What does it mean when you feel more yourself after losing someone you loved?

This feeling can confuse you. You're supposed to feel broken, smaller, diminished—right? But sometimes loss cracks you open in a way that lets you finally breathe. You feel the absence sharply, and in that sharpness, you also feel clarity. Space. A return to something buried. Mirabai experienced this. Her love for Krishna was devotion, yes, but it was also a lens through which she examined herself—her desires, her contradictions, her refusal to be contained. When she couldn't live that love conventionally, she didn't shrink. She became more radically herself. Her grief became her freedom. Sometimes a relationship holds us in a shape we're not meant to stay in. Sometimes we're so focused on loving someone else that we've stopped listening to our own heart. The end of that love, as devastating as it is, can be a return to yourself. This doesn't mean the relationship was wrong or you didn't really love them. It means you're complex. You can have loved genuinely and also be relieved of the weight of it. You can grieve and expand at the same time. Notice both. Don't let guilt over the expansion silence the grief—or vice versa. You contain multitudes.