Closure – A Different Perspective

Are you Seeking Closure – Let’s Talk After you Read This!

Many people look for “closure” or resolution when a significant life event, trauma or loss has occurred. Closure often comes with the belief that the hurtful event can be moved on from, or will be somehow made OK once closure is achieved.

Let’s unpack this topic.

Resolution

Often, we think resolution puts things right. How can that happen when the wrong is committed, the hurt is present and the solution for repair doesn’t change the facts, as is the case with betrayal?

Resolution is not about fixing or making the problem go away.

Resolution is not about changing the events.

Resolution often has tones of victim blaming rather than perpetrator accountability.

Moving On is Vastly Different from Resolution

The message of moving on will allow space for the painful echoes of the experience, yet it is vastly different from resolution. Moving on is for the victim, not the perpetrator. It is agentic. It is not for the perpetrator to act on her to achieve silence or control the narrative. 

Moving on is a mindset. It is a choice to adjust how you hold the story about the events and harm caused, not to say they are OK, or didn’t happen, but that they do not hold you prisoner.

Moving on teaches us to redistribute the weight of how the harm is carried. This is the only way we can go forward as human beings. To not redistribute and move forward, we stay stuck in pain.

Closure, It’s Not What We Think it is — Story time

Thirteen years ago, I walked away from the home where I raised my children to get away from my abusive husband. This year, I sold that home. Before I passed it along, I had to clear out years of memories I left behind. 

I thought this project would bring me that hoped for closure.  It did not. In fact, what I learned from this experience was not at all what I expected. 

Here’s what I learned.

• Being back in that home, even under the current circumstances wasn’t reclaiming. I didn’t need to reclaim anything. I was still present within myself. What I owned never changed that truth.

• Finding the physical pieces that had been only memories for so many years was not a win – I still had to make decisions about these items to save, keep, toss or sell. 

• Seeing pictures and letters written back and forth between my husband and myself caused me to have to sit in the experiences all over again, asking questions I’d long since set aside.

• Both possessions and memories have weight. Material things require a physical labor to move that makes the emotional labor to shift the items back into mental storage an added difficulty.

• Reclaiming possessions doesn’t change what happened. It only changes when I choose how I am going to carry the memory of the experience.

• Hurt and trauma are part of life. It’s my choice if it keeps me stuck or if I go forward. That must happen regardless of the outcome and timing of the event. It is up to me how and when it happens.

What we believe about our experiences matters. When we are waiting for the healing to come from an outside source, we give away our agency and choice to make improvements for our well-being. 

Psychological well-being happens as we choose to live fully, regardless of the circumstances. 

The stoic, Epictetus, taught that our responses to life events is what really matters. We can have the most challenging life while still possessing the greatest internal peace – or we can have the opposite. 

Choose Peace – Not Closure

The idea of closure can have the additional context of the issue no longer being a problem. For some situations in life, this may be accurate. It is not true for abuse (at least in our opinion). The abuse happened. It happened to us. We didn’t cause it. We cannot control it. We cannot cure it. We can, however, learn how to choose peace despite it all. 

Peace is a mindset; it is not a static state of life. Peace is feeling settled within yourself. It is not having everything and everyone around you calm. It can, at times, require great courage and wrestle to maintain, but the impacts to you personally are worth the effort.

Abusive husbands can rage while a wife remains firm in her resolve to not give him her peace. Closure may give you the sense of something in time ending, but peace goes with you – regardless of the outcome.

Endings and Changes

Relationships end. Situations or events end. People move on or pass on. Those left behind must go on – regardless. To not go on – even when it is difficult to do so, robs you of your opportunities to grow as a human being. 

Life is a series of steps, up and down; forward and backward. Steps no one can walk but you. If you are in charge of your steps – which way do you want to go? Will you give up walking until the day is perfect, or will you go forward even in the storms of life?

Forward is a Mindset Shift

Moving forward after betrayal or abuse happens when we do the following.

• Own the story in a way that doesn’t keep you stuck waiting for the abuser to fix things for you
• Own the anger and hurt as a motivational energy that moves you forward – not to sit in a grievance waiting for justice that might not happen

These values do not erase or justify the abuse. They are simply a means to an end that you own.

Locus of Control

In psychology, we use the term, “locus of control” as a way of visualizing what is in the power of the person and what is outside the person’s power or control.  The graph below is a sample of this principle. 

In spite of all the trauma and betrayal, we have control over how we assess and manage our life. This is true, not because we are the cause of the abuse, but because we are the ones that carry the meaning of it and the solutions for healing. 

What Will You Bring to Your Life?

Kahil Gibran taught, “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”

There will never be any justification for a husband to power over or coerce his wife. There is evil in the covert abuse that is targeted upon a woman by the man who proclaims to love her. This truth is as accurate as is the truth that even in this devastating pain, we have the solutions for healing – much of which comes from the meaning we make of the experience. 

Give adversity a place to be the super-power it was intended to be. Resilience is not found in avoidance. It is found in pushing through hardship with purpose.

Living Well

If you are looking for a way to move beyond some of the traditional views on healing, join us in the Community where we are offering a membership course packed with potential for living well.