Why Closure Is an Unhelpful Goal in Grief—and How to Heal Without It
Grief can make reading hard. Want to listen to this article instead? Find its corresponding podcast episode here.
“You just need to find closure.”
“Once you get closure, you won’t feel so bad.”
“Have you found closure yet?”
Closure. It’s one of the most common words used to describe healing from grief, but it’s also one of the most harmful.
Whether you’re navigating a death, divorce, diagnosis, estrangement, or any other loss that meant your life didn’t go the way you thought it would, I bet you’ve been told that healing requires closure.
There’s a myth that if you just have the right ritual, conversation, or mindset about your loss that you’ll finally be “done” grieving—and permanently be able to release grief’s sticky hold on your heart.
You’re told that if you achieve closure, the pain of your loss will feel wrapped up. Resolved. Complete.
But experience—and more than a decade of supporting grievers—has taught me that there’s no such thing as closure.
Which led me to ask:
What if closure isn’t the goal of grief at all?
In this article, I’m challenging one of the most societally accepted ideas about grief—and offering you something more compassionate, more honest, and more sustainable instead.
If you’re sick of chasing closure, this blog is for you.
What Is “Closure” in Grief?
When people talk about closure in grief, they usually mean:
A sense of emotional resolution
Feeling “at peace” with what happened
No longer feeling intense pain
Being able to “move on” without looking back
The word and the idea of closure both imply a sort of finality. An ending. A sealed door. It suggests there is a point where grief should be completed—like a task you check off a list.
But grief doesn’t work that way.
Grief is not a problem to solve or even a chapter of a book to close. It is a reflection of love, attachment, meaning, and identity. And our relationship to those things don’t simply end because we want them to—or because other people tell us they should.
The Invisible Pressure That Closure Puts Onto Grieving People
The losses that we face have an impact on our lives forever.
Sure, we may not be sad forever, but we will be grieving forever.
This might look like remembering a loved one who died through rituals or stories, taking lessons about relationships into future relationships after a divorce or breakup, adjusting your life to accommodate a diagnosis, or simply living with the understanding that grief is an inherent part of being human.
The idea that you should “get closure” after a loss often creates an invisible but heavy pressure:
Pressure to feel better faster
Pressure to forgive or forget before you’re ready
Pressure to stop talking about the person or relationship you lost
Pressure to tidy up something that feels anything but tidy
So when closure doesn’t come, you may assume you’re doing grief wrong.
I’m here to reassure you, you’re not.
The problem isn’t that you can’t find closure; it’s that closure is not a helpful goal in grief.
Why Closure Is an Unhelpful Goal in Grief
Closure is an unhelpful goal in grief for one simple reason: It requires us to be inhuman.
Implying that it’s possible to simply “close the book” on a person, a relationship, a season of our life, or a part of ourselves suggests that people are capable of a kind of black-and-white compartmentalization that just isn’t humanly possible.
When I picture closure as a concept, I see a closed box labelled “grief” all tied up with a beautiful bow, never to be opened again.
But people are messier and more fluid than a tidy box with a ribbon. We aren’t capable of tying up our pasts with a pretty bow and moving on as if nothing happened. As a matter of fact, many of us who’ve faced loss don’t want to live in that sort of segregated world.
Grievers often say things like:
“How am I supposed to pretend my marriage never happened?”
“Why would I want to leave my sister in the past?”
“Even if I wanted to forget the abuse I endured, I can’t. I carry its impact with me every day.”
“That job changed my life. I’ll always remember the skills I learned there.”
If your grief is ongoing, you’re not a failure. It’s proof that your loss mattered deeply—or that it impacted your life in a significant way. It’s also proof that you’re human!
The societal narrative says:
“You need to let go.”
“You need to move on.”
“You need closure.”
But I know that healing is not about letting go, moving on, or “boxing up” our grief.
It’s about learning how to carry grief with us each and every day—folding grief into our lives instead of insisting it sit “over there in the corner.”
When we make closure the goal, we set ourselves up for an impossible standard. We ask our nervous system to forget. We demand our hearts amputate attachment. We force our memories to quiet down on command.
Once again, that’s not how humans operate, especially after a loss.
Research in psychology supports this. The continuing bonds theory, widely accepted in modern grief research, tells us something radical:
Healthy grieving does not require severing ties.
Instead of “detaching,” many people adapt by forming a new kind of relationship with what they’ve lost:
They talk to their person who died.
They create meaningful rituals.
They carry values or lessons forward.
They make decisions with their loved one in mind.
They honor the impact of their past relationship as they move forward into the future.
This is not a denial of grief. It is a folding in of grief, known in many grief support circles as integration.
And integration is very different from closure.
The Problem With Asking “How Do I Get Closure?”
When someone types “how to get closure” into a search engine, what they often mean is:
How do I stop hurting like this?
How do I stop replaying what happened?
How do I live with unanswered questions?
How do I move forward without betraying what I lost?
Notice something important.
None of those questions actually require closure.
They require skills, support, self-compassion, and most importantly, permission to grieve in a way that doesn’t demand a closing of the chapter.
The search for closure can become a subtle form of self-rejection.
This can sound like:
“If I were stronger, I’d be over this.”
“If I were grieving right, I’d feel resolved.”
“If I could just find the missing piece, I’d finally feel okay.”
But some losses don’t come with neat explanations. Some relationships don’t get final conversations. Some endings are abrupt, ambiguous, or unfair. Even if a loss is neat and tidy—a long life well-lived or a relationship where both people are able to separate with no hard feelings—grief still comes along for the ride.
There are still things to mourn, futures lost, and identities changed.
Closure suggests certainty. But grief lives in uncertainty.
And healing is not about eliminating uncertainty. It’s about increasing your capacity to live alongside it.
How to Heal Without Closure After a Loss
If closure isn’t the goal, what is?
In my online community, Life After Loss Academy, I teach the 5-step GRIEF Method for rebuilding life after loss. And one of the most powerful steps—especially in conversations about closure—is the third step, INTEGRATE.
Integration means weaving your loss into your life story instead of trying to cut it out or compartmentalize it.
Here’s what healing without closure can look like:
1. Ground Yourself in the Present
Before you can integrate grief, you have to feel safe enough to experience it. This looks like creating rituals and routines that help you feel centered and stable in the midst of uncertainty.
Grounding practices stabilize your nervous system so that grief doesn’t feel like it’s running the entire show and give something to come back to during the seasons when grief gets overwhelming.
You don’t need closure to feel steadier. You just need anchors that support you as you keep moving forward alongside your grief.
2. Release the Life You Thought You’d Have
This is the part people often confuse with closure. But releasing is not erasing what happened. It’s giving all the emotions of your grief a compassionate, healthy way to be expressed.
Releasing looks like allowing yourself to grieve:
The future you imagined
The version of you that existed before
The roles and identities that shifted as a result of loss
You may need to practice releasing again and again. Again, this isn’t because something is wrong with you. It’s because grief isn’t linear, and it keeps showing up in different ways and in different flavors across your life.
3. Integrate Through Continuing Bonds
Instead of asking, “How can I find closure?”
Try asking: “How do I stay connected in a way that feels nourishing instead of excruciating?”
This might look like:
Creating rituals on meaningful dates
Speaking to your person when you need guidance
Living out shared values—like empathy, humor, or education
Displaying photos or keepsakes intentionally
Making decisions that honor what mattered most in your relationship
You are not required to detach in order to heal. You are allowed to carry grief forward in ways that mean something to you.
4. Establish Boundaries Around Closure Culture
One of the most exhausting parts of grief is managing other people’s discomfort with the fact that grief keeps going.
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: “I’m not looking for closure. I’m learning how to live with loss.”
Establishing boundaries protects your healing from societal pressure.
5. Cultivate a Long-Term Relationship With Grief
If grief isn’t a chapter to be closed or an unpleasant part of yourself to wrestle into a box with a bow, what is it?
Inside Life After Loss Academy, I teach that grief is a lifelong companion—sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, always present—that accompanies you for the rest of your life.
When you stop trying to push grief into the tiny box of closure, you free up energy to consider how you and grief might co-create meaning, purpose, connection, and even joy as you move forward.
Instead of living in spite of your grief, you live alongside it. And that can open up doors you may not have even considered before—opportunities for hope, peace, and healing.
FAQ: Closure and Grief
Do you ever get closure after a death or loss?
Some people experience moments of peace, acceptance, or resolution. But these are not permanent states, and they don’t erase love or longing. Instead of closure, many people experience and choose to practice integration—a growing ability to live fully while still missing and carrying forward who or what was lost.
Is closure necessary for healing?
No. There is no evidence that emotional “closure” is required for healthy adaptation after loss. In fact, many people heal by maintaining ongoing bonds and finding meaning—not by detaching completely. For more on this, check out this article from my friends at What’s Your Grief on Continuing Bonds.
What if I never got to say goodbye?
This is one of the most painful parts of many losses. You may not have had the goodbye you wanted, whether surrounding a death-related loss or a relationship breakup. But healing can still include symbolic goodbyes, letters, rituals, conversations spoken out loud. The absence of a final moment does not disqualify you from healing. It’s still possible to integrate your grief into your life and rebuild after loss without a final goodbye.
Why do people push closure so much?
This is a larger conversation, but the short answer is: because grief makes people uncomfortable and our society still separates—both legally and socially—grief from “normal life.” (Take a look at bereavement leave policy in the workplace or the idea that it’s not “appropriate” to discuss grief over dinner for instance.) I think the world we live in likes the idea of closure because it gives us the illusion of control. It makes grief feel contained and less threatening. When someone tells you to seek closure, they may be trying to reduce their own discomfort—not necessarily support your process.
What should I try to find instead of closure?
Seek steadiness. Seek compassion. Seek integration. Seek support from people who understand that grief and love can coexist. If you’re looking for a great place to start, my online course + community Life After Loss Academy has on-demand video lessons for folding loss into your life, journaling exercises for integration, and weekly grief support coaching with me.
Closing Thoughts: You Don’t Need Closure to Heal from Grief
If closure feels impossible, there is nothing wrong with you.
Your grief isn’t asking to be closed. It’s asking to be honored.
There’s a part of you that understands that healing isn’t about sealing the door or tying your loss up with a bow; it’s about building a larger life around everything you’ve lost.
A life where grief isn’t shut away, but has a place of meaning at the ever-growing table of your existence here on earth.
If you’re ready to stop chasing closure and start learning how to integrate your grief into a meaningful, steady, hopeful future, that’s exactly what we do inside Life After Loss Academy.
You don’t need to be done remembering.
You don’t need to erase what happened.
You don’t need closure to heal.
You need tools, support, and a clear framework that allows grief to exist while you rebuild alongside it.
And that kind of healing is absolutely possible.
Learn more about the community, read student reviews, and join me inside Life After Loss Academy here.
