I Lost My Dream and Found My Destiny

Neal Tricarico · June 24, 2026 · 7 min read

When the dream you built your whole life around is taken from you, the first thing you have to do is grieve it. Not just the person. The dream itself. Because what I lost when Anthony died by suicide was not only my son. I lost the entire future I had already lived inside my head a thousand times. And until you let yourself feel that loss fully, the new thing cannot arrive.

TL;DR

Losing Anthony took my lifetime dream of being a boy dad. What arrived on the other side of that grief was not a replacement dream but a destiny I never asked for, built from exactly what the loss taught me. You cannot rush to the destiny. You have to sit in the empty space the dream left behind first.

What is the difference between a dream and a destiny?

A dream is something you build toward on purpose. You pick it, you tend it, you picture yourself inside it. For me, the dream was being a boy dad for a lifetime. I had two sons and a daughter, and inside that dream I knew exactly who I was. I was the father of Anthony, the father of James, the father of Samara. That identity was the ground I stood on.

A destiny is something that finds you. You do not pick it. You do not interview for it. It arrives in the wreckage of the dream and says: this is what you are going to do now, and you do not get a vote. The difference is agency. One you hold. The other holds you.

Why grieve the lost dream first?

Everyone wants to rush you to the new purpose. People say things like "you will find meaning in this" or "he would want you to keep going" and I know their hearts are in the right place. But before any of that can be real, you have to name what you lost. And for me, the thing I lost was not only my son. It was the entire role I was living inside.

I was the father of my son. That role was not a side project. It was the architecture of my days and the shape of my future. When that role ended, I was not just sad. I was disoriented. The floor under me was gone. And until I let myself feel that disorientation instead of performing strength over it, nothing real could grow there.

Research on meaning reconstruction after loss affirms this. The central process in grieving is not getting over it but rebuilding a world that makes sense again after the one you had collapsed Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss - APA. I have written about what that rebuilding actually looks like day to day, and the short version is that post-traumatic growth is not closure. It is learning to carry the weight differently, not putting it down.

How did Field of Dreams crack this open?

There is a scene in Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner's character asks his father, who has appeared as a young man on the baseball field, if he wants to have a catch. I have watched that scene more times than I can count. But after Anthony died, it landed differently.

The dream in that movie is a father and son playing catch. It is the simplest, most American image of what it means to be a dad. And that was my dream too. I was going to be the father who played catch with his boys for decades. I was going to watch them grow into men and stand beside them. When I sat with that movie after losing Anthony, I realized I was not just grieving the person. I was grieving an entire reel of scenes I had already shot in my head that would never play.

That is when the grief for the dream itself finally had a shape I could hold. It was not vague sadness. It was specific. I was mourning the Christmas mornings that would not happen, the weddings I would not stand at, the grandchildren he would never meet. And naming those things one by one was the first real grieving I did.

What does it mean to lose the dream but get the destiny?

Here is the part that is hard to say and harder to hear: I lost the dream and I got something else. Not a better thing. Not a fair trade. But something real.

The destiny that found me was saving lives with what the loss taught me. I did not choose that. I did not wake up one morning and declare a new career in post-traumatic growth. What happened was quieter. I started talking about what I was living through, in small rooms and then bigger ones, and people kept coming back to me and saying some version of "that changed something for me."

At some point I had to admit that what came out of the fire was not nothing. There is a body of research on post-traumatic growth that describes exactly this. Growth after trauma is real, measurable, and never cancels the loss. It coexists with grief rather than replacing it Posttraumatic Growth Resource Center. What changed for me was not the grief leaving but the growth arriving alongside it -- finding a way forward started with small, deliberate steps, not one giant conversion.

How do you carry a destiny you never wanted?

The honest answer is that you carry it the same way you carry the grief. One day at a time. Some days it feels like a burden and some days it feels like the only thing that makes the burden holdable. There was a turning point during those hardest days when the prayer changed from healing to peace, and that shift taught me something about surrender that I carry into the destiny work every time I show up for someone else.

What I have learned is that the destiny does not require you to be grateful for the loss. It does not require you to say the trade was worth it. It only requires you to show up and let what you learned be useful to someone else. There is a line I hold onto when the weight gets heavy: I signed up for this. Not in the sense that I chose the loss. In the sense that something deeper than my mind recognized that this was mine to carry, and carrying it for other people is how I stay upright myself.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention connects loss survivors to exactly this kind of peer support, and the research on meaning-making after loss confirms what survivors already know: helping others is not a way around grief, but it is a way through it AFSP Suicide Loss Resources.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is purpose required to heal?

No. Purpose can emerge from healing, but healing does not depend on finding one. Some people grieve fully and live meaningful lives without ever feeling called to a specific "destiny." The pressure to find a purpose can become another burden if it arrives too soon.

How do you find purpose after loss?

For me, purpose was not something I found. It was something that found me when I stopped hiding from the pain. I started showing up honestly, telling the truth about what happened, and other people who were drowning recognized a hand. That recognition is what built the purpose. It was not a plan; it was a consequence of being seen in the dark.

Does destiny make the loss okay?

No. Never. The destiny is not compensation. The loss is still the loss, permanent and wrong, and I would undo every speaking event and every person helped in a heartbeat if it brought Anthony back. The destiny does not make it okay. It makes it bearable in a way it was not before, and those are not the same thing.

Sources cited in this analysis?

If you are in crisis, call or text 988. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7/365, free and confidential.