The Grief We’re Not Allowed to Feel
A Letter to the Men Who Are Holding It All In.
By Alex Holmes
I didn’t want to write this.
And yet here I am.
Because if I don’t write it, if I don’t put it into language, into story, it lives in my body.
And that’s the thing about grief. It doesn’t disappear.
It doesn’t take a hint. It just...waits. Sometimes for years.
Until the day it doesn’t.
A few weeks ago, I was asked a question by someone inside HMP Brixton, during a recording for National Prison Radio.
“What’s your purpose?”
I hesitated.
Not because I didn’t have one. But because I’ve never been asked it quite like that…by someone who was on the cusp of freedom, who was staring down the barrel of a new life, and still unsure what to do with all the pain he’d carried inside.
I told him the only truth I knew:
"God is in control of that."
But I think my purpose is to be a mirror. A voice. A vessel.
To help men feel something that’s been taken from them:
Permission.
Grief has never been part of the masculine script.
Especially not for Black men.
Especially not for boys who grew up learning to keep it moving.
Grief? That was for the women.
We were told: Man up. Keep going. Don’t make it about you.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? The backs broken beneath the promises that didn’t meet their agreements.
So when death happens…when heartbreak comes…
When a father leaves or a friend dies or the world cracks open just a little bit, we don’t know what to do with that feeling in our chests.
So we hide it.
We smoke it.
We drink it.
We scroll past it.
We deaden the ache and pretend we’ve healed.
But grief doesn’t work like that.
It is patient. It is precise. And if we don’t sit with it, it will sit in us.
Waiting to turn into something else: rage, apathy, numbness.
I remember the first time I cried for someone I lost.
Not because they died.
But because they left before I got to say what I needed to say.
And that’s the thing I want to talk about:
The unspoken part of grief.
The unsaid things. The emotional inheritance men carry from our fathers, brothers, uncles, and peers who didn’t know how to cry either.
Some of us are grieving men who are still alive.
Fathers who never saw us.
Mentors who betrayed us.
Friends who ghosted us when we needed them most.
We’ve made a habit of losing people and pretending it doesn’t hurt.
So what do we do with this?
We start small.
We grieve in real time.
Not in the quiet shadows of our bedrooms when no one’s watching, but out loud, with others who get it.
We write it down.
We speak it aloud.
We let it feel ugly and sacred at the same time.
We tell our boys that tears are not weakness.
We show them that hugs don’t steal masculinity.
We teach them that “I miss you” is one of the bravest things a man can say.
And if no one ever told you this before, let me be the first:
You’re allowed to grieve.
You don’t have to be strong today. You just have to be honest.
If this resonated with you, I want to hear from you.
Reply to this, share your story, or pass it to someone who’s been holding it in for too long.
We’re building something here…not just a newsletter, but a brotherhood of words, emotions, and unlearning.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for feeling.
With you in this,
Alex
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This is HUGE...permission!