Why does grief from my mental illness feel like the deepest love I've ever known?

Mirabai wrote in her own grief, and people sometimes mistake that rawness for weakness. But there's something true in what you're sensing: the pain of mental illness, especially when it costs you relationships or the life you imagined, can open a door to tenderness you didn't know existed. Grief cracks you open. It removes the small talk and the protective layers. What's left is exposure — to your own longing, to what actually mattered, to how much you wanted something to work. That exposure *is* a form of devotion, even though it hurts. Mirabai knew this. She grieved Krishna so completely that her grief became indistinguishable from love. She didn't transcend her pain — she moved through it with her whole self. The trap is mistaking suffering for depth. Not everything that hurts is spiritual. But when you grieve what your illness has taken — time, relationships, the version of yourself you thought you'd be — that grief is real data about what you love. Sit with it. Write it. Say it out loud if you can. The depth you're feeling? It's not the illness doing something beautiful to you. It's *you*, your heart, recognizing what matters. That's always been there. The grief is just showing it to you.