Grief of Fulfillment

I’ve been looking through a few old folders in which I collect phrases, images, and articles that mean something to me. Check this one from Christina Baldwin, spoken at the Circle Practicum in August 2015.

“There is a kind of grief when you find what you want. It is the grief of fulfillment.”

I’ve seen this kind of grief often, though have not named it so, when people experience a moment of meaning in how they are being together. It’s an awareness of what is. It’s an awareness of what could have been all this time. It’s a grief, perhaps, for the walls of protection that many of us have built around us, thinking them necessary, yet realizing that they aren’t.

Grief has many reaches.