Oh fuck, you're still sad? By Bess Stillman | Sep 18, 2025 Subtitle: Grief gets an expiration date. Just like us. --- Overview Bess Stillman, a physician and author, candidly narrates her experience dealing with grief after her husband Jake’s death one year prior. Despite the official timeline for "disordered grief," she reflects on how grief defies such neat categorization and timelines, describing it as a continuous, recursive process. --- Key Themes Personal Grief Experience Denial and Disbelief: Bess struggles to accept Jake's death fully—she still looks for signs him being around, expects texts or calls, and searches for his presence in everyday moments. Mental Model and Prediction Error: Neuroscience concept applied to grief—her brain's expectations of Jake clash with reality, causing continuous pain and the need to repeatedly adjust to his absence. Grief is Learning: Grief involves dismantling the mental model based on repeated reminders and experiences reinforcing Jake’s absence. Physical and Emotional Impact: Grief changes her brain and body, akin to amputation or phantom limb pain. She uses vivid metaphors comparing human grief to how some animals can regenerate lost parts. Medical Perspective on Grief The American Psychiatric Association defines “disordered grief” as grief lasting more than a year with symptoms such as emotional pain, numbness, disbelief, loneliness, avoidance, and difficulty reintegrating. Bess questions the arbitrary diagnostic timeline and the concept of “too much” grief. Despite ongoing pain, she functions well—raising her daughter, working, and managing daily life—challenging the notion that prolonged grief pathologizes normal human experience. Societal and Cultural Reflections Medicalization of Grief: The fear of pain leads to pathologizing grief, seeking diagnosis as a means to cure or fix suffering. Cultural Silence on Death: Modern society hides and sanitizes death, removing collective grieving rituals which historically made grief more visible and communal. Loneliness in Grief: After initial outpouring of support, the bereaved often face isolation as others move on with their lives. The Burden of Being "Too Much": Bess feels like a reminder of life’s randomness and mortality, causing discomfort in others and isolation in her grief. The Nature of Grief Grief is non-linear and deeply personal, recurring unpredictably. Moments of love, anger, bitterness, and sorrow weave into daily life. Time feels fractured; the world moves forward but her internal timeline feels frozen or slowed. Grief is described as a physics problem rather than illness — how to "catch up" to a world that continues moving while you feel stuck. --- Closing Reflections Bess acknowledges that while Jake will be dead forever, she is still alive, and grieving is living. She rejects the idea that grief is sickness, emphasizing she just "still feels love." The article invites readers to reconsider grief not as a condition to fix but as an intrinsic part of loving and losing. --- Comments Highlights Suze: Shares her similar experience after losing her husband in 2011; stresses that grief never goes away but life grows around it. She encourages embracing grief without shame and finding support groups. Sam: Expresses empathy and commitment to supporting Bess and Athena, shares personal moments of dreaming of Jake, and reflects on the persistent bond through grief. --- Additional Elements An audio version of the post is available. Visuals include a poignant photograph related to the post's theme. There is a call to subscribe and engage further with Bess Stillman’s writing on grief and life. --- This intimate and insightful essay explores the complexities of grief from a deeply personal and medical viewpoint, challenging societal expectations and encouraging compassion for the