Kintsugi Heroes
Kevin Holloway · 62 min
After losing his wife and business partner of nearly 40 years, Kevin Holloway turned decimating grief into a living curriculum on courage, identity, and what it truly means to be — not just behave — as the person you want to become.
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Nearly 40 years together, Kevin Holloway and his wife Mandy built a leadership business and a life around the concept of courage. When Mandy died three and a half years ago, Kevin lost not only his partner but also his business partner, his collaborator, and the person who handled much of the public-facing work while he worked behind the scenes. The grief was decimating. What followed was not a smooth recovery but something messier and more honest: a deliberate, hard-won reconstruction of himself through the study of being.
Kevin discovered ontology, the study of being rather than behaviour, and worked through 31 different ways of being, from courage and compassion to presence and vulnerability. He learned that you can hold fear and still act, that gratitude shifted from 17th on his values list to the top five, and that grief does not follow a neat curve. It scribbles. It loops back. It hits you on random days, years later, with the same force as the beginning. The difference is that now he stays present with it instead of running from it.
What changed Kevin's survival into something like thriving was a choice to reach out rather than isolate. He called people the night Mandy died. He had over a thousand conversations with family, friends, clients, and eventually men he did not know through his local men's mental health group. He started playing tennis at seven on Monday mornings with a friend and kept showing up. He stopped measuring success by what he owned or how many people acknowledged him, and started measuring it by what he gave back to humanity in the moment, not after the fact. Today, he works as an ontological coach, helping others understand that becoming the person you want to be is possible, even after everything breaks.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, 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 • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗