Closure is an unhelpful goal in grief because it requires you to stop being human.
None of us is capable of that.
Implying that it is possible or a worthwhile goal to simply close the book on a person,
a relationship, a season of your life, a part of yourself, suggests that you are capable
of a black and white compartmentalization that just isn't a thing that humans are capable
of doing.
[Music]
Hi there, Grave Growers, and welcome back to another episode of Grave Prower.
I am so honored to be here with you today, as always.
If you've been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back, and if you
are new to me and my work, hello.
My name is Shelby Fercitya.
I am a grief coach, a three-time author, and the founder of an online community called
Life After Loss Academy, where I have helped thousands of grieving people stop feeling
lost, stuck, broken, and alone, and start building lives they love from the lives that
loss forced them to live.
I joke around here that I cover not just death-related losses, but also divorce and major
diagnosis, the 3D's, death-devores diagnosis, as well as any other major loss that changes
your life.
Here on Grave Growers, we believe that grief is not something to get over, it is something
that we grow with, and that by treating grief less like a problem to be solved, and more
like an invitation to live more deeply, we can create meaningful lives that are rich
with all the memories that we carry, the struggles that we faced, and the preciousness
of what it is to be alive right here, and right now.
Before I get into today's episode about closure being a garbage myth, a reminder that released
I for my third book, of course I'm here right now, three actually helpful things to say to
someone grieving is coming up in less than one month on March 31.
This little guidebook teaches you how to support a grieving person in your life with the
best free tool that any of us has, and that is our words, so that you will never enter
another conversation with someone who's grieving wondering, "What on earth do I say
to support them?"
As an author, pre-orders are super helpful when it comes to getting the book seen by bookstores
and the marketing powers that be, so you can find a link to pre-order, of course I'm here
right now, in the show notes.
If you have already pre-ordered the book, thank you so much.
You could submit your receipt number, no photos required, from bookshop, Amazon, Barnes
and Noble, or your local indie bookstore on my website, to access a free six week book
club where we will read, of course I'm here right now, cover to cover, and discuss it
together as a group.
This book club kicks off in mid-April, so make sure you have the book in your hands and
submit your pre-order receipt before then.
And lastly, if you would like to celebrate the launch of this book with me, I would love
to see you at one of two launch parties.
The first is taking place the eve before the book debuts into the world on March 30th here
in Chicago.
We will celebrate with an author talk and interview with my friend and podcast host Emily
Washkowek and treats that are themed for the book.
Why yes, I did get an entire tray of treats that match the book cover.
Of course I'm here right now.
Dress code is white and blue to match the book and you will receive a book along with your
ticket that I can sign when you come.
The next launch party is the day the book comes out March 31st on YouTube in the evening,
so no matter where in the world you live, you can tune in to hear more about the clients
and interactions that inspired this book about what to say to someone who's grieving, plus
hear me read excerpts live.
And of course the replay of that virtual event will be available for free if you can't attend
live.
You can save your spot for both of these launch parties at the link in the show notes for
this episode.
Now let's get into one of my all time favorite things to whine about and complain about in
grief world, which is that closure is not a helpful goal for anyone in grief and how to
heal without it.
Maybe you have heard the phrases floating out in the world or directed directly at you,
you just need to find closure.
Or once you get closure, you won't feel so bad or simply inquiring, have you found closure?
Yet.
Closure is one of the most common words used to describe healing from grief, but it is also
one of the most harmful in my personal opinion.
Whether you are navigating one of the three D's death divorce diagnosis or another loss
like an estrangement, a job loss, pet loss that meant your life did not go the way you thought
it was going to.
I bet somewhere, some way, somehow you have been told that healing requires closure.
There is this myth that if you just have the right ritual, the right conversation, the
right mindset about your loss that you will finally be done grieving and permanently be
able to release griefs sticky hold on your heart.
You are probably told that if you achieve closure, the pain of your loss will feel wrapped
up and resolved and complete.
But experience with grief and more than a decade of supporting grieving people has taught
me that there is no such thing as closure, which leads me to ask, what if closure is not
the goal of grief at all?
So in this episode, I am challenging one of society's most accepted ideas about grief
and offering you something more compassionate and more honest and frankly more sustainable
instead.
If you are sick of chasing the idea of closure, this episode is for you.
So I want to start off by talking about what is closure exactly.
When people talk about closure and grief, they usually mean one of a few different things.
This could be a sense of emotional resolution.
It could be feeling at peace with what happened, whatever the hell that means.
This could be no longer feeling intense pain, which is a goal for many gravers.
It could also be being able to air quotes here, move on without looking back.
To me, the word and the idea of closure both imply a sort of finality.
Something has been finished, something has been done, a sealed door.
It suggests that there is this point where grief should be completed, like a task that
you check off the list.
But we all know that grief does not work that way.
If it is not a problem to be solved or even a chapter of a book to close, it is a reflection
of love or attachment or meaning or identity and our relationship to all of those things
does not simply end because we want it to or because other people tell us that they should.
There is a sort of invisible pressure that the idea of closure puts on to grieving people.
In the work that I teach on this podcast, grief grower, every article I've ever written
talks about how the losses that we face haven't impact on our lives forever.
Sure we may not be sad forever, but we will be grieving forever.
We will identify as gravers.
We will be people who have lost someone or something forever.
This might look like remembering a loved one who died through rituals or stories.
This could look like taking lessons about relationships that have ended into future relationships
after a divorce or break up.
This could be adjusting your life to accommodate a major diagnosis or simply living with the
understanding that grief is an inherent and permanent part of being human.
The idea and the misive, the to-do task that you should get closure after a loss often
creates this invisible but heavy pressure.
It is pressure to feel better faster.
It is pressure to forgive or forget maybe before you're ready.
It is pressure to stop talking about the person or the relationship that you lost and
it is pressure to tidy up something that feels like it's not tidy.
It will never be done.
It will never be finished.
So when closure doesn't come after a loss, a lot of grieving people assume and kind of rightly
so that they're doing grief wrong.
But what I want to reassure you of if closure has been something that you are chasing is
that you are not.
The problem is not that you can't find closure.
It is that closure is not a good goal in grief.
Here's why.
Closure is an unhelpful goal in grief for one simple reason and that is it requires you
to be in human.
I'll say that again.
Closure is an unhelpful goal in grief because it requires you to stop being human.
None of us is capable of that.
Implying that it is possible or a worthwhile goal to simply close the book on a person,
a relationship, a season of your life, a part of yourself, suggests that you are capable
of a black and white compartmentalization that just isn't a thing that humans are capable
of doing.
When I picture closure as a concept, I see like a closed box label of grief that is like
all tied up with a beautiful bow and put over there never to be opened again.
But people are messier and more fluid than a tidy box with a ribbon.
We are not capable of tying up our pasts with a pretty bow, putting it over there and moving
on as if nothing has ever happened to us.
As a matter of fact, so many grievous that I work with in life after loss academy and beyond
who have faced major losses do not want to live in that kind of segregated world where grief
lives over there and we live over here.
Grieving people will often say things like, "How am I supposed to pretend that my marriage
never happened?
Why would I want to leave my dead sibling in the past?"
Even if I wanted to forget the abuse I endured, I can't.
I carry its impact with me every day.
Or that job changed my life.
I will always remember the skills that I learned there.
If your grief is ongoing, you are not a failure.
If your grief is ongoing, that is proof that your loss mattered deeply or that it impacted
your life in a significant way.
It is also proof that you are human.
And in a society that says, "You need to let it go.
You need to move on.
You need to find closure."
I know and you know because you're listening to this episode that healing is not about letting
go or moving on or boxing up your grief.
It is about learning how to carry grief with you each and every day, folding, integrating,
grief into your life instead of insisting it's sit over there in the corner.
When we make closure, the goal of our grief experience, we set ourselves up for an impossible
standard.
We ask our nervous system to forget what happened.
We demand our hearts, amputate, attachment, and renounce attachment to everything in everyone
we have ever been tied to.
And we force our memories to quiet down and shush on command.
And once again, that is not how humans operate, especially after a loss.
Research in psychology also supports this.
There is something called the continuing bonds theory, which is widely accepted in modern
grief research.
And it tells us something wonderful.
Healthy grieving does not require severing ties.
Instead of detaching, which is kind of what closure demands of us, many people adapt to
grief by forming a new kind of relationship with who or what they have lost.
So for instance, they might talk to a person who has died or create meaningful rituals
on grief, anniversaries, or every day.
They might carry values or lessons forward with them into the future, or they might make
decisions with a loved one or a historical event, a loss in mind.
They honor the impact of their past relationship as they move forward into the future.
And this is not a denial of grief.
Again, like closure would insist you do, it is a folding in, an integration of grief,
known in many grief circles, as I've said it already, integration.
And the process of integration in life after loss is so very different and honestly so
much healthier than closure.
Here's the problem with asking.
How do I get closure in the aftermath of a major loss?
So when someone types into a search bar like how to get closure, what they often mean is
how do I stop hurting like this?
Or how do I stop replaying what happened?
Or how do I live with unanswered questions?
Or how do I move forward without betraying the person or the thing that I lost?
And I want you to notice something important in all of these questions.
I wonder if you can guess what it is.
I'm going to pause for two seconds and see if you can guess.
Can you get there?
None of these questions actually requires you to get closure.
How do I stop hurting?
How do I stop replaying?
How do I live with unanswered questions?
How do I move forward without betraying who or what I lost?
None of those are actually about closure.
What they require instead of closure is skills, grief skills, grief support, lots and lots
of self-compassion and most importantly, permission to grieve in a way that doesn't demand
the closing of a chapter.
When you search for closure, whether on Google or elsewhere, it can be a form of self-rejection
in your grief.
So that could sound like if I were stronger, I would be over this by now.
Or if I were grieving right, I would feel resolved.
Or if I could just find the missing piece, I would finally feel okay.
It takes all this pressure to find closure and turns it into shame on top of you.
But there are many losses that do not come with neat explanations or tidy resolutions.
Some relationships do not get final conversations.
Some endings are abrupt or ambiguous or unfair.
Even if your loss was neat and tidy, a long life well-lived or relationship where both
people are able to separate with no hard feelings, that sounds like magic to me.
Grief still comes along for the ride.
Are this of how your relationship ended, there are still things to mourn and futures lost
and identities changed?
Closure suggests certainty, but grief lives and has always set up house in uncertainty.
And healing from grief is not about eliminating uncertainty or like erasing that thing out
of your life.
It is about increasing your capacity to live alongside or with uncertainty.
So this is what you've been waiting for in this episode.
How do I heal without closure after a loss?
Because of closure is not the goal, then what is?
In my online community life after loss academy, which is open 365 days a year, I teach something
called the Five Step grief Method and you can listen to past episodes of grief grower to
learn about the grief method, what's included, all that jazz.
One of the most powerful steps, especially in conversations about closure, is the third
step, the letter I, into grade.
And in my after loss academy, I teach that integration means weaving your loss, folding your loss into
your life story, instead of trying to cut it out or compartmentalize it and put it over
there.
And so here is what healing without closure can look like through the lens of the grief
method that I teach inside of life after loss academy.
That stands for G, ground, R, release, I integrate, E, establish, F, foster.
And this is the series of lessons that I teach in life after loss academy.
So first let's talk about grounding, feeling safe and secure and stable in the world again.
Before you can fold grief into your life, you have to feel safe enough to experience it.
So when you're grounding, instead of finding closure, this looks like creating rituals
and routines that help you feel centered and stable in the midst of uncertainty.
Any grounding practice stabilizes your nervous system so that it doesn't feel like grief
is running the show of your life.
And it also, this is my favorite part about grounding.
It gives you a secure and stable place to come back to in all the seasons of your life
when grief gets overwhelming.
I'm thinking like a major milestone getting activated in the grocery store, seeing someone
who doesn't know your person is dead.
For example, and you're like, I am V overwhelmed.
I need to go back to what feels safe and stable.
That is why we practice grounding first.
And you do not need closure to find ways to feel steady in grief.
You just need anchors that support you as you keep moving forward alongside your grief.
Number two, release and life after loss academy.
Part of integration is releasing the life that you thought you would have.
This is the part that people often confuse with closure, but releasing or letting go if
you want to use like how society would phrase it.
This is not about erasing what happened or never thinking of your person again or never
considering your loss folded into your life again.
It is giving all the emotions of your grief, a compassionate and healthy way to be expressed.
So when we talk about releasing inside life after loss academy, I walk you through how to
grieve the future you imagined, the version of yourself that existed before, and the roles
and identities in your life that have shifted or changed or died as a result of loss.
And I often say that you may need to practice releasing again and again and again.
We let go in our lives many, many times.
This is not because something is wrong with you.
It's because grief is not linear.
It cannot be contained and it keeps showing up in different ways and in different flavors
across your life.
The third module in life after loss academy is called integrate and this is where we talk
about how do we fold in our loss in our life through the lens of continuing bonds.
So instead of asking how do I find closure, you might ask instead how do I stay connected
to my loss in a way that feels nourishing instead of excruciating.
We've talked about this a little bit before in this episode, but this could look like creating
rituals on dates that are meaningful to you or speaking to your person when you need
some guidance or living out shared values like empathy or humor or education or displaying
photos or keepsakes intentionally in your home or in a place where you can appreciate them
or making decisions that honor what mattered the most in your relationship.
You are not required huge underlying here.
You are not required to detach from your loss in order to heal from it.
In fact, you are allowed to carry grief forward in ways that mean something to you.
You might think I'm stopping here, but I'm not because I want to talk about the fourth
module in life after loss academy, which is called establish and this is where I talk about
doing grief with other people.
The first three modules, ground release and integrate, are all about how do you do grief
with yourself? How do you as a grieving person exist and survive in the world?
The fourth module acknowledges that grief never happens in a vacuum and we are always doing
grief in the presence of other people, friends, family, co-workers and they all have something
to think or say about our grief.
Some of them are supportive.
Some of them are not supportive.
One of the biggest things we do in the established module of life after loss academy is
talk about establishing boundaries around closure, culture, say that five times fast.
One of the most exhausting parts of grief is managing the fact that other people are uncomfortable
with the fact that your grief keeps going.
There's nothing to do with them.
There's everything to do with you, but they don't like that.
When someone says, "Don't you think it's time for closure?"
Or maybe you just need to move on.
You are allowed to respond with something like, "I'm not looking for closure.
I am learning how to live with loss."
In life after loss academy, we invent all kinds of scripts and all kinds of boundaries and
all kinds of protective mechanisms, tools that you can use in conversations with people
to say, "I am not interested in doing grief that way.
I am doing grief this way."
And establishing those kind of boundaries protects your healing process from the societal
pressure to find closure or pretty up your grief or set your grief over there and never
look at it again.
It is one of my all-time favorite parts of working with grievers inside the course and
the community.
Finally, the last step, foster, is all about how we cultivate or foster a long-term relationship
with grief.
Because if grief is not a chapter to be closed or an unpleasant part of yourself to
wrestle into a box with a bow and put over there, what is it?
Inside life after loss academy, I teach that grief is a lifelong companion.
Sometimes it's loud, sometimes it's quiet, but it is always present that accompanies
you comes along for the ride for the rest of your life.
And when you stop trying to push grief into the tiny box of closure, you free up all of
your energy to consider how you and grief might co-create something together.
This could be meaning, this could be purpose, this could be connection, this could be joy
even, as you find your way forward.
So instead of living in spite of your grief, you learn how to live alongside of it and
that can open up hundreds of doors.
You may not have even considered before opportunities for hope or peace or healing that don't ignore
your grief, but instead fold it in along the way.
All without closure, you can find ways to ground, through grief, to release grief's heaviest
emotions, to integrate your grief into your life, to establish grief honoring relationships
with other people, and to foster a long-term relationship with grief.
It is pretty incredible if I do say so myself, and I'll say this again at the end of the
episode, but if you're interested in joining us in Life After Loss Academy, the doors are
always open and you can join us at any time by checking out the link in the show notes.
Before we go today, I want to give you some FAQ on closure and grief, just sort of a rapid
fire.
Common questions people ask about closure and grief, and my thoughts about them.
First one is, do you ever get closure after a death or loss?
And what I will say to that is like some people experience moments of peace or acceptance
or resolution.
There are people who are living with loss, but these are not permanent states, peace, acceptance
resolution.
They also do not erase the love or the longing that existed before.
So instead of closure, many grieving people experience and choose to practice integration,
which is the ability to live fully while still missing and caring for who or what was lost.
So I don't think it's possible to get closure because closure is not real.
It demands we be robots, but you can find other ways of living with loss that are dare I
say as comfortable or even more comfortable or meaningful or fulfilling than the process
of trying to find closure maybe for you.
Number two is closure necessary for healing?
No.
Very shortly said, no, there is no evidence that emotional closure is required for healthy
adaptation after loss.
Many many people heal by maintaining ongoing bonds and finding meaning again, not by detaching
completely from their loss.
If you would like to learn more on this, there is an incredible article from what's your
grief.
You can search for continued bonds on their website and there is, I'd say a good mix of
like five to ten different support articles about continuing bonds theory and it is a great
resource to learn more about the concept of continuing bonds.
If you're really excited about that.
Number three, what if I never got to say goodbye?
This is one that like hits me in the heart because I did not get to say goodbye to one of
the people that I lost that I talk about often my best friend Tammy.
This is one of the most painful parts of so, so many people's losses.
You may not have had the goodbye you wanted.
You may not have had one at all whether this is surrounding a death related loss or a relationship
breakup.
What I will say is that healing can still happen.
What goodbye may never get to happen, but you can create rituals surrounding the goodbye
like letters or rituals or conversations spoken out loud.
And the absence of like a tie it up with a bow final moment does not disqualify you from
being able to heal from grief and loss.
It is still possible to integrate your grief into your life to fold it in and to rebuild
after loss without that final tie it up with a bow moment.
Therefore why on earth do people push closures so much?
Said in short this is a larger conversation, but the short is because grief makes people
uncomfortable.
And our society still separates both legally and socially grief from normal life.
If you'd like to have a good example of that you can look at bereavement leave policy in
the workplace or the idea that it's not quote unquote appropriate to discuss grief over
dinner.
I think that the world that we live in right now likes the idea of closure because it
gives us the illusion of control.
It makes grief feel contained and less threatening.
And when someone tells you to seek closure they may be trying to reduce their own discomfort
with grief and not necessarily support you in your grieving process.
I think grief would be so much easier for everyone in society things if we could just be done.
But that is not how grief works.
Last question here what should I try to find instead of closure?
As I mentioned before in this episode what you are seeking is steadiness, compassion, integration,
support from people who get it and who understand that grief and love and healing can all coexist.
If you are looking for a place to start life after loss academy has on demand video lessons
that take you through the five step grief method GRIEF for folding loss into your life.
Many of them also have journaling exercises and you will also get once a week grief coaching
online with me and the replays are always available if you cannot attend life.
What I want to offer to you today is this, if closure feels effing impossible there is nothing
wrong with you.
Your grief is not asking to be closed.
I do not know of a grief that has ever asked to be closed.
Your grief is asking just about all the time to be seen and recognized and honored.
There is a part of you I bet I put money on this that understands that healing is not about
sealing the door or tying up your loss with a bow.
It is about building a larger life around everything that you lost.
This kind of life is one where grief is not shut away or quarantined over there but has
a place of meaning at the ever growing table of your existence in this world.
Next invitation here, if you are ready to stop chasing closure and start learning how to
integrate your grief into a meaningful, steady and hopeful future that is exactly what we
do in life after loss academy.
You do not need to be done remembering.
You do not need to erase what happened and you do not need closure in order to heal.
You need tools and support and a clear framework that allows grief to continue to exist while
you rebuild alongside of it.
And that kind of healing is absolutely possible.
I have seen it now for more than five years inside life after loss academy.
You can learn more about the community, read student reviews and join me when you are
ready at Shelby for Scythia.com and under the little work with me tab there you will see
life after loss academy or you can check out the link in the show notes.
Closure is not real.
Pass it on.
That's all for this episode of Grief Grower.
Thank you so very much for joining me today.
If you are looking for grief support beyond this show you can find free workshops, blog articles
and my new What's Your Grief Supporters Strength Quiz at Shelby for Scythia.com/links.
And if you'd like to get support from me for your unique loss experience, join us in
life after loss academy, my online course and community.
I'll walk you through my five step grief framework, GRIEF, ground release, integrate, establish
and foster.
And you can get live coaching from me every single week to answer your questions.
Replays are always available if you can't attend life.
It is just $33 a month to join or $22 a month if you are marginalized or financially stressed
griver, you can cancel at any time.
If this podcast felt validating, comforting, educational or otherwise helpful to you, please
subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.
And be sure to share grief grower with a friend because you never know what someone you love
is going through.
Grief grower is hosted by me Shelby for Scythia and the theme music is composed by Addy Goldstein.
Until next time, grief grower, I see you.
I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world.
And I love you.
Because even through grief, we are growing.
[Music]