"Discover the Easy Way to Make $10K+ in Your First Month with No Money – Free Online Workshop!" The Closure in Accepting That They May Never Change

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“One of the hardest things I’ve had to understand is that closure comes from within. Especially difficult if you’ve been betrayed by someone you love because you feel like you gotta let them know the pain they caused, but the peace you seek can only be given to you by you.” ~Bruna Nessif

Many years ago, I wrote a very personal post for Tiny Buddha titled Get Past It Instead of Getting Even: Revenge Isn’t Winning.

The post described the challenges I experienced with my parents as an adult and, ultimately, my decision to cease all relations with them.

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Many years ago, I wrote a very personal post for Tiny Buddha titled Get Past It Instead of Getting Even: Revenge Isn’t Winning.

The post described the challenges I experienced with my parents as an adult and, ultimately, my decision to cease all relations with them.

Such a decision was by no means easy or hastily made.

It required many years of guidance and counseling to accept that sometimes such a drastic decision is necessary for maintaining one’s mental health and the health of other meaningful relationships.

Over the years, I have experienced sharp criticism for that decision to dissociate from my parents. I’ve been branded an awful son, self-centered, and even a hypocrite based on my writings when compared to the reality of my familial relationship.

I understand the criticisms because I once was on the opposite side of where I am now, with a seemingly perfect family relationship that others envied.

I was quick to judge those estranged from their families with some of the same criticisms now cast at me.

I was simply unable to fully grasp how it was possible that a bloodline connection could ever be severed, and how life could go on without their presence.

But what we see often differs from reality, and perfection is unsustainable and unattainable when it comes to family relations.

Before you know it, you have transformed from the harshest critic to the pitiable object, constantly wondering how lifelong relationships could quickly deteriorate with such hatred and anger.

But the passage of time, combined with age and life’s unending volatilities, alters one’s perception and relaxes the emotions we once believed would extinguish our joy, sanity, and quality of life.

This new perspective is an unanticipated sensation after such a tumultuous experience, and suddenly, the word “closure” is no longer foreign to one’s vocabulary.

An Attempt at Reconciliation

It was early December, and homeownership again handed me an unexpected repair project in my kitchen. It appeared easy enough at first but became much more complicated once I understood the problem.

Pausing momentarily to decide how best to proceed, given that a clever solution was necessary if I did not want to incur a hefty repair cost, I immediately began thinking about my father.

Growing up, my father and I were incredibly close.

We spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, sharing long conversations with him mentoring me on the mechanical skills he was so adept with.

Sitting on my kitchen floor, lost in a sea of nostalgia, I realized how invaluable those conversations and his mentoring were. How other invaluable life lessons often sprouted from those conversations. And how, regardless of all that had occurred, I considered myself grateful that he was my father.

As tears began pooling in my eyes, I decided I had to reach out to him at that moment, sharing my nostalgia and gratitude while naively hoping this might be the impetus we needed to reconnect.

Fearing my mother would intercept any hard-copy communication, I turned to social media and sent him a private message through his Facebook page.

My message to my father was 436 words long.

At the start, I acknowledged how the passage of time and age softens our perspectives, lessens the bitterness, and enables us to see and appreciate things we took for granted in the past.

I acknowledged how we all played a role in our eventual separation, how conversations could have been handled differently and more beneficially, and how blame at this point was futile.

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