Trusting and Re-trusting

Trust breaks quietly. A word left unsaid, a moment that doesn’t sit right, a choice that changes everything. It isn’t always a single event—sometimes it crumbles over time, worn down by inconsistency, by misalignment, by a pattern we saw but chose to ignore. When trust is gone, the absence is sharp. It leaves us unsure—not just of others, but of ourselves. Before we look externally for confidence in those around us, we must ask ourselves: “Can I trust myself again?”

There’s an impulse, after trust is broken, to look for certainty. A guarantee that it won’t happen again, a promise that we won’t misstep, won’t get hurt, won’t find ourselves in the same place twice. But trust isn’t about certainty. It isn’t a thing we get back; it’s something we build forward. Trust is belief without certainty—the willingness to meet life as it comes, even when we can’t predict the outcome.

Brené Brown talks about trust as something built in the smallest of moments—not in grand gestures, but in the way we show up again and again. Carl Jung reminds us that trusting ourselves means facing the parts of us we might rather avoid—the fear, the self-doubt, the quiet knowing that we ignored. If we don’t trust ourselves, how can we trust the way we move through the world?

So the work begins here, in the smallest ways. Keeping a promise to ourselves. Listening when something doesn’t feel right. Taking responsibility, not just for where we’ve been hurt, but for where we’ve hurt ourselves—where we’ve stayed silent, where we’ve abandoned what we knew to be true, where we took the hit instead of dodging the blow. Ernest Becker wrote that we suffer not just from what happens to us, but from the stories we tell ourselves about it. If the story is “I can’t trust myself,” what might change if we start telling a different one? What if, “I can trust myself, because I can learn, I can grow, I can heal, I can…”

It’s not about restoring something old. It’s about choosing, every day, to trust the process of becoming someone who can hold trust again. Jessica Dore writes about micro-movements, the way tiny, deliberate choices create transformation over time. Trust is like that. One moment at a time. Notice those moments and weave them into a story you can believe in.

And what about trusting others? That part is harder. Reopening the door, after it’s been slammed shut. Letting someone close enough to hurt us again. But trust isn’t blind faith. It isn’t about pretending things didn’t happen. It’s about discernment. Watching actions, not just words. Asking: Is this person showing me that they are safe? Am I holding onto resentment, or am I truly open to rebuilding? Am I trusting because I feel safe, or because I feel like I should? Once you trust yourself, your intuition will guide your trust in others, if you listen.

There’s no perfect moment where trust returns all at once. There’s only this moment, and what we do with it. So maybe the question isn’t “How do I trust again?” Maybe it’s simpler: What’s one small step I can take, right now, toward trusting myself again? Maybe that’s all we need to do today. And then tomorrow, we do it again.

For me, the hardest loss of trust wasn’t in another person—it was in life itself. When I lost my partner, I lost my trust in life. Through shadow work and reflection, I came to the conclusion that I could not trust with a broken heart—I feel that no one can. My solution: love can heal a broken heart, but that love had to come from within. We build our trust, we heal our hearts, we learn and speak our stories. The work is ours. I wrote out, “How can you love yourself as much as you loved her?” The answer was to live the life, moment by smallest moment, that I would want for her, for us, for me, and to bring love to those I could. Moment by smallest moment, I found that self-love, healed that heart, and rebuilt that trust. I found a new story within myself and I am living it every day.

Reflection:

What steps can you take to rebuild trust in your life? How will it change the way you see yourself—and the life you are meant to live?