The man who stayed.
At 42, Paul Folino Gallo was widowed by the sudden death of his wife, Elysha – an experience that reshaped his understanding of grief, masculinity, and what it means to be the parent who stayed. He is the father of Giorgio and Valentino, and a barrister practising in Sydney.
His debut memoir, Remembering Elysha, explores early widowhood from a father’s perspective while tracing the generational patterns that shape how men grieve. Reflecting on his own family history – including his father’s childhood after the violent loss of his own father at nine – Paul considers what we inherit emotionally, and what we choose to change.
Moving between the quiet logistics of survival, the ache of anniversaries, and the sacred ordinariness of school lunches and bedtime rituals, his writing explores life in the shadow of absence. It is as much about breaking silence as it is about bearing loss.
‘In the courtroom, I’m trained to bring precision to complex human stories. In writing this book, I tried to bring that same discipline to the emotional landscape of grief – to give language to what so many feel and struggle to express.’
He writes for those who were never shown how to grieve, and for the children watching them learn. Paul lives in Sydney, New South Wales.
