FALMOUTH, Maine — Three men in Maine are on a mission to make mental health treatment more available to other men, specifically those dealing with the loss of a child.
Jay Tansey and his wife Elly lost their daughter Bella in 2017 to a stillbirth. Eleven months later, Tansey's roommate at Bowdoin College and best man, Rob Reider, and his wife, Tehilah, lost their daughter Lila the same way.
Tansey and Reider now had a new layer in their bond: bearing the grief of a dead child.
"This too doesn't pass, and you just learn how to navigate life in a different way," Tansey said.
They both felt the need to protect their wives, who also were grieving.
"Breast milk coming in but there not being any baby. You know, just another reminder of not having your baby in your arms at home," Tansey said.
"I just wanted to do whatever I could to protect [my wife], because I felt so helpless from being unable to protect my daughter," Reider said. "That became my focus. Not my own grief. Not my own heartbreak. Not my own confusion with, 'Am I a father because my daughter is not living?' She didn't come home."
Seven months later, another Maine father about the same age suffered the same devastating loss. Chris Piasecki and his wife, Sarah, suffered a stillbirth. Their daughter Isabelle had no heartbeat.
"For those who don't know what it's like to see your child wheeled out of a room for what you know is going to be the last time: It's horror," Piasecki said.
He said those feelings lingered for months and years.
"The first time I laughed, I immediately sucked it back. It was like, 'You're not allowed to laugh. You can't laugh. Your child's not here. You're not allowed to laugh,'" Piasecki said.
Piasecki's sister-in-law knew Tansey and Reider from Bowdoin and suggested they get in touch, so they did.
"It was three grown men, surrounded by strangers, crying in public," Piasecki said.
They met at Liquid Riot, a restaurant and bar in downtown Portland.
"Jay was the first person I did not have to explain why I felt this way. I didn't have to justify my feelings. I can just exist," Piasecki said.
"My safety net expanded. My space for validation, my space for comfort, my space for safety, where I could talk about what I was feeling from the unique perspective of a father from the non-birthing parent," Reider said. "I now had two guys that I could go to and talk about it with instead of just one. So, literally, my network doubled."
They later referred to those meetings as "Beers and Tears."
"As the three of us started hanging out more and more and realized that there were things that we can talk about only with one another, we figured there are other dads out there who likely needed a similar space and a similar outlet," Reider explained.
That was the catalyst for the Sad Dads Club.
The group meets every Thursday night on Zoom, linking dads from all over the United States, Canada, France, New Zealand, and more.
They alternate between "My Child, My Story" sessions, where one dad takes the microphone during a themed session, such as intimacy after loss.
"It's less than 1 percent. But when you're those parents who are coming home without your baby in your arms, math is not on your side. You feel like math has betrayed you," Tansey said.
Since their respective losses, Tansey, Reider, and Piasecki have all had other children, which they call their "rainbow babies."
"The living child you have after losing a child, so after the storm comes the rainbow," Tansey said.
"While there are points of pain where you're reminded of milestones that you never got with the child you lost," Reider said. "It is also the most unbelievably magical thing that you can imagine to then bring a living child after having lost one and be able to spend time with that child in your house, in your arms, and love them so intensely.
"I think that's the most heartbreaking thing behind losing your child is having your child forgotten. The world doesn't see them. How else are you going to keep them with you? How else are you going to ensure that they exist, if not physically?" he continued. "They have to exist through your voice, through your stories, through you saying their name."
Each family has a tradition to remember their lost children. Tansey and his family go to a beach, light a lantern, and release it into the sky, sending it to Bella. Reider and his wife light a candle on Lila's birthday and tell her brother, Dallas, about her. Piasecki and his family do a balloon release to Isabelle.
Their mission as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit is to gather donations for dads to get professional therapy. One dad described the group as helping dads see a future version of themselves: someone who can still find joy after so much pain.
"You're never fully healed. But one of the big things that we wanted to do with Sad Dads Club was try and return to some of the things that once brought joy," Piasecki said. "It took a long time for me to figure out who I was going to be after the loss, professionally, personally, you name it. But I knew I wanted to find joy again, and that's what meeting these guys and Sad Dads has been able to accomplish."
The group also has a Discord channel, where members post in a variety of threads from fantasy football to other loss-related topics. The group is also including parents of kids who died from sudden infant death syndrome, medically necessary abortions, and other scenarios.
"It's the worst group with the best guys," they said.
You can follow Sad Dads Club on Instagram here.