Why does grief come back in waves instead of getting better in a straight line?

Because grief isn't a problem to solve. It's a relationship that keeps changing shape. You might wake up one morning and think you've moved on, and then a song plays, or the light hits your room a certain way, and you're back in it. This isn't failure. This is impermanence showing you something true. Mirabai's love for Krishna was so alive, so embodied, that it cycled through longing, ecstasy, devastation, grace—sometimes in a single poem. That wasn't instability. That was depth. Buddhist grief practice teaches you to stop expecting a finish line. Instead, you learn to recognize the *quality* of each wave. Some waves are sharp and active. Others are dull and heavy. Some come as subtle ache. You're not trying to make them stop—you're learning to swim in them differently. The waves don't mean you're broken or healing wrong. They mean you're human, that you loved something real, that impermanence is still doing its work on you. This is actually where freedom lives: not in being 'over it,' but in moving with it. Notice this week: which waves are softer than they were? That's not linear progress. That's deepening.