okay? I said, Look, jump on a call. And so he said, What's going on? Are you you you are you what are you doing here? And I told him, and he said, I need to share something with you. He said, You remember that conversation you had with me? I said, Yeah, I do, very vividly. He goes, I have modeled my entire upbringing of my children based on how you showed up as a father. I was really taken back. I said, Let me share something with you. I love your kid. He's like, you know, he's like my son. But every time I see him, it reminds me of my boy, of what he would have been. And he said, I'm so glad that you shared that with me. And he started crying, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Um It's um, I think that's so important to keep highlighting because one of the things that someone listening to this might be tempted to conclude, or might be tempted to assume, is that grief is this perpetual state of being sad and crying and stalking and being down in the dumps. And I will never again see another sunny day, another bright day, or experience joy or anything like that. And obviously, that's a caricature of grief, but it doesn't have to be that. And that is not what you have been saying these last 20 years have been for you in any way, shape, or form. The companionship of grief is such, in my opinion, that one is actually, I sincerely believe this, and I would love to hear your your opinion about this. I think when someone learns to reconcile with grief, the image that is powerful in my mind is sort of learning to hold hands with grief and not being afraid to hold hands and not being afraid to let go, but knowing that grief will always be there. I think the moment one learns to embrace grief, it actually enriches one's life and enables one to enjoy life in a fuller way, in a more meaningful way, in light of the grief that one lives with. It doesn't mean that it will stop hurting. It just means that whenever that pain is felt, we'll be at different times, and it can be large intervals in between.

Grief As Love, Not Weakness

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Yeah, and they could be triggers. I mean, triggers I mean my case, you know, Raza, my younger brother's son, is a trigger every time I see him. No, I I don't get triggered every single time. Sure. But it's a trigger, right? And and I that's there's something that I I wanna you brought up a very good point. You see, there's an emoji. We all know this. There's an emoji of uh, you know, a hug, a virtual hug. Right? That's what we need to do with greed, grief. Because grief is is and you're right, I mean, you know, to again, it's it's a stigma, it's a it's a cultural stigma. And it it is very, I'm not I'm not I'm not belittling it. It's sad. You know, it is it is world-crushing. It is, you know, it it destroys on the surface, it looks like it's destroying you, it's destroying your life, it's destroying everything around you, right? It's taken me a long time to understand this. Grief is love. When we cry, when I cry like I've just done, I'm expressing my love for my child. I miss him. And there's nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

There's nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

It's me expressing if I if mourning, you know, mourning grief is in internally and mourning is externally. If I'm mourning externally in front of a bunch of people, it's my love for my son. And if somebody feels awkward, well, I'm sorry about that. I apologize. But you know, you you when my son goes, when my children go on holiday, or they like my my son's abroad, my oldest, I miss him. It's the same thing. I miss him. I miss harsh him.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

If you were to call up a friend and say to your friend, you know, my boy is is abroad right now, and boy, do I miss him. Yeah, that friend is not gonna look at you and say, Hey, man, what is wrong with you?

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Yeah. What are you what are you talking about here, right? Like totally, totally.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yet when it comes to, to your point, when it comes to this expression of love for Hashim, yeah, because of the circumstances, there is something that prevents people from recognizing, from acknowledging that, yeah, it's love expressed in an entirely different way. The spectrum of love enables this expression.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

And one's inability to not see that and understand that, on the one hand, it's like, it is awesome that you cannot relate because you've never lost a child. And how incredible that you've never had to experience that. On the other hand, if you can just see it as I'm just expressing how much I love and I miss my child, who happens to not be here because he didn't have a long life. And even if that child did have a long life, they're not here anymore. Yeah. And I miss them.

A Love Letter That Unlocked Tears

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Like that is a human, it's a human reaction, right? And and you know, I was just thinking while you're talking, you know, I'm thinking of your children. And, you know, we've talked, you know, prior to this this podcast, and and you know, uh, you know, how do you see the the loss of your children? Because, you know, you you didn't lose one. There were there were there were four. And so it's reconciling. Again, I use that word reconciling with yourself, and love sits very centrally in that reconciliation.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

I'll share the story with you. Shared it on the podcast before. If you've heard any of the episodes, it the intro song called Love Letter came out of a place of reconciliation. The four losses that my wife and I experienced, there was the one in particular that sort of encompasses all four of them. That would have been my daughter. And I've always wanted to father a daughter. And so that one hurts in a different way than all the other ones because I didn't know what the uh the other three would have been, but I knew that this one would have been a girl.

unknown 18:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

And so many years later, I am sleeping one night, and I just wake up and I could not go back to sleep. And all of this emotion just begins to well up inside, and I begin to weep in bed as my wife is next to me and she's sleeping. And so I needed to express my thoughts in writing. And I decided that at the time my therapist had told me, just keep something next to your bed so that when these moments happen, you can just start writing them down.

unknown 18:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

And I tried to, but nothing would come up in the way that I needed to express myself.

unknown 18:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

So I kept that process ongoing, open-ended for a number of years, maybe like two or three years. And it's not until the rebranding of this podcast, which used to be called The Miscarriage Dads, that I realized, okay, I would love to add a personal touch to this. And this idea of writing a love letter to my daughter resurfaced. And so I began to write. And then as I started to write, all of these emotions just flowed out of me through my pen onto this paper. And I wrote the lyrics of the intro song to this podcast. And it was such a release that I needed. And in the process of writing, I realized I'm not just penning these letters to her. I'm penning these letters to the other three. And I'm also penning this letter to the two who are living testaments of their siblings whom they've never met. And it all just fell together beautifully in this process of writing, in this process of expressing, in this process of reconciling all the things that I had been for a while, even though this work has really interested me and has given me a sense of direction and meaning and purpose, I was still keeping things at bay. But that process that night, that process that began that night, the writing and and and all of that, it just, I think that was the very first time where I learned personally to fully embrace my grief and accept the fact that I am always grieving. And there are times, there are circumstances, there are triggers that allows you to tune into it more so than at any other time. But it never truly escapes you. You can never truly escape it because it just becomes your state of living.

Divorce, New Love, Shared Loss

SPEAKER_03 21:14

Yeah, it's beautiful what you've just expressed, and it's so profound and poignant because it's, you know, you you you at that moment, and this is this is I like to think this is the gift that grief gives us. Grief gave you that gift to be able to produce something like that in memory of your daughter and your other three kids and your living children. Yes. Um, to be able to be so expressive, so creative, so you, so present. That is to me what present means. To be able to do something and then look at the work that you're involved in. And I think that is so profound groundbreaking through such such a breakdown to be able to have a breakthrough like that. Is, you know, let's put it this way you wouldn't be able to do it if you hadn't gone through those losses. I wouldn't be sitting here having a conversation with you if I didn't lose Harshin. What what we have, and and again, uh, you know, I I I have to work really hard with myself on this. Whenever I see a challenge, roadblock, or what have you in life, you know, I try to reframe it, saying, okay, what's the opportunity behind it? What's the what's what's the goodness behind it? What's the and and and and it's that in itself is quite exhausting, you know. And so it it we we are we are we operate, us dads operate at a heightened level. I'm not gonna call it anxiety or whatever, it's a heightened level of emotion because of what we've experienced. Uh I just find that I function that way. So you know it's it's it's interesting. And you you talk about writing. I'm just gonna come back to the writing bit. But one other thing that I wanted to share with you was the the the trigger. So one was the loss of my mother. The other one, the other one was really interesting. So I went through a divorce. And by the way, the the the average number of years after child loss for for couples is around 10. If they don't sort this out, it's 10 years after child loss. Mine was 12. So that's some that's a number to and and and the number of couples that do split is they there's a lot of numbers that are being banned around that 60, 70 percent, that's not true. It's around 16 to 18 percent of couples that and it could be any loss, any child loss. It could be, you know, I I remember uh we had a driver who used to do deliveries for us, and his partner and him had two miscarriages. That was it. Their their marriage, uh their relationship was over. You know, so i i again it's identifying these all these grieving styles and what have you, and and communication. So after my divorce, um I in 2022, I was obviously still in the UK, and a certain person came to meet my brother and his wife, and she, you know, I I met her and we we started talking, and we agreed that we were, you know, kind of keen on each other, and so we we agreed, she left in Octo at the end of October 22. She lives in Canada, and you know, we would we would talk. And in that conversation, it transpired that her second son she lost in exactly the same way. In fact, he was born, he only survived 24 hours. Wow, and I didn't know about this, she didn't know about mine, my loss, and that automatically brought us closer, that loss. And then I came to see her in in December of 22. I actually proposed to her, um, and that's why I'm here in the in in Canada because I got I got married to her, and so having somebody now in my life who understands my loss because she's gone through it herself as a woman, and the work, and I again I saw her permission in terms of and by the way, this this permission business is is the one thing that fathers really struggle with to giving themselves permission. That's another area that we can go into at some other point. But so I I I I I I said, look, this is what I'm thinking, just she goes, do it, just do it. This is this is you gotta do this, right? So those are the those are the reasons one of the reasons why that when I did that, when she when she kind of gave me permission, I started diving into the work. I came up with articles that people had and and just the emotions, I was just sitting there weeping. This is this is beginning of last year, 20, 19, 20 years later, weeping as if I I had lost him that morning.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

And it was so painful, but it felt good. That's the strange part. So I want to just kind of kind of so that that was the beginning of the kind of a lot of the resurfacing work, and and in that, in that I was growing at the same time. So I was growing and thinking about and and I had this idea for you know years that I wanted to build a framework, something that I could share with dads that would. I didn't have the words at that time, I didn't have the words of reconciliation. I just wanted to help them to move from A to B. And again, going back to the point, this is not about fixing. And so in 2024, I had I had started a website and some work around it, and and fear kicked in of you know, no one would really want to know and what have you, and I just shut it down.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

And then went back to what I was uh whatever I was doing. I had moved here by then anyway, and I was struggling because I was going through. You can imagine, you know, you you you lose a business, you lose your life. It took me seven years to get myself back into some sort of space, starting all over again. New relationship, coming into Canada, immigration, trying to get legal, you know, all that stuff going on. And here I am trying to think about a framework for grieving death. You know, but but but you know what? You know, I'd like to think I'd like to think, you know, the Lord is great, God is great, and you know, the the He showed me the way, He showed me direction. I wanted to work around what fathers want, this framework, this do. It's a do attitude. Let's do this, right? Rather than talk about necessarily about feelings and you know, that sort of thing, because that's the therapists are very good at that. And I'm not a therapist, I'm not a clinician in that sense. I've done coaching courses, I've done NLP. Uh that just that gives me the ability to have some sort of self-awareness. I had to go back to a story that I want to share with you about my second boy, who he's very successful, he's in he's 29, going to be 30 this year. And he always struggled as a young man, as a young boy, to express himself. And so the way that in his teens, the way he managed that was that he, when he was upset with his parents, he'd go into his room for half a day or a day and write a letter. He would put his thoughts on a letter, and then you know, he'd he'd think about it, come come back down once he's completed, and he'd sit us down and say, and and he'd read it. And he'd cry and we'd cry with him. And he'd read more, and he'd cry, and we'd cry with him. And I remember having a conversation with him, you know, a few years later, and I said, You know, you used to write those letters. He said, That's the only way I can, as a man, I can express myself. And it's made me start thinking about this whole letter writing process, expressive writing.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Yes.

Why Writing Helps Trauma

SPEAKER_03 29:02

And during during the my my research last year, I wanted to find out, tethered to grief, trauma, it does writing come into it? Because we go and talk, don't we? We talk to in in in in in support groups, we talk to therapists, we do couple counseling, we we get involved. Talking, they say, it's a proven fact that you know talking helps to be expressive, to communicate helps. And and and I was I was just I fell off my chair. I the the the amount of science, 40 years of science-backed evidence, people have done, specifically one individual, Jamie Pennebaker in Texas, around writing and how it helps trauma victims and grief. Because what what what basically is, if I can try to explain to you, when grief happens and an event happens and it's traumatic, the brain is wired to uh you know it to protect. So it's the the the the the fear and flight area of the brain, which is the amygdala is the central part of the brain, and that's where this sits. And what happens is that most people don't fly away, they don't they don't do the flight bit. Fear is very much there, and they they just stop, they just sit in that space, and the the the constant uh you know reminder of the grief, reminder of the people who said this and said that become very sensitive about things, it's constantly just it's a it's a recurring uh trauma.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

It's almost like they get sucked into the vacuum of that event.

The Five-Session Letter Writing Framework

SPEAKER_03 30:49

It's a vacuum. And and you know, uh Victor, not Victor Mate, uh is it Mate Gor Mate Gor Gabor, Mate Gabor talks about this? He's a psychologist, uh physician in in Canada. He talks about this grief, the event is the event. What happens afterwards? That's the trauma. It's like an open wound. And it takes years sometimes. And it only takes a very small trigger to whip it open if it's if it's if it closes, right? So the the the the trauma bit comes after the the event itself. Grief doesn't happen at the event, it happens after it. And so looking at the looking at the science, what expressive writing does, and he he's done a number of tests, and I've actually I've built this into my into my program, is that writing helps move the uh the the event, the grief, to the front part of the of the brain where all the meaning takes place, the thinking takes place, the logic takes place. And what it does is that it rewires the brain to think about the grief and make sense of it. And uh what the tests and the and and the science that that's the studies that have shown is the impact is that uh cortisol levels reduce, less stress, you sleep better. And I I can I can vouch for those things when I you know when I start really starting, and I've been writing most of my life. Those are huge because you effectively what what he found, what Jamie found was that people were going less to the doctors for anxiety-based, depression-based. Because remember, there's nothing wrong with us. We're just going through this this this period in our life, utter sadness. And I thought, okay, so I've got this, I've got a framework. I I've already had a framework in my mind of you know, five sessions, and and and and I I looked at my own journey, and I thought, okay, so the first one would be naming the loss. What happened? And this is all done in a written work. So there would be prompts that I would put on the screen, it's online, and before that, there would be a reframing of that particular session about uh naming the loss. And before that, you know, there'd be some breathing exercises, some grounding, allowing people to and and for them to have an opportunity, these dads would sit in a very private, small, intimate group of you know, five or seven guys, and I would ask the question, you know, how are you feeling? And a lot of them would say frustrated, anxiety, depressed, you know, all that sort of stuff. And I and I would always say, look, where you are right now, it's fine. Start from that position. This is not about right or wrong. This is there'sn't there's no right way or wrong way. There's only your way. It's only your way. And so I take them through this, and then after the writing, after the prompts, and they don't have to do, they don't have to pick all the prompts, only the ones that really relate to them. And they have 30 minutes of sitting there. So we have a 30 minutes or a bit of music going on in the background, and they have time to think about what they're writing, and then they share after that. And they each share. And I've had dads come in and said, I hadn't made a decision I wasn't going to share. But the moment that dad, another dad started sharing, I wanted to share. And they can share whatever. There's no restriction. So they can share the whole letter, they can share one word, they can share their their thoughts, they can share a particular prompt that's that's you know really resonated with them. Anything they can share that that this is not working for me, you know, whatever. It's it's it's fine. Because the work allows them to start to think. The other thing that I I this is not a necessity, but what I recommend is bring a pen and some paper. No typing. Because again, studies have shown that when you write, physically write, it slows your brain down. Yeah. It allows you to think instead of just typing away, typing away, typing away. Because it doesn't, it goes in here and out the other. Slow the slowness of writing, it those things sit in the brain and allows the brain to rewire.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

And it also connects you to your sense, right? The the tactile nature of holding something and feeling and and moving along the page. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

The noise of the pen or pencil, that even that has a has an impact, right? And so the the the first one is naming the loss. Second one is is you know, naming the loss, what happened. The second one is what do I want? And it's interesting because what do I want? Well, obviously, what does every dad want? He wants his child back. I want their child back, absolutely. Right? So we we acknowledge that. I I I actually read in the in the in the framing, I say, you're gonna if I if I'm gonna ask you this question, this is your answer. And no one has disagreed with me. But but here's here's another thing I would like you to consider. What is it, what other thing do you want after wanting your child back? And when we say wanting our child, we actually sit there for a little while in silence. Just allow that to sink, to normalize wanting your child back. Right? And people, uh dads have come up with, you know, I just want to wake up in the morning and not feel sad. I want to be able to make my breakfast and not cry. I want to be able to hold my children and be the dad for them. It's you know, little things. I want to be able to breathe properly. I want to be, you know, just take that heaviness off my chest. So these wants aren't huge, great big goals. They're just very small micro things that get you through the day. I want to have a full meal every day. One full meal, you know? So really interesting. The third one is pivotal because the first two are looking sort of historically backwards. The the third one asks the question: who do I want to take with me on the journey? Who do I want beside me? And that's pivotal because that's honoring the people there. And that's the reconciling bit. Uh the third reconciliation is reconciling with your relationships. So uh if if I've had fathers who have gone into grief three, four months in, and they are they uh one dad wrote a letter to his father, just didn't understand his situation. I had a dad who is eight years in, and he he had reconciled his differences with with all the all his friends and family, but he wrote about honoring all those people who have been there with him and don't have a problem calling out his daughter's name, Lila's name. You see, see how that how this works for different people in different timelines as they're coming through the grief. And that's what I try to design it in such a way, and it's intentional, it's done intentionally this way, that I I want to be able to capture a father who's going through grief, whether it's three months, two years, ten years, twenty years. Yeah, you know, and so the fourth one was next step. What next step are you gonna take? And again, nothing big, it could be a very small. And I'll give you an example when one dad he just said, I'm gonna actually go and start talking about this in radio stations and podcasts, and that's what he does. He's he's one year in, he's going through IBF, he has no kids. Wonderful guy, absolutely wonderful guy. I mean, what an amazing soul. And that's the way he's you know, for for and he calls it his ESA project, Isabella. These are this is his ESA. And he he he his ruminations and thoughts about going through the process of writing, he came up with this name, his ESA project, right? And he at the same time was doing therapy, and that morning on the first, the second session, first session, he did therapy. It came in into the session and he said, I haven't cried. He said, In fact, I haven't cried so much in the 30 minutes when I was writing the last time I did that was when my daughter died 12 months ago. I haven't even cried. He goes into his therapy, and the doctor and the and the and the um therapist asks, How are you doing? I'm fine. Yeah, good, it's all good. Yeah, how are you doing on this? Do you see the difference? And he said, What this space allows me to do is to think privately in my little space, yeah, without, and if I feel like sharing, I'll share. If I feel like and and and the the beauty is no one's judging, nobody is and he they because we go through an agreement every in every session, there's no judging. This you know, what you share here stays here. The fact is that you know there there has to be respect in and give time to and listen to other people. And after they share, I I I usually say this and I get the dance to say it is you know, thank you for trusting us. So the space, he says he he was saying that there's nothing that he's experienced where there is uh he doesn't have to permission, he doesn't have to take permission. The space gives him that permission, but you go go ahead and do it. It's okay. Whatever you want. And the last one is uh is a is a letter to your child. And and that that is that is so so it's it's it's taking the dad across from what happened and reconnecting it. So the let you know, a lot of dads write directly calling out to their daughter and sons and daughters. They call them by the name. This what you know what happened, this is what happened, this is where I am after your after I've lost you. And then five weeks later, they're rewriting a letter to their child and saying, This is the next step I'm gonna take. This is uh how I've reconciled with your mother or you know, grandfather, what have you. This is um what I wanted, I wanted you, but I've just so this it's this this motion that they physically and I mean I have seen I don't know how you use the word transformation. I've seen reconcili guys reconciling with themselves, with their children, with their relationships through this process.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

I think that's such a beautiful framework to take a father on a journey. I mean, grief is already its own journey.

SPEAKER_03 43:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

And to provide such a strong framework to kind of guide the steps in a way that is open-ended, yet also invites that person to discover their own, you know, the path that they want to take, right? The journey that they want to go on, and where is it that they want to end up, or what is it that they want to define as who they're going to be and what they're going to be? I think it's such a it's such a powerful, powerful tool, powerful framework.

The STILL Method For Fathers

SPEAKER_03 43:55

Thank you. And I I think I think one of the things is the question here is is uh ultimately what's the Prize. And look, grief is is is a journey. I don't even like to use the word journey because it it signifies a destination, an endpoint. And it, you know, and and there's a there's a gentleman who's who talks about grief a lot, he made that point. I give him credit for that. That you know, there is no destination. There is no destination for us for grief. But here's the thing. If I was if I was asking myself, and this is my but this was my starting point and re-engineered it backwards, if I was starting myself, what is it that I would want? So number one, there's two things. Number one, I'd want to be, I'd still want to be a dad. Doesn't matter if my child's there or not. Okay, number one. Number two is I want to find a way to be able to understand my grief. So move, and I call this move with grief, not move on from grief. Because the world tells you to move on. And I would challenge society and say, no, no, there's no moving on because there's no fixing and there's no endpoint, there's only moving with. And what does that mean? That means that I the the the the framework allows a dad to carry that grief for himself, to reconcile it for himself, his child, and his relationships. It's moving on, carrying everybody with him, and not losing the memory. So I use I use uh something called a still method. A still method is a framework that underpins the the work that we do, that I do with dads. And it's it's called the it's still, so there's a this it's an acronym. So the S stands for being seen from a dad's perspective. If I'm talking to a dad, you know, he he he wants to be seen. He doesn't want to be fixed, right? The tell means uh the T stands for tell, so to be able to express and to to name it, to name the loss, and then to own it, and and to be able to put words of grief for it somewhere to land safely. The I is for investigate, so dads want to find answers. They they want to they want to they want a way to kind of move with or move forward, right? In their life, you know, so it's it's it's not about venting, it's about searching for a structured, private, purposeful uh way to understand themselves and and what's going around them. The first L is about link. So it's it's it it it it allows a dad to be able to connect and not having to choose between griever and supporter, but to connect the two. So a dad is actually the same man being a griever and a supporter, and that's about carrying carrying the the the the both together, and you know it's not abandoning neither, it's carrying both together in his life. The last L is led. So that's about more about being in a space where the dead are led by somebody who's lived that experience. So I've spoken to a lot of fathers and they say that they have great therapists, and this is not a comparison between therapy and what I do, but the two are complementary with each other. But a lot of therapists have not lived the experience of that kind of loss, and so they're at a slight disadvantage with with what I do, I've lived it, I'm living it. Uh it's not over, right? And you know, so it's a dad-first, dad-led permission levels change when you set up that kind of environment because there's relatability there. And so the still method underpins the framework, it underpins everything that I do. And you know, I I I like to talk to fathers from that framework and say, look, you know, you know, what is it that that you're looking for? Is it to be seen? Is it is it do you want to tell something to somebody? Are you looking to investigate? You know, you know, what connections do you want? What link do you want? Where do you want them in your life? And who would you want who do you want this to be led by? So that's that, and again, that that's taken a little time for me to come up with that framework. But it allows the dads to be able, you know, it touches dads at at different stages in their grief. And they they they they for the people I've shared it with, they can relate to it.

Permission, Survival, And Growth

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Thank you for shedding light on the method and on the framework. As we come to the conclusion of our conversation, we've spoken about a lot. If we could distill some of the most important things, so if there was like the top three things that you would want someone to take away from everything that we've discussed today, what would be your word of wisdom, your word of counsel for a father who has listened to this, or even a partner who's listened to this and is thinking about their male partner, right? To to to help them discover their own journey of grief or their own experience of grief and to do something with it.

SPEAKER_03 49:44

I think the the the the first thing that I would say is that it's okay. How you react, how you're feeling angry, or you're feeling because no one day is the same. So every day is okay. And and to be able to to to give yourself permission, I think that's the first thing. It's okay and give yourself permission. It's it's where a lot of dads really, really do suffer in that space. Number two is you live. It feels like the end, but you will live. Life goes on, and it when I say goes on, doesn't mean that you goes on without that memory. It's for you to find a way to carry that memory, but you will live, and through that living, grief morphs into it it changes in shape. It's not my grief is not the same that it was 20 years ago. It's a very different grief. And so in that in that and and and un and and I would say this in my experience, unbeknownst to me, there's grief, there's growth in opportunity, growth, love, you know, peace sits in that in that space where growth shifts and it changes. Because like in anything in life, we if you look at where you were when you were a teenager to where you are today, you're a different man, you know. So we evolve and our emotions evolve. You know, I I was in my 20s, I was a you know, quite a expressive, sometimes angry young man, you know. I'm a I'm a different, completely black and white, different guy, completely different, you know. And we I always say this, just a little bit of insight. We are not who we are by where we've come from, but we are who we are by what we create. And and to me, that is really important and profound because I think, and and the work that I'm that I'm doing with you know this the the expressive writing letter right, I call it letter writing journey, and building a community of fathers based around this idea of reconciliation is is sitting very centrally in this this growth area, this you live area. It'll be okay. And and and permission, the sort of giving yourself the permission. And what I what I want to do is I want to share a link that you can share with your listeners. And it's it's a it's um it's it's basically a gift for me to to you guys. And it it there's two effectively two tools in there. One is a 15-minute uh webinar of a taster of the way that I deliver the framework, the the letter writing. So there's two prompts in there, and it and it'll give them a real taste of okay, let me, you know, they can stop the video, they can write the the look at the prompt, write the thoughts down. Because remember, one thing about writing also I wanted to mention is that you're taking from here, so it's it's sitting inside of you and looking, staring at you from inside your head, and it doesn't give it there's no space, so it's constantly swirling around with all the emotions. By writing it on a piece of paper, it's actually physically gone from there to there, and it's sitting on the external and it's looking at you. And then reading it is very different. Reading, sharing it has a different connotation and different feeling to it. So that that I wanted to I wanted to put that in there. Yeah. And the second one is again around the relationship piece, because you know, when when a child dies, a lot of people suffer. And that, you know, and and and with all the good intentions in the world, they want to try to uh give you some sort of solace, some sort of peace, some sort of space to to they try to make you feel better as a dad, right? So I thought about so the some of the questions, especially about what my mother uh mentioned to me, and I put down so kind of the questions you shouldn't ask and the questions that would preferably way to ask when you want to start a conversation with a father. So instead of saying, you know, how are you doing, you can say, how are you managing? You know, and it's it's just a it's just a a softer way of uh for a father to feel seen. And from there, you know, you know, the the they they have the viewers that have access to this, they can contact me. Uh you know, there's there's my contact details down there also. If they just want to have a uh 30-minute session, just to talk, I'm I'm available for that too. So I thought I'd I'd mention that to you. But yes, I mean those those three things to me, it's you know, it's okay you live, and you know, grief, grief changes shape over time.

SPEAKER_00 55:13

Thank you so much for uh sharing the link and the resources with with my audience. And I know that someone is going to, well, more than someone, but even if it's just one person who can benefit from that, it is going to add so much value to them personally to help them reconcile with their experience that much more.

SPEAKER_03 55:38

I I do want to say, one, I appreciate you um hugely. You are an incredible father, and you'll always be a dad. Always, always, always of of of six children. Yeah. It's one of those things that when someone asks us, how many kids have you got, I thought I've always reluctantly said four. And I'm now uh plucking up the courage to say five. So, father of six children, and the work that you've done, I've been hugely impressed uh by what you what you what you're doing and and the partnerships you're creating and the difference. And and I think there's a lot of work that's going on by a lot of fathers that is seismically changing the face of the landscape. And it'll take time, but it it it's the persistence that people like yourself and others that are that are that are just you know plugging away at it to to um create just more awareness. That's that's it. And I'm I'm uh hugely inspired by your story and what you're doing, and thank you so much for inviting me to um to express uh my thoughts in this very safe space that you that you've created. Um and so much credit goes to you, your family, and your children.

Closing Dedication And Support Offer

SPEAKER_00 56:59

Thank you for listening today. If you or another dad you know are looking for assistance navigating baby loss, I'm offering a free 30-minute virtual meeting to explore support options. Visit the Dad Always website to request your private conversation, and also download the Dad Always survive guide to serve as a companion for navigating the first moments after baby loss. This podcast episode is dedicated to the ones we hoped for but never met, and the ones whose time with us was all too brief.