How do I know if what I'm feeling after someone's death is normal grief or something else?

Grief doesn't have a single shape. Mirabai knew this—she wrote about love and loss as inseparable, the way devotion breaks open when its object disappears. What you're feeling is probably normal, even if it feels strange or contradictory. Grief can be relief. It can be anger one hour and numbness the next. You might feel closer to the person or more abandoned. All of this lives in the territory of ordinary grief. What matters is whether you're able to eat, sleep, or find small moments of function, even if they're fragile. Whether you have someone you can talk to without judgment. Whether, slowly, the acute moments of pain start to have more space around them. If you're having thoughts of harming yourself, or if months have passed and nothing feels different—if you're completely alone with this—that's when you might benefit from talking to someone trained in grief. There's no shame in that. Sometimes grief needs a guide, especially if the death was sudden, violent, or if you had a complicated relationship with the person. For now, trust that what you're feeling is real and that you're not breaking. You're just being broken open. There's a difference.