Losing a brother to suicide reshapes everything. Michael Collins, PhD researcher at UTS, turned his grief into a decade of study on men’s mental distress, help-seeking and connection. His story begins in a violent home with an alcoholic father, moves through a twenty-year career in dance and fitness, and fractures when his mother dies of cancer and his brother takes his own life within a single year. What he found on the other side is not a neat answer, but permission to grieve openly, to cry in public without apology, and to turn loss into purpose.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses mental health & wellbeing and trauma & healing, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you’re not alone. Help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
• Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au
Losing a brother to suicide carries a weight most people do not speak about. Michael Collins knows it from the inside. Twelve years ago, within a single year, he lost his mother to cancer and his younger brother Marty to suicide. Both were his primary relationships. The grief, he says without hesitation, has been the hardest thing he has had to deal with in his life.
But this is not a story about being broken by loss. It is a story about what happens after the breaking. Michael grew up in a violent household with an alcoholic father, taking on the role of emotional caregiver by age twelve. He spent two decades as a dancer, choreographer and myotherapist, searching for meaning without the credentials or security that usually come with it. When grief came, it redirected everything.
He went back to study.
🕒 CHAPTERS:
00:00 Grief and sorrow belong in public
05:05 From performance to research on men’s mental health
10:17 Reversing roles: the twelve-year-old adult
16:11 What his father gave up
22:53 Twenty years searching for meaning
28:20 The cycle that shaped two brothers differently
34:00 Losing his mother and brother within a year
40:14 Crying on the bus and clearing the air
46:54 Reclaiming his body through dance
50:49 Why men don’t seek help the way women do
59:59 The violence he won’t forgive
1:08:07 Permission to feel in safe spaces
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📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14
Lifeline Australia webchat: lifeline.org.au
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Welcome.
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Kintsugi Heroes was created from a simple belief: every person has a story worth sharing, and sometimes the story we need to hear arrives exactly when we need it most.
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