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Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

(bessstillman.substack.com)
461 points LaurenSerino | 1 comments | 18 Sep 25 14:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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graemep ◴[18 Sep 25 14:54 UTC] No.45290469[source]▶
There is a problem with rigid medical definitions. There is a huge difference between the author of this, a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent (as I did earlier this year). Of course it will take her far longer to recover (if at all).

I would guess her grief is not "disordered" though. As she says she functions - she works, she looks after her child, she looks after herself.

> We medicalize grief because we fear it.

Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.

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pizzathyme ◴[18 Sep 25 15:36 UTC] No.45290960[source]▶
I'm so sorry for your loss. I agree with what you say about "disordered", the language is hostile.

In a less morbid area, I feel the same way about ADHD - "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder". For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this.

In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?

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1. enobrev ◴[18 Sep 25 16:03 UTC] No.45291315[source]▶
I think there's something of a pendulum here, and I agree it's swayed too far to over-diagnosing ourselves. But I also think of my father who passed a couple years ago.

We didn't have much of a relationship. He had friends, but never close ones. He was weirdly mean or weirdly seclusive or weirdly awkward at times - and also incredibly intelligent and occasionally gracious and hilarious.

After he passed, I wondered if he might have been somewhere on the spectrum - but his peculiarities were simply ignored. A poor boy, in a poor urban neighborhood, with a dead father, being raised by an immigrant mother and immigrant siblings doesn't get diagnosed with much of anything - if they see doctors at all. And hey, he had a near photographic memory, and did great in school, so what's there to worry about?

It's always been "how he was", and that's probably ok, but I do wonder if he would have had a better or somehow different life if he knew more about _why_ he was the way he was.