Do I need closure? The art of healing forward

We often imagine closure like a neat little bow on a gift: A final conversation, a heartfelt apology or a clear explanation that suddenly makes all the pain make sense. But what happens when that moment never comes? What if the person who hurt you isn't capable of giving you what you need? What if waiting for closure might actually be keeping us stuck in the very place we’re trying to leave?

Related links: 

• Emotional regulation episode
• Mum to Mum with Doctor Tash podcast 

✨ Ready to be a little kinder to yourself? Download our free 5-day self-compassion challenge—with daily prompts, gentle exercises and tools to help you stop the spiral of self-criticism and start speaking to yourself like a friend.

Creators and Guests

Host

Faith

Faith is a Singapore-born advocate for holistic wellbeing, informed by decades of personal exploration into counselling practices, therapy and trauma recovery. Although not a psychologist, she has developed a nuanced understanding of emotional wellness through her healing journey. Married and living in Singapore, Faith shares her home with two beloved cats and nurtures a passion for jump rope, finding both joy and valuable life lessons in it. Her outlook embraces a blend of physical, spiritual and emotional health, allowing curiosity, compassion and intentional consideration to guide her as she navigates the gentle greys that lie between life’s extremes.

Host

Melody

Melody is a passionate advocate for empowering mothers through connection, faith and digital engagement. As the project leader for Mums At The Table, a vibrant community for mothers, Melody leads efforts to create meaningful content that helps mums navigate parenting while fostering deeper relationships with their children and local communities. With a background in media and communication, Melody uses her expertise to engage mothers in digital spaces, equipping them with practical tools for parenting and personal growth. She lives in Sydney with her husband and their primary-school-aged son.

What is Life in the Grey?

Life isn’t always black and white. Life in the Grey is a Mums At The Table podcast where we explore the psychological factors that shape our relationships, be that as a parent, a partner, or a peer. And don’t worry—it’s short because we ain't got time for fluff. Expect practical takeaways that you can apply to your own life, whether it’s navigating parenting challenges or finding balance amidst life’s demands. Join us each month as we share stories, insights, and reflections that encourage personal growth and foster a sense of connection in our community.

MELODY:
You know, I had a moment this week where what I knew in my head just clashed with who I was as a person.

FAITH:
Oh dear, it sounds like you were experiencing a gap between your rational thinking and then your instinctive reactions.

MELODY:
Yeah, yes, a little bit like that. So I basically discovered why my son's big emotions don't just stay with him, but somehow detonate something inside me as well. I'll come into it, but before that, welcome to Life in the Grey, a Mums At The Table podcast where we sit in the messy middle of relationships and growth and admit that knowing better doesn't always mean doing better. I'm Melody, project leader of Mums At The Table.

FAITH:
I'm Faith and I spend my time looking at the ways psychology and spirituality work together in our everyday lives, and you can find most of my work on Instagram at Hope Channel Singapore. So Mel, you were talking about detonation, internal detonation. Do you want to tell us more about that?

MELODY:
Yes, so I think I've shared this before multiple times about how I struggle to stay calm when my child has big emotions. There's something about it that really just hits the nerve. My voice will sharpen, I react usually badly, and well, actually almost always badly.

And almost immediately after, I feel this wave of guilt because in my head, I know the right thing to do, stick with them, validate, let the emotion ebb and fall. I mean, we talked about it all in our episode on emotional regulation, but knowing and doing are two very different things.

FAITH:
Yeah, it's the classic human tension, right, where our spirit is willing but our nervous system is overwhelmed. We want to be the calm parent, the calm person, but then something inside our body is telling us that there's an emergency that needs a sharp response. And it's not a moral failure, it's a nervous system reflex, and a lot of times it's a reflex that was learned a very long time ago.

MELODY:
You know what, this is actually what I came, the epiphany I had, right? It's funny because you know what you said, right, that this is something that happened a long time ago. I know all of this, right?

Intellectually, it's like, family of origin, patterns, triggers, generational trauma, whatever it is, I know the language. It wasn't until, so I was recording an episode for our other podcast, Mum to Mum with Doctor Tash, a not-so-subtle plug. But yeah, something that she said just landed differently.

I knew about the history, I knew about the family origin, but then she said something and suddenly all the memories just came back in a way that was less theoretical, and suddenly that's when it dawned on me. I wasn't taught to sit with the big emotions. It actually clicked.

Hang on, the reason why I'm having all these big emotions, when my son has big emotions, is because I wasn't taught to sit with them. This is not criticism on my parents or the many other significant adults in my life. It's not that.

I know they love me, I know they were doing the best they could, but the reality was that as a child, I discovered that the message that I got was big feelings were inconvenient, especially when it comes to sadness and anger. If I expressed them, I was either reprimanded or distracted, and the emotion was something to move past very quickly, to tidy up, to suppress. No one actually modelled to me what it looked like to sit inside an emotion without trying to fix it or shut it down.

So yeah, like you said, when my son expresses those emotions, of course, my nervous system is going danger, this is not allowed, shut it down. And I react and it's just suddenly go, hang on, this is actually generational and this is why I'm reacting.

FAITH:
It's such an amazing epiphany. I guess it's like the ghost in the nursery, right? Where our reactions to our children's, or not for me without having kids, but even just to other people's big emotions, are often just echoes of how our big emotions were handled when we were small.

MELODY:
You know, it was very interesting to me because I knew all this, I've been trying to work through all this for years, and I always knew that it's something that's happened. And you talk about this ghost in the nursery, right? With the ghost in the nursery, at least you got shades of it, like sometimes you feel cold, sometimes you see, okay, we're talking too supernatural here, but you get shades of it, right?

But I didn't think I had that. And that's why I couldn't recognise it. And so for the longest of time, I'm struggling and I'm going, why am I having all these big emotions?

When my son's having these big emotions, why can't I just be calm? And it was, I don't know why it took this many years, but suddenly in that many years, in that split second in which she said something, I suddenly got that epiphany.

FAITH:
Mel, it takes however long it takes. Sometimes that's how life and learning works. Everything came together at the right time.

You spoke to someone who happened to use the right words that landed in just the right. Everything is a confluence of all these factors. It just happened.

The question that I have then is, now that you know, what are you going to do?

MELODY:
It's something she said as well. I think it was part of that that triggered it as well. But before I go into what I'm going to do, which I will, but I just wanted to mention a little bit more about this whole realising an epiphany, right?

And I think what I wanted to share as well is the fact that everything that we do does stem from a family of origin and things that have happened to us, whether we recognise it or not. And even if we don't recognise it, right, I think maybe it's a one day it will happen. But if not, right, it's also recognising that it is not your fault in that sense.

And I think that was where it, that was one of the epiphanies I had as well, because for the longest of time, it's a, what is wrong with me? I am starting to cry. It's a, what is wrong with me?

Why can't I sit with these big emotions? Why don't I have the capability to do that? And now it's discovering that, hang on, it's a, yes, there is a, I'm not criticising my parents.

I'm not criticising my family members, but there is a reason for all that has happened. Anyway, so I'm just wanting to, I guess I just want to let people know that, you know, if you do find that what is wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with you. And it's just something that you haven't been able to uncover and it's not, it's not your fault.

I guess is what I'm trying to say.

FAITH:
When we get to the space that we can acknowledge that there's a gap, something powerful happens because we can stop asking what is wrong with me and instead start to ask, how can I support myself?

MELODY:
And I think this goes into that question that, you know, I didn't answer initially and went into a crying rampage instead. What am I going to do about it is the fact that recognising the fact that, you know, yes, it's what happened to me as a kid. I can't change that.

But there is a certain standard and a certain kind of childhood and experience that I want my son to have. And so the only thing I can change is the experience that he has. And I think we talked about it before as well in our other conversations about this concept of healing forwards.

And yeah, I can't, I mean, yes, in a way I can heal myself in how I sit with big feelings, but that's going to take a lot of time because I've had a whole lifetime of not being able to sit with my feelings. But my son has a whole lifetime in front of him of having the experience where he can sit with his feelings. And so that's where I need to focus on is to fight the difficult feelings in myself.

And he doesn't need to know all of that, but to heal it, to have it in such a way that he has that healed pathway to move forward to.

FAITH:
He has a different pathway to move forward to, a different experience than what you had, which will set him up for a different response, right? A different pattern.

MELODY:
Different types of trauma that he gets, not this.

FAITH:
Well, that's a whole different story. But I wonder if it's less of fighting your emotions and more of sitting with them and figuring out why they want to step forward, why these big emotions that you have feel the need to protect you and what are they really protecting you from, right? And I don't know if it's about fighting.

It's more of understanding. Yeah, I guess. Right?

Because in a way, you are still healing forward. I see it as you are healing forward the future self, your future you. That's true.

So in any case, future mum is going to benefit from whatever you do right now. And it's not easy starting something, learning something new. It's never easy.

This is the part that we got to get brave. You got to get brave because yes, you can rise from the ashes as they so speak, right? But first you got to burn.

And that burn is not going to be easy. It's going to be very uncomfortable.

MELODY:
But yeah, and that's the thing, right? It's the change. And I like what you said about, you know, when I think about healing forwards, right?

Because I think about it in the concept of generational trauma. So it's like, you know, I can't heal the past generation. I can't heal this generation.

So I'll heal the next generation. And so for me, equating that to I'm healing my son. But yes, you are right.

It's about healing my future me as well. And giving myself the ability to feel more comfortable sitting with whatever it is. And yeah, that's me with big feelings, but it could be someone else with whatever it is as well.

And it's about just making it easier and making it a better place for themselves in the future. It doesn't have to be the next generation. It could just be the future them.

FAITH:
I'm wondering if now I can share with you a line that you shared with me that shifted my brain chemistry. Because…

MELODY:
I think I know what it is.

FAITH:
Okay, then why don’t you say it? Because if you think you know what it is, so why don't you share? Because when you said this line, it shifted my brain chemistry. So I think it's important that present-you can then shift the future-you's brain chemistry with your own words.

MELODY:
It's what I use for New Year's resolutions as to why I don't believe in New Year's resolutions and why I want to do change. But you know, I don't see it as an emotional thing. But yes, it does make sense.

So it's basically my life philosophy. The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, but the next best time is now. The only direction available to me is forward while recognising that I think healing forward isn't going to erase the old wiring because it's what I'm used to.

It's why I think that explains why I react so quickly, so immediately. Because we said it before, it's the highway. And so we just get onto the highway.

It's what we're used to. It's what we're raised on. It's what we don't do with the uncomfortable feelings.

It's what I'm raised on. But I hope to be able to find the off-ramp a lot quicker so that I can heal it forward for my child so that they know that they are safe with their big emotions and also that I will eventually get the message that I am safe in my emotions. And yeah, hopefully the recovery will be quicker.

The repair will be gentler.

FAITH:
Oh, definitely. It's neurobiologically accurate. We're not stuck with the old wiring.

It's not the only road we can choose. We are active participants always in growing something new. And yes, we can sometimes go back and judge ourselves by our old wiring because we're human.

This is where we come back and say, oh, you know what, but we're planting new trees. And so it will take time for this little shrub to then start to grow into this big oak tree, but it will grow. And so, yeah, oh, I forgot to water it yesterday.

Okay, never mind. I'm going to water today. Oh, does it need a bit of more nutrients?

Okay. I'm going to give it nutrients today. Let's look at what we're doing consistently.

It's not about the one big burst today. It's about what little steps we can take every day, little bits. And honestly, I love that tree metaphor because for me, it took away the shame.

It took away the shame often associated with the gap between what I know I'm supposed to do and how I actually behave. And it honestly dismantled this misguided belief that just because we didn't have the right wiring all those years back or months back, that somehow we missed this window to be a calm, validating person forever. That's such a misguided belief, right?

Yeah. But…

MELODY:
What’s passed is passed.

FAITH:
Yes, what passes passed. And we can make a choice as to what we plant. What are we growing? So we can go back the old tree and water it.

Or we can say, you know what? Today, I'm going to walk in a different direction and go nurture that shrub or become a bush that in a few months' time maybe becomes a bigger tree.

MELODY:
A little sapling will become a tree.

FAITH:
Yes. Yeah. And so I guess the question that maybe we can all ponder upon this week is what does planting or nurturing that little sapling to grow into a tree look like? You know, little things that we can do to nurture that sapling. And we'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

So share them on whatever platform you're watching or listening to right now. And if you want to share more privately, please send an email to [e-mail]. And if there's one person in your life who really needs to hear today that they are not broken for having big reactions, big emotions, please share this episode with them.

Life in the Grey is a Mums At The Table podcast. And thank you so much for sitting in the messy middle with us.