the myth of closure

You’ve been sold a beautiful-sounding idea (we all have…), a comforting promise wrapped in soft edges, that one day, the curtain will fall, the last piece of the puzzle will click effortlessly into place, and the ache you’ve carried for so long will dissolve in a warm bath of perfect understanding. You picture that moment like a cinematic scene - the music swells, the truth is revealed, and you walk away lighter, freer, unburdened.

That’s closure.
Or so you’ve been told.

Closure paints the picture of a story that ends cleanly, with every loose thread tied into a perfect bow. It whispers that once you uncover “the reason why,” have “the final conversation,” or uncover “the truth,” you’ll be able to pack up your pain, place it neatly on a high shelf in the back of your mind, and never again feel its weight pressing on your chest.

What if, however, closure (at least the way you’ve been taught to think about it) is nothing more than a mirage on the horizon? What if this waiting, this endless hunt for the missing piece, isn’t part of your healing at all, rather it’s the very thing keeping you bound to the hurt you long to release?

This is more than acceptance. It’s a radical re-imagining of what it means to be free: the profound truth that you do not need every answer, every explanation, or every “why” in order to step forward, whole and unshackled.

Your mind is a master problem-solver, wired to seek patterns and connect dots. You crave certainty the way a parched mouth craves water instinctively, urgently, almost without thinking. You want to know why. Why did they leave? Why did this happen? Why wasn’t it different? That hunger for explanation is a survival instinct, designed to help you make sense of your experiences so you can feel safe again.

When something happens - a breakup, a betrayal, a loss - without a neat conclusion, it shakes you to your core. It’s like reading a book that’s missing its final chapters, the narrative hanging in mid-air. You imagine that if you could just fill in those missing pages, the storm in your chest would calm, the air would clear, and you could finally put the story down.

And yet here’s the subtle trap: in chasing that elusive “final answer,” you don’t actually move forward, you loop back. Over and over, you reopen the same pages, tracing the same lines, replaying the same scenes, hoping for a revelation that may never come. And each time you do, you don’t just remember the pain, you relive it. Your brain cannot tell the difference between a real-time experience and one vividly replayed in your mind. So, your chest tightens, your stomach knots, your heartbeat quickens as though the moment is happening again, right now.

This is why waiting for closure often keeps you stuck. Instead of loosening the past’s grip, the search for answers can tighten it, binding you even more deeply to the very thing you long to release.

Closure is so often painted as a single, definitive moment, a scene where something happens to you from the outside. Someone finally tells you the truth. A long-overdue apology lands in your inbox. A long-lost explanation finds its way to your ears. It’s sold as that moment when the air shifts, your shoulders drop, and your heart feels light again.

And yet what if that moment never comes?

What if the relationship ends without warning or explanation, leaving you replaying conversations in your head at 2 a.m.? What if the apology you hoped for never arrives, no matter how much you deserve it? What if the truth about why someone acted as they did remains locked away, known only to them, and they’ve chosen not to share it?

When you make closure a prerequisite for moving forward, you hand your healing over to someone else. You decide your peace depends on their words, their admissions, or their willingness to tell you what you want to know. That’s a dangerous gamble because not everyone is willing, ready, or capable of giving you the answers you crave.

And here’s the most unsettling part: even if you did get those answers, they might not do what you imagine. They might not take away the sting. They might not make the hurt vanish. In some cases, they could even leave you with more questions than before, deepening the ache instead of soothing it.

The truth is, closure (in the way you’ve been taught to see it) is often a moving target. Just when you think you’ve arrived, another “what if” or “why” rises to the surface. And in the meantime, the chase for it delays the real, necessary work of healing: choosing to set yourself free, whether the answers come or not.

What if, however, closure wasn’t something you had to wait for, rather something you could create for yourself? What if you didn’t need every last “why” neatly explained in order to finally feel whole?

This is where your power lives - in the decision that your healing, your peace, and your future are far too precious to put on hold while you wait for someone else to say the words you crave or take the action you think you need. You don’t have to stand still in the doorway of your life, watching the world move on without you, just because someone else hasn’t given you their version of the ending.

Choosing to move forward without full closure doesn’t mean pretending it never happened. It doesn’t mean pushing your feelings down or denying what’s true for you. It means you can look at the reality and say: I may never know exactly why. I may never hear the apology I wanted. And I can still choose to live freely.

When you release the need for every answer, you reclaim your freedom. You stop letting someone else’s silence or choices dictate your ability to move forward, and instead, you root that freedom firmly in your own.

In many spiritual traditions, the art of letting go is not just encouraged, it’s seen as essential to living with peace and purpose. It’s born from the deep knowing that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to fully control life’s outcomes. You can make choices, you can take action, however you cannot dictate every turn, every response, or every ending. From a soul perspective, every experience you’ve had, whether drenched in joy or heavy with pain, has been part of your unique path of growth, self-discovery, and expansion. These moments, even the ones you wish had been different, have shaped the wisdom you carry now.

Letting go without closure asks you to lean into that wisdom. It’s the quiet, courageous choice to trust that even without all the facts, without every “why” explained, you still hold within you everything you need to move forward. You’ve lived the experience. You’ve felt the emotions. You’ve learned what it came to teach you. The missing pieces don’t strip away what you’ve gained; they simply remind you that some parts of life aren’t meant to be tied up in a bow.

It’s like holding a sacred text in your hands and noticing a few lines are faded or missing. Those gaps don’t erase the truth written in the words you can see. They don’t take away the meaning, the beauty, or the guidance that’s still there for you. Your story is the same. The unanswered questions don’t diminish its value. They simply invite you to step forward carrying the wisdom you’ve gathered, rather than the weight of what you’ll never know.

Imagine this…

You’ve been wrapped in a deep, loving relationship, the kind that felt like it was part of your very skin, a constant heartbeat in your life. And then, without warning, it ends. No final conversation to make sense of it. No gentle parting words to soften the blow. No explanation to stitch together the pieces of your heart. Just silence. Just absence.

If you decide to wait for closure, you might find yourself trapped in a relentless loop, replaying every smile, every late-night conversation, every tiny shift in tone or glance. You analyse each memory as if it’s a puzzle piece that could reveal the truth if you just stared at it long enough. You spend days, months, maybe even years in that suspended place, caught between what was and what could have been, holding your breath until the “why” appears.

Yet, if you choose, bravely, to let go without every answer, the transformation is profound. The focus begins to shift, slowly at first, from the ache of loss to the richness of what was shared. You remember the warmth of their hand in yours, the laughter that left you breathless, the way they cracked open your heart so it could hold more love than you ever thought possible. You see the lessons that shaped you, the resilience you didn’t know you had, and the wisdom you now carry because of it. You keep those gifts, tenderly, and release the rest. And in doing so, you unshackle yourself, stepping forward into a life where love can meet you again, fresh and unshadowed, without the weight of unanswered questions clinging to your soul.

And then there’s the sting of betrayal - a wound of a different kind. After the heartbreak of a love that ended without explanation, imagine another blow coming from a place you least expected… A friend you trusted with your secrets. A colleague you counted on without hesitation. Then, one day, they acted in a way that blindsided you, a choice so out of step with the person you believed them to be that it left you standing in stunned silence. And still, to this day, their reasons remain a mystery.

If you hold yourself in place waiting for their explanation, you remain tangled in anger, confusion, and mistrust. Your mind keeps circling back to them, their actions, their choices, their “why.” You find yourself replaying moments like an unfinished scene, hoping for clarity that never arrives.

However, if you choose to let go without their words, the focus shifts. Your attention turns inward, toward what you now know. You begin to ask, What have I learned about boundaries? About listening to my intuition when it speaks softly? About trusting my own judgment, even when others fail me? In that shift, you step out of their story entirely and return to your own, stronger, wiser, and untethered from their silence.

When you release the need for every last answer, something remarkable begins to happen. You start to reclaim your energy - all that mental and emotional fuel you’ve been pouring into questions that have no satisfying conclusion. Instead of burning yourself out in endless loops, turning the same “why” over in your mind until it frays, you find that energy flowing back to you. You feel lighter. Clearer. Less exhausted by a story you’ve told yourself too many times.

Your healing begins to gather speed, too. By no longer picking at the wound, no longer peeling back the scab with late-night replays or imaginary conversations, you give it space to close. You stop living the hurt on repeat, which means it no longer has the same power to keep you raw and open. The pain doesn’t vanish instantly, however it does shift, becoming something you can move with instead of something that keeps you standing still.

And then, something even deeper takes root: your self-trust grows. You realise that you are capable of moving forward even without all the pieces. That you can navigate uncertainty without needing someone else’s version of the truth. In that realisation, you become freer, no longer tethered to the behaviour, words, or silence of another person. The past doesn’t disappear, however it loses its grip on the steering wheel of your life. It becomes part of your story, not the author of your next chapter.

The myth of closure convinces you that your peace lives somewhere outside of you, tucked away in another person’s apology, buried in an explanation you’ve yet to hear, or locked inside the way someone else chooses to see and understand you. It whispers that if you could just get that one missing piece, everything inside you would finally settle. And so, you wait, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, keeping your healing on pause until someone else delivers the words or actions you’ve decided will set you free.

However the truth is, peace doesn’t live in their hands. It lives in yours. It is not a prize someone else awards you; it is a choice you make from the inside out. When you begin to understand this, something shifts. You stop giving your power away to those who have already shown they may never offer the resolution you want. You stop measuring your readiness to move forward by what they do or don’t do. You reclaim the right to decide that your future begins here, not at some undefined point in time when the past is tied up neatly in a bow.

When you let go without all the answers, you stop waiting for life to make perfect sense before you dare to live it. You decide consciously and bravely, to live now, even if the “why” remains a mystery. In that choice, you don’t just set down the weight of the past; you swing the door wide open to a version of yourself that feels lighter, freer, and more unapologetically real. You begin to step into a life that is no longer shaped by what was done to you, instead by the power you have chosen to reclaim.

If you’ve been holding on waiting for an explanation, an apology, or the moment when everything finally “makes sense” (and let’s be honest… we all have) then it’s time to consider that your peace and your future might be too precious to keep on pause. Letting go without closure may feel impossible at first. The pull to keep digging for answers can be strong, especially when your heart is tangled in what-ifs and unanswered questions. However, the truth is, you can begin releasing the grip of the past without having every piece of the puzzle. And you can give yourself permission to start today by taking some powerful and practical steps.

One such powerful first step is to acknowledge what’s missing and accept that it may always be missing. This doesn’t mean you like it, approve of it, or agree with how it happened. It simply means you’re no longer holding your healing hostage to the arrival of something that may never come. From there, give yourself the gift of writing your own ending. Take a journal and imagine the closure you wish you had - the words you longed to hear, the truth you wanted to know. By putting it on paper, you reclaim control of the narrative, even if it’s just for you.

After this, turn your attention to the lessons. Ask yourself with intention, What has this taught me about myself, about love, about trust, about boundaries? Let your answers become the treasures you carry forward. Support this with rituals of release; symbolic acts that signal to your mind and body that you are ready to let go, such as burning a letter you’ll never send or placing a written list of grievances into running water to be carried away. Finally, shift your focus deliberately. Redirect your energy toward your present life, your future, and what you’re creating now. Let the past be a chapter in your story, not the place you continue to live.