Instagram DM from N:
“How do you figure out what your ‘closure’ is after assault?”
My answer:
To me, closure is a cousin of perfection. Unattainable because the goal posts keep moving. They move because we learn and grow. We often fall short when we aim for closure. And try as we might, we can't effort our way into it. We can’t effort our way to closure because the control we have over our feelings and outcomes is limited.
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But therapist Pauline Boss says something that I like which I have adopted in my own world to deal with things that I cannot change. She says, “I think we can become comfortable with what we cannot solve,” .
I prefer the idea of "getting comfortable" with something instead of “acceptance” or “closure”. Getting comfortable with something feels healing to me. I like the open-endedness of it. The fact that there is no timeline. No box to check. Productivity and efforting are irrelevant. But I also like the idea implied in "getting comfortable”; it feels like a journey not a destination. As I have said before, trauma survivors need the journey instead of a finish line. Damn hard of course because we rather be busy and get it "done"! But that's not possible with "getting comfortable."
I hope this helps in some way. Thanks for writing, N.