Closure..

"Dear Dickhead"... The unsent letter..

Most people think closure requires a conversation, an explanation, or a final word from the other person. The idea that closure comes from one definitive conversation is deeply ingrained, but it’s often just a bullshit story we tell ourselves that ultimately keeps us stuck waiting for something we may never get (closure). And it probably wouldn’t satisfy us, even if we did.

This entry isn’t just about closure.. It’s about one simple method I use to help the healing process, without ever needing closure again. So buckle up, I’m first about to drop some myths aka bullshit that may make you feel seen as all hell.

“I need to be heard”

No you don’t..The belief here is that if the other person just understood how you felt, you could move on. But that’s bullshit.. Closure is an internal process, not a transaction, and not something that should ever be dependent on another person’s validation. That’s the truth here, that’s what you are seeking. You are not looking to be ‘heard’, you are looking for your feelings to be validated, to have the other person agree they were wrong or that your pain was justified. That rarely happens the way we imagine. And even when it does, it often doesn’t bring the peace we expected, because the wound was never really about their acknowledgment in the first place.

“I need answers to move on”

No you don’t.. People often believe that knowing why something happened, why they were left, betrayed, or rejected, will unlock healing. But explanations are rarely satisfying, rarely honest, and rarely (if ever) going to provide you with closure. The other person may not know their own reasons, they may lie, or may offer a reason that creates more questions or more pain. And sometimes the real answer is simply: they don’t know, which isn’t the kind of answer that feels like closure.

“One last conversation will bring me peace”

No it won’t.. This assumes the conversation will go well, that the other person will be receptive, honest, and emotionally available. In reality, these conversations often go sideways. They can reopen wounds, introduce new pain points, or leave you feeling worse. The fantasy of the conversation bringing you peace is almost never the reality.

“Closure is an event”

No it’s not.. People wait for a moment, a conversation, an apology, a funeral, a symbolic gesture, as if closure is something that happens to you. But it’s more often a gradual, internal shift. It’s not a door that closes with a slam, it’s more like a room you slowly stop visiting over time. You eventually can enter the house without even remembering the room exists.

“If I don’t get closure, I can’t heal”

Yes you can.. This one is particularly ridiculous because it hands your healing over to someone else’s willingness to participate. You can absolutely heal without their cooperation, you do not need to wait around on anyone to start the process. Therapy, journaling, time, and new experiences can all facilitate healing, none of which require the other person’s involvement.

“Telling them everything I am feeling will release it”

No it won’t.. Venting can feel cathartic in the moment, but research on emotional processing suggests that simply expressing anger or hurt doesn’t necessarily reduce it, and can sometimes reinforce it. What helps more is making sense of what happened and integrating it into your story, which you can do without the other person. Releasing it is important, yes, but there are far more effective ways to do it than word vomiting your every emotion to a person that you’re not even sure will listen.

An uncomfortable truth..

I recently ended my relationship.. While I usually go through these things in private to find healing and acceptance before I share, I just knew this one journalling technique has been a saving grace for me lately and it could help others in similar situations.

I’m not in a place where I want to openly talk about details, I’m still working through emotions of my own.. But I too found myself making some of the statements above. I too wanted “closure” in a form of releasing my feelings, I wanted a conversation, an apology, and everything in between.. But I knew, I might not get the closure I envisioned, and how I envisioned it. I knew the conversation wasn’t guaranteed to play out how I’d like it too. It was never going to bring me closure, if anything it would bring more hurt.

So, FUCK needing to be heard.. FUCK needing a conversation.. And FUCK waiting on anyone else to get closure, give yourself the closure you need. So let’s get to it, shall we?

Journaling is a tool I’ve been using since I lost my father in 1999. If you’ve read my book, you know it was my grief counselor in public school who first suggested I start writing ‘Dear Dad’ entries in my diary. It was a way to process my emotions while still feeling connected to him, like I was speaking to him directly. As a child, journaling was short lived. But as an adult, with a deeper understanding of its impact, I found my way back to it years later.

Fast forward to today… Journaling isn’t just a tool I lean into when I need it, it’s a daily practice. It’s become a foundational part of my healing journey, one that’s shaped how I process, reflect, and grow. Over the past few years, I’ve invested in learning various therapeutic approaches so I can support others to experience that same kind of transformation through journal therapy.

I won’t give you a 17 paragraph breakdown of every form of journaling. Instead, we’re going to focus on one, arguably one of the most powerful.. The Unsent Letter.

I’ve been writing letters since I was a child. I’ve always been better at expressing my thoughts and feelings through writing rather than talking, and the unsent letter allows me to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge advocate for releasing your thoughts, feelings, and burdens on paper, using any of the journal therapy writing techniques. However, there’s something that feels powerful about the unsent letter. It’s an opportunity for you to get every single thing you want to say, or wish you could have said, off your chest, regardless of how unhinged it is. (If you’ve had a run in with a chronic gaslighter, trust me THIS is the BEST method, hell maybe it’s the only method). You want to call that man a love bombing, sociopath? Your ex best friend a sneaky c*nt? Do you girlfriend, get it out of you, tell them (in the letter).

Sure, I’ll give you the more formal breakdown of why it’s effective, especially if you’re someone leaving a relationship or friendship behind that is desperately seeking closure (aka the last word, the final thought, to be heard). For me personally, the easy part is writing it, the hard part is not sending it.. But I’ll get to that..

What is the unsent letter?

Essentially the unsent letter is an expressive writing technique where you would write a letter to another person. Sure this approach can work when writing to someone specific that may have hurt you, your younger self, your future self, an identity you’ve outgrown, even a version of you that you’re becoming. Because this entry all started with ‘seeking closure’ we are going to focus specifically on writing this letter to another person.

The therapeutic value comes from the act of writing, not the delivery. It helps you process emotions that feel stuck, the gut wrenching unresolved grief, things left unsaid, anger, love, regret. Because there’s no audience, you can be completely unfiltered and honest in a way that even therapy sessions sometimes don’t allow. The healing happens through externalization.. getting what’s inside onto the pages creates distance, clarity, and oftentimes an unexpected emotional release. (I don’t think I’ve ever not had an emotional outburst while writing an unsent letter).

The unsent letter releases emotional suppression. A lot of times after we have a falling out, or a relationship we once valued comes to an end, there is a build up of emotions that we suppress, sometimes until we explode. Sure, we call our friends or people we care about and vent until we are blue in the face, but that’s not enough. While it’s important to give our emotions a place to land, if it’s your bestie or mom is on the receiving end of the call, the chances are you are going to hear EXACTLY what you want to hear, or at the very least a response you can rely on not to increase the pain. Why are y’all afraid to hurt? What’s the method to the madness of doing everything we possibly can to avoid pain? Pain is guidance… Pain is a whisper of direction.. Pain is a sign to pivot..

Typically the best time to start writing your unsent letter is right while you’re in the thick of the emotional chaos. Your thoughts are all over the place, your emotions are triggered without warning, you’re in the phase of questioning your every decision, basically if you feel like you need to pick up the phone and call a therapist, THAT’S when you actually need to pick up your pen.

Now, this next part is very much “the Amanda way”, so you’re not going to find it on the internet, you’re not going to find any formal case studies that this way is the most effective, but from my experience (and fuck, I have a wrote a lot of unsent letters in my day) this way has helped me go from writing like a crazy psychopath, paragraphs of nonsense that may get me admitted if anyone were to ever read, to… Understanding, clarity, acceptance, distance, and a sense of peace as I fully release the relationship.

I personally write two letters.. The first one, is in the thick of the pain as described above, it’s the most important, so get messy with it. I don’t wait, I don’t filter, oftentimes it’s a scribbled mess. You may even find a drawn stickman with an X over the face done forcefully enough to tear the page. Or maybe there’s disgusting names written in the corners, questionable and morbid thoughts exposed on the pages, either way, letter number one is a free for all, just get it ALL out of you and onto the pages.

I don’t care if it’s addressed as “Dear Dickhead”, just write your letter as you feel pulled to do so. Set it down and come back to that first draft as many times as you need. You could start, then as you are eating dinner a thought pops into your head.. Voice message it to your notes and add it to the letter later.

Emotions are messy, vague, and overwhelming. I can’t even imagine how my brain functioned before I journalled. Or how I was able to hold onto so much without any coping strategies to encourage healing. This first draft of your letter allows you to start the process called ‘narrative construction’, it helps you start to turn your experience into a story you can start to understand. It starts to allow you to name the emotions and feelings as it slowly starts to structure them.

The unsent letter essentially allows honesty without consequence. In real conversations you filter, adjust, and sometimes soften your approach to protect the other person’s feelings. How many times have you walked away from a conversation and said “damn, I forgot to say….?” Ya, me too, it’s brutal. But with an unsent letter no one interrupts, no one gets hurt, no one reacts. Instead you can finally say what you never allowed yourself to say, and what you actually feel.

A lot of emotional pain isn’t from what happened, it’s from what wasn’t said, acknowledged, or resolved. So this letter gives you an opportunity to fully express yourself without limitations, so go all out, leave NOTHING unsaid. “You did this”, “I felt this”. Take yourself through confrontations, take yourself back to scenarios that you felt were handled poorly, take yourself on that mind-fuck of a rollercoaster and release it all onto the paper.

Once you have fully written everything that you can possibly think of onto paper, take a break. Praising yourself for what you were just able to do, your ability to release through writing is the first big step to closing this door WITHOUT needing closure from the other person. Now it’s time to write that “final draft”..

Like I said, this part is my way, the way that I personally find helps. The first draft/second draft method isn’t about “cleaning up” what you originally wrote the first time, it’s having the ability to structure it exactly how you want it, in the tone, in the delivery, etc. I can still remember my very first client that followed this method, she was a domestic violence survivor and she wanted to articulate her letter in a way that made her feel strong, powerful, and fearless (the complete opposite of how he made her feel with his abuse).

When she sent me both drafts of her letter addressed to her abuser, I quickly responded to her that these were private and she didn’t need to send them. However, she wanted me to read them, she just wanted someone on the receiving end to validate her feelings, so I did. In the process I was able to see the difference in the two drafts..

Draft one was messy, vulgar, and descriptive. There were stories of pain, rage, and unshakable fear, but there was also this strength in her voice that had me behind the screen screaming “FUCK YESSSSSS”.. But draft two gave me goosebumps.. It went from “fuck this, I don’t deserve that, fuck you” to words strung together so carefully and professionally that you would have thought a licensed therapist was the one writing it.

It was powerful, emotional, and raw. But what was even more rewarding was listening to her as she shared her experience of burning the letter in the very spot that he first ever laid his hands on her. She was acknowledging what happened, sharing her experience through writing, feeling every emotional wave in the process, but was able to finally let it go, let him go, let the relationship die, and find peace in never having to speak to him again. Our own words have that power, sometimes the awareness we believe we have is disguised in the thick of grief, but reading our own words again and again builds almost a trust within ourselves.

The second letter doesn’t have to be written how she did, in fact the process isn’t to ‘perfect’ the original letter, it’s an opportunity for you to read through, see what still feels true after you’ve had a chance to reflect - if I’m being honest, I find I learn more about myself in this part. Letter one is scattered emotional chaos, letter two comes from a more grounded, calm place of understanding.

The real purpose of the unsent letter isn’t about fixing the relationship, being understood, or getting closure. It’s about fully expressing your truth without needing permission, a response, validation, and it’s about leaving something behind without ever again needing closure in the first place.

Okay, this is getting much longer than I intended. I could ramble about therapeutic writing techniques over and over again but let’s wrap this up shall we?

The unsent letter is a great technique that can be used in many different scenarios, but it’s especially effective when someone that feels stuck in a loop, someone that can’t say something out loud, someone that is holding resentment or grief, someone that feels unheard or misunderstood, or someone that is struggling with identity shifts. The unsent letter isn’t just about release, it’s a tool for identity reconstruction, boundary awareness, pattern recognition. Because what you write will reveal what you tolerate, what you suppress, and what you actually feel but don’t always act on.

So remove the audience, remember that no one is going to read what you write, it’s not being sent or judged. Dig deep into your “not so pretty emotional triggers”, allow yourself to write from anger, frustration, resentment, and confusion. Let it be messy and graphic if need be. Make sure that you give yourself time.. This won’t all come out in a 10 minute writing session, in fact it’s proven in writing that the first 5-10 minutes is often someone hardly scratching the surface, typically they filter themselves, but as writing continues the truth starts to rise to the surface.

What happens after you write the letter?

This is where everyone is different.. Some individuals have rituals of sealing it, ripping it up or burning it. Some people crave the symbolic release, I personally write both letters in my journal, I keep them so I can revisit if needed. Over time, for myself I’ve found that flipping back through these letters can be reminders in weak moments, or even just a way to track my growth and how far I’ve come.

Sometimes, the first letter is one of many. I myself have written multiple letters to the same person, and sometimes the healing isn’t as black and white or comes as quickly as I would like. Sometimes healing isn’t what’s needed just yet, it may just be an awareness of patterns, or recognizing behaviours that simply just aren’t okay.

Or sometimes you run into feelings of sadness for the other person, it’s almost this feeling of guilt that silently encourages you to actually send the letter. Not because you want closure, not because you want them to read it and squirm, but rather because what you wrote may help them. It may help them do better in their next relationship, it may encourage them to find healing in themselves. It may even help them see your point of view after all.. But probably not, but guess what..

They aren’t your fucking responsibility. It is not your job to ‘fix’ them. It’s your job to fix yourself. So write the letter as many times as you need. But don’t go looking for the “closure” you’ll probably never receive.

For the person reading this: If you’ve been seeking closure, or trying to find ways to process a breakdown of a relationship, or a friendship. Or maybe you’re harbouring feelings that you need to release. Please reach out to me and I will create a safe space for you to express what you are carrying while I help guide you through some crucial first steps. I am happy to discuss the full process of the unsent letter at no cost, just a promise that you will see the process through.

If you read this and found it helpful for yourself, or maybe you thought of someone that needs to read this. Please copy the link to this entry and send it to them or add it to your social media. We need more FREE content out there that can help other heal. As always, I look forward to your comments, emails, or DMs!

-A