Closure Isn't Always At the End

Sometimes It’s a Conversation

Closure can be just moving on. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

When I wrote Tightrope, I knew people might reach out. Friends. Colleagues. Maybe even individuals connected to the files I had worked on.

What I didn’t expect was how much I still had to learn about closure.

Writing the book felt like crossing a bridge. It gave me distance in many ways, physical, mental and emotional from 27 years of policing. It allowed me to step away from the weight of it all and begin asking, what comes next?

I believed that was closure.

But today challenged that belief.

I took a call from a young woman I first met when she was six years old. A child at the center of a sexual abuse investigation. I won’t call her a victim because she has grown into anything but that.

Before publishing Tightrope, I reached out to let her know I had written about the case. After reading it, she asked if we could speak.

I said yes.

And then I spent days wondering what I would say.

I could have directed her to file a Freedom of Information request. But I knew that wouldn’t give her what she was really looking for. What she needed wasn’t just information, it was understanding.

She had already done the hard work of healing. She had chosen not to be defined by what happened to her. But like many people who have lived through trauma, she was left with something else:

Questions.

And here’s what I’ve come to understand, questions don’t just seek answers. They are part of healing itself.

Research in trauma recovery and narrative psychology shows that meaning-making, trying to understand why something happened or how it shaped us, is a critical part of healing. Psychologist James Pennebaker’s work on expressive writing found that people who are able to explore their experiences through reflection and questioning show improvements in both mental and physical health.

Who knew that writing Tightrope was actually something that would be ‘good’ for my health, but the research says that it is just that.

Other studies in post-traumatic recovery highlight that asking questions, of ourselves and others, helps reorganize the experience into something we can live with, rather than something that controls us.

That’s what this call was.

Not about reopening wounds. But about reorganizing the story.

As she asked her questions, something shifted.

For her and unexpectedly, for me.

I had carried anger about how her case concluded. There was a conviction. She was safe. And yet, I had always felt it wasn’t enough.

But as I listened to her, her strength, her perspective, her life now, I realized something I hadn’t allowed myself to see:

What I thought was an imperfect outcome…had still given her the space to heal.

And in that moment, I felt something I didn’t even know I was missing.

Peace.

Real closure.

Not the kind that comes from walking away, but the kind that comes from understanding.

Closure, I’ve learned, doesn’t always arrive at the end of an event. Sometimes it comes years later. Sometimes it comes through connection. And sometimes it comes when someone is brave enough to ask the question.

We often talk about “shared experiences,” but I don’t think that’s quite right. We can share a moment, a space, a circumstance but the experience itself is deeply personal. No two people carry it the same way.

And yet, when those perspectives come together, when we are willing to ask and to answer, something powerful happens.

We don’t just give something to the other person. We receive something too.

That’s what today reminded me.

What began as an attempt to help someone else move forward…ended up moving me forward as well.

There is power in conversation. In honesty. In being willing to sit in discomfort long enough to ask and to listen.

So if you’re holding onto something because of an experience you had, be that anger, confusion, unanswered questions, ask yourself:

Who could I ask? Who could I pose these questions to?

It might feel uncomfortable. You might be afraid of the answers.

But research and life both tell us the same thing:

Avoidance keeps us stuck and who wants that. Curiosity moves us forward.

Be afraid if you need to be.

And ask anyway.