What does grief feel like when the person who gave your life direction disappears without warning? In this episode of the Solo Dad Podcast, Matt talks with golf professional, widower, father, yoga teacher, and Wim Hof Method practitioner Kevin Chin about the sudden death of his wife, Terry, and the tools that helped him survive, rebuild, and become unstuck. Kevin and Terry met through Couchsurfing before apps like Airbnb had become part of everyday life. Kevin was traveling through Florida to play in golf tournaments and hoped to make his trip less lonely. Terry responded to his message, offered him a place to stay, and the two connected almost immediately. Within weeks, they had adopted a dog. From that first meeting, they were together for the rest of Terry’s life. They married in 2015, welcomed their son, Tommy, in 2016, and were building their first home when Terry suffered a sudden brain aneurysm and died in 2018. Tommy was only one year old. Kevin shares the disorientation of those first days: the hospital, life support, organ donation, grief fog, an inability to enjoy food, extreme weight loss, panic indoors, and the constant physical need to sigh and take deep breaths. A counselor gave him language that stayed with him: people grieve in character. For Kevin, that meant returning to nature. He walked outside when being indoors felt unbearable. He sought out wilderness, yoga, meditation, grief groups, therapy, breathwork, and eventually the Wim Hof Method. The combination of breathing exercises, cold exposure, and intentionally entering difficult situations gave Kevin a way to find stillness and remain present. Kevin does not suggest that grief disappeared. Instead, he describes learning how to participate with it. He talks about taking life breath by breath, recognizing grief anniversaries in his son, writing meaning into difficult experiences, and accepting that he cannot fully explain why everything happens. Sometimes, as in the old story of the farmer and the horse, all we can say is: “Maybe.” Through the CLIMB framework, Kevin’s journey reflects: Courage: Facing grief, intense emotions, the wilderness, cold water, and difficult internal experiences rather than continually avoiding them. Learning: Discovering how breath, the body, grief fog, physical health, and the nervous system are interconnected. Integration: Continuing his relationship with Terry through gratitude, memory, parenting, and the person he has become. Movement: Walking in nature, practicing yoga, teaching golf, cold-water immersion, breathwork, and deliberately doing difficult things. Building and Belonging: Accepting support from family, counselors, grief groups, friends, his community, and Terry’s mother. Kevin also speaks candidly about grief and organ donation, the complexity of support groups, the secondary losses that follow the death of a spouse, and losing the person who served as his social connection, compass, sail, and direction. His advice to people in early grief is practical: take care of your body. Eat when you can. Be careful with alcohol. Breathe. Make one small, healthy choice and allow it to create a snowball effect. Most importantly, Kevin wants people to understand that the capacity to survive hard things is already within them. You are stronger than you can imagine. Ready for more than just listening? Explore the CLIMB framework and support options at https://solodad.life/
