Transcript

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve probably seen the renewed conversations around America’s Next Top Model and the growing demand for accountability. And honestly, that question isn’t wrong. When we feel hurt, misrepresented, or injured in some way, it is completely natural to want accountability. We want the person who hurt us to say, “I see you. I understand what I did. I’m sorry.” Accountability matters. Acknowledgment matters.

But today, I want to talk about something deeper and, honestly, more uncomfortable. Because the truth is: while accountability is important, there are many times when it simply doesn’t happen. Sometimes the people who hurt us refuse to see it. Sometimes they don’t remember it the way we do. Sometimes they rewrite it under a different narrative. And sometimes they just aren’t mature enough to take responsibility.

If we wait to heal until someone is held responsible for what happened to us, then we stay tied to that event. We stay emotionally connected to that moment and to that person. So today I want to talk about the difference between accountability and closure, because I think we often confuse the two.

And first, let me say this clearly: I am not talking about justice. Justice is the system in place to hold people accountable for crimes. Accountability is asking someone to take responsibility for what they did. But closure is something else. Closure is not something that necessarily arrives with an apology. Closure is something we develop from the inside out.

Learning that distinction between accountability and closure can be the difference between healing and festering. And once you learn how to create closure within yourself, it can become one of the most liberating experiences of your life.

This is something I know from painful personal experience.

We learn accountability as children. We learn that when we do something wrong, we should come forward and say we’re sorry. But somewhere along the way, many people lose that lesson. We stop holding ourselves accountable. We start hiding our actions. It’s almost like we grow out of accountability instead of growing up into it.

At the same time, we’re also taught that we need accountability from others in order to move past what happened. We learn that nothing is resolved until someone admits what they did. And as adults, many of us still carry that belief — that our healing requires the person who hurt us to finally take responsibility.

But if our healing depends on another person taking accountability, then they have permanent control over how we feel.

Now, the desire for accountability is valid. We want acknowledgment. We want to be seen. We want someone to honor our pain. We want them to recognize the impact of what they did. At the root of that desire is something deeply human: “Do you see what you did? Can you feel what it did to me?”

But unfortunately, many people never reach that level of awareness. They are not willing — or able — to put themselves in your shoes and feel what you felt.

It’s easy to talk about accountability when we’re discussing celebrities or public figures. Everything is documented. Everything is recorded. We can replay it. Debate it. Analyze it. That makes accountability feel very black and white. But outside of television and social media, accountability is rarely that simple.

Most of the wounds that shape us are not caught on tape. They aren’t recorded. All we have are our memories and the feelings those memories left behind. And those feelings are not transferable. We cannot force another person to remember things the way we do or to feel what we felt.

I’m not saying this lightly, and I’m not saying it to bypass harm. I’m saying it from lived experience.

I am the child of an alcoholic, abusive mother. When I was in middle school, it felt like someone turned the lights off inside of her. She went from being my best friend growing up to becoming angry, violent, and absent. She didn’t want to be a mother. She took her anger out on me as the oldest sibling, and I did my best to protect my younger sister from it.

When it got really bad, I would take my sister and run away. We would go to my father’s house, miles away. But he kept bringing us back. I don’t think it was because he didn’t hear us. I think part of him didn’t want to believe it had gotten that bad.

It was years of trauma and years of not feeling seen — not by my mother, and not really by anyone else either. And as a young teenager, I truly believed I could somehow make her understand. I believed that if I could explain it the right way, something inside her would turn back on and she would finally say, “I see you. I feel you. And I’m sorry.”

But eventually, I had to face the fact that it was never going to happen.

Every conversation became a spiral. I would try to talk about the abuse, and she would tell me what a terrible child I was. She told me I didn’t love her, that I was the reason she wasn’t coming home, that I didn’t deserve her love. I heard those statements on repeat for years because some part of me kept believing I could finally get through to her.

Eventually, I had to grow up very quickly in order to save myself. I cut contact with her in high school and never spoke to her again. I believed the situation was so toxic it was going to kill me. It had already sent me into a deep depression for years.

But even after the contact ended, the pain didn’t. I still had dreams about her. Dreams where I was invisible. Dreams where I was abandoned. The experience stayed in my body. I pushed it down and got on with life, but I never actually healed it — because some part of me still believed she might come back one day, get sober, and finally say, “I’m sorry. I see what happened. I acknowledge it.”

And that hope prevented me from healing.

The wounds stayed open because I didn’t know how to find closure without an apology.

It wasn’t until after the military, when I had a breakdown and ended up at a meditation retreat, that things finally cracked open. During a body scan meditation, I could see so clearly that my heart had been ripped into. I could see the wounds that had been created over years of trauma, and I could also see that I had allowed them to stay open.

Part of me had kept them open because of guilt. The guilt that I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t good enough for her to stop drinking. That I wasn’t enough for her to stop hurting me.

Seeing that forced me to realize something painful but liberating: I was never going to get the outside validation I thought I needed. And the only person I was hurting by carrying that guilt, anger, and need was me.

I had to understand where that pain lived in me, how it affected me, and how it had shaped my relationships, my self-worth, and even the way I moved through the world. I realized that waiting for accountability was really waiting for permission to heal.

And that is the trap.

If we are waiting for accountability in order to heal, we remain tethered to the person who hurt us. Emotionally. Energetically. Spiritually. We are handing them control over our peace.

Real closure comes from acknowledging that it happened. Acknowledging the wound. Processing the guilt, anger, grief, and resentment connected to it. Recognizing how it shaped us. Forgiving ourselves for whatever part of it we internalized — even if that is simply the guilt of a child trying to make sense of an adult’s addiction.

A lot of people call this process shadow work. It’s not dark or dangerous. It simply means going within and examining what we have lived through. What did it feel like? Where are we still carrying it? How does it show up in our bodies? How do we react when something reminds us of it?

For me, one of the most unexpected triggers was the movie You’ve Got Mail. There’s a mother-daughter ballet scene in the bookstore, and for years, anything like that would make me break down. That feeling of abandonment was still sitting inside me, waiting to be activated.

Shadow work gave me a way to find those places and begin releasing them.

It took time. I looked everywhere for help — bookstores, self-help books, the internet, mentors, spiritual teachers. I had to identify my triggers and work through them one by one. I had to learn how to respond instead of react. I had to release the emotional charge attached to those memories.

I used the Ho’oponopono prayer in the mirror: “I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Thank you.” I said it to myself exactly as I was, without hiding, without pretending, without softening the truth of what I felt. And over time, that work changed me.

I didn’t forget what happened. The memories are still there. But the emotional hook is gone.

That doesn’t mean I excused what happened. It doesn’t mean I pretended it was okay. It means I stopped carrying it in the same way. I stopped bleeding from it.

At some point, the pain shifted into acceptance. Not approval. Not denial. Acceptance.

I’ve shared thoughts like this before, and some people understandably react strongly. They hear “closure comes from within” and think it means “just let it go” or “forgive and forget.” That is not what I mean. Healing is not pretending it didn’t happen. Closure is not erasing memory. Closure is acknowledging what happened fully and then integrating the lesson so that it no longer owns you.

It’s like carrying bricks in a backpack. You can carry them as long as you want. There is no judgment. But if you can set even one brick down, life becomes lighter.

One reason I wanted to talk about this now is because of the conversations around America’s Next Top Model and Tyra Banks. So many former contestants have shared painful stories of emotional harm, harassment, and deep trauma. And when you listen to them, you can feel how alive that pain still is in their bodies.

But unfortunately, in situations like that, the apology people want may never come. And even if it does, people will debate whether it is sincere. Public accountability cannot be the foundation of personal closure.

We cannot control other people — not their awareness, not their honesty, not their maturity. And if we are waiting for those things to feel better about ourselves, we are in trouble.

Closure is not something someone else can give you. It is something you create. And once you create it, no one can take it away.

From a spiritual perspective, we are souls having a human experience. And some of those experiences are deeply traumatic. The question becomes: how do we respond to them? Do we let them harden us? Or do we allow them to teach us something about who we are?

When I look back at what happened with my mother, I can now ask: what did that experience teach me? It taught me strength. It taught me how to survive depression. It taught me how to keep my heart open after it was broken. It taught me that I was worthy of love, kindness, and acceptance. It taught me that what happened was not my fault.

And strangely enough, identifying those lessons became part of what finally released the pain.

Spiritual growth is not about bypassing pain. It is about transforming it. Honoring how it shaped us. Learning from it. Using it to improve our lives and, hopefully, the lives of others.

One of the hardest truths in life is this: the people who hurt us do not always understand what they did. They may never acknowledge it. They may never apologize. They may never see it the way we do. And yes, that is unfair.

But if our peace depends on their awareness, then we have placed our happiness into the hands of someone who harmed us.

Closure cannot live there. Closure has to come from within.

Accountability can help. Justice can help. But closure cannot rely on either one, because the only growth and healing we can truly control is our own.

If you feel called to do that inner work, I’ll share the healing meditation I mentioned, along with other support tools. And if you’ve found practices that helped you find closure in your own life, I’d love to hear them.

Please remember: you are not alone in your pain, and you do not have to be alone in your healing.

Until next week, love and light.