A Salford father will be joining a team of 20 to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in October.
Brendan Shryane, 34, will be ascending the highest mountain in Africa to raise awareness and funds to support men struggling with the loss of a loved one.
Brendan, who lives in Swinton and grew up in Monton, will embark on a five-day ascent to the summit of the mountain next month in memory of his son Archie who died shortly after birth.
His son was born during lockdown in 2021 with an extremely rare lung complication (Alveolar capillary dysplasia).
The complication is so rare that there have only been 200 people with the same disease recorded across the world.
And after five days of himself and wife Melanie’s suffering, they lost their child.
He said : “They did as much as they could. But it was incurable.
“I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I almost became closed off because I thought nobody would understand or know what I was going through.
“That was the wrong way of dealing with it.”
As he continued to share on Instagram: “I felt that there was nobody I could talk to who truly knew how I was feeling.”
He also explained on Instagram the difficulty of sharing the news with his then two-and-half-year-old daughter, Mila.
He said: “Our daughter Mila became the sole reason to get out of bed each morning.
“Despite the pain and heartbreak, we had to keep going for her.”
They also now have a two-year-old son called Harvey, whom he described as their “rainbow” baby.
After a while of suffering, he decided to raise money for the ICU that looked after Archie in St Mary’s Children hospital, Manchester.
After struggling for months he used the motivation to raise more than £11,000, completing various challenges with the help of friends.
As he continued: “We were invited down to the hopsital as a family, and they showed us a new state-of-the-art incubator with the money we had raised.
“It was a great day and felt really good.”
He eventually found the charity StrongMen while planning to do the Three Peaks challenge.
He joined the StrongMen event called Weekenders, which provides men with the opportunity to share their individual experiences with one another as they embrace the outdoors.
He said: “It’s a brotherhood of quiet, mutual understanding of grief, hurt and pain, that nobody ever wants to end up in.
“I was really surprised at how comforting it was to meet strangers. It was a good feeling of everyone knowing what you had been through without talking.”
The group, which meets regularly, has already raised £17,000 through the Kilimanjaro trip on the Strongmen JustGiving page.
StrongMen CEO and co-founder Efrem Brynin said: “The funds will be used to help support our Weekenders through 2025.
“The support of the community through these events helps to sustain all the participants as we move forward.
“Without this support men will suffer in silence.
“Grief can cause severe emotional and physical health conditions which are often overlooked and even ignored, especially in men.”
The team of 20 will start their attempt to summit the volcano, Mount Kilimanjaro from Thursday October 3.
Efrem offered advice to those in need, saying: “Keep going, keep talking and reach out for specialist support when you need it.”
More information on the climb can be found through the link here.
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