THE TRUST YOU'VE BEEN SEEKING
I’ve spent YEARS trying to figure out the answers to questions like these:
How do I support myself?
What is my purpose?
Where is my belonging?
But underneath all of those questions was the real one:
Can I trust this life to hold me?
I changed physical locations 108 times in three and a half years.
And here's what I learned, move after move after move:
I always had a place to sleep.
I always had enough to eat.
I always had enough gas in my car.
Over and over and over again. Without fail.
God/Goddess/theUniverse never abandoned me.
But I kept abandoning myself.
I waited for someone else to save me.
To provide for me.
To prove to me that I was worth caring for.
And when they inevitably fell short of that impossible task, I told myself:
See? No one and no thing is trustworthy.
But the truth was more uncomfortable than that.
It wasn't other people I couldn't trust.
It was myself.
I wasn't showing up for my own life.
I wasn't taking responsibility for my choices.
I wasn't acting on my own behalf.
I was waiting to be rescued while simultaneously resenting anyone who tried.
How could I trust others when I wasn't even trustworthy to myself?
We say we can't trust people because of what they've done to us.
Because of the ways they've failed us or hurt us or let us down.
And yes - those betrayals felt very real.
But if we're honest, the deeper wound is this:
We learned we couldn't trust ourselves.
To make good decisions.
To keep ourselves safe.
To choose what's right for us.
So we live in this liminal space of never fully letting anyone in,
while never fully showing up for ourselves either.
It's a protection mechanism. I get it.
But it's also a prison.
You can't build a sovereign life when you're waiting for someone else to prove they're worthy of your trust -
while simultaneously proving to yourself that you're not worthy of your own.
The shift happened when I finally stopped waiting.
Stopped waiting for clarity to arrive.
Stopped waiting for someone else to take responsibility.
Stopped waiting for permission to trust myself.
I started acting on my own behalf.
Making decisions even when I wasn't certain.
Holding my own boundaries.
Providing for myself.
Showing up as the one I'd been waiting for.
And everything changed.
Not because other people suddenly became more trustworthy.
But because I became trustworthy.
To myself.
And from that solid ground -
that unshakeable trust in my own ability to respond
I could finally see the truth:
The outer world had always been a mirror of my inner landscape.
When I abandoned myself,
I saw abandonment everywhere.
When I became reliable to myself,
I began to see reliability reflected back.
Trust isn't something you extend to others first and hope they earn it.
Trust is something you build with yourself -
through your actions,
your choices,
your willingness to show up even when it's hard.
And when you trust yourself?
When you know - bone deep - that you will not abandon you?
Then the question of whether you can trust others begins to fall away.
Because you're no longer looking for them to do what only you can do.
You're not asking them to prove you're worthy of care.
You already know you are -
because you're caring for yourself.
You're not waiting for them to keep you safe.
You're keeping yourself safe.
And from that place of self-trust, you can finally let people in.
Not because you need them to complete you,
but because you're whole enough to meet them as equals.
So I'll ask you:
What would change if you stopped asking whether you can trust them -
And started asking whether you trust yourself?
Because the woman you've been waiting to trust you?
She's already here.
She's just waiting for you to show up.
