This post is available as a podcast here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/ULuSP8rGtzb

When you put your trust in someone and they abuse it, that’s a reflection on them, not on you. That’s my rough recollection of something from Amanda Palmer’s book, where she was talking about the trust she put in her fans when she was couch surfing. Sure, some people might take advantage of you for trusting them, but should their actions change who you are? No. Their abuses are on them. When you are trusting, it isn’t naiveté behind the trust – I think it’s love. When we want to see in others the best parts of ourselves, we open our hearts to trusting them. If we let those that abuse us shut out that trust, it will impact our relationships for the rest of time. I would rather be abused than lose that connection.

It’s funny, I’m instinctively trustful in most things. I will share anything from my life experience, I don’t hide that. I will trust a near-stranger with a key to my home if I read them and they seem trustworthy. I will even seek out the best intentions of strangers when they do something that seems offensive to me. However, there is one way I’ve always held back, and that was showing my true self. I told my stories, I put on a good show, but baring myself wasn’t there. What did I like? Who knows. What did I believe in? Hard to say. What kind of person was I? The kind that kept everyone else happy. The people pleaser curse. You know so much about us, but you never really know us.

I’ve talked about people pleasing before, so in this post it’s more about self-trust. We talked about self-love last week, so let’s build on it with self-trust. I don’t just mean trusting yourself to know who you are, your wants, and your needs. I also mean trusting that you can show yourself. Who you are, at all levels. We’re taught in primary school that we will be rejected for who we are, but in reality, we can only be loved for who we are. So, if we deny or repress ourselves – we cannot find that peace and happiness that comes in love.

I think that’s what people mean when they say you cannot love others if you don’t love yourself. To entrust who you are to someone else so completely to fully love each other – you have to know and love yourself enough to show yourself to another human. You have to trust them with being yourself. If you don’t know yourself, how can you be yourself? If you don’t love yourself, how do you maintain that trust? In my youth, that never happened. People pleasing masks the self to conform to the wants and needs of others. It destroys the foundation. People pleasers still find love, but I didn’t.

There are thousands of quotes for this, but: be the bright, beautiful, unique person that you are naturally. Do not fear that your love of Sara Bareilles, or cats, or painfully spicy food is going to scare off someone who will love you. It’s hard, but if you love those things, own them (I’m assuming you’ll have a very different list! Mine is also much longer.) Honestly, “your people” are going to laugh with love when you’re belting out a song you love, no matter how they feel about it. Those A-holes that shamed me for loving songs they didn’t like, they weren’t my people. The amazing humans that loved my passion and love for the same songs, even when they didn’t like them, those are people to hold onto.

My story this week is about my trust when I travel; many of you will think I’m crazy, but it’s all in flow.

I am someone who actually loves to have an organized plan. My mom will tell you about my organized closet in high school where I planned out my outfits weeks in advance, along with my hair and makeup. I also organized my closet so that everything was worn, in roughly the same order, by organizing it front to back with the oldest shirt in front and the most recently worn shirt in back. Yeah. I was exceptionally planned out in my “look.” I lost that somewhere along the way, but I think losing it was healthy.

I travel in a sort of reckless abandon. I go on mini-walkabouts. They aren’t true walkabouts because there is a loosely structured plan, but the middle is open enough for me to do whatever I want at whatever pace I choose. It’s freeing. This approach often leaves me in situations where I just have to trust that things will come together. Somehow, they usually do. If they don’t, it can be pretty awful, but that’s rare. If things are in flow, and I’m not trying to force anything specific to happen, things just fall into place. I’ve stayed at stranger’s houses, slept at rest areas alone, met up with friends I hadn’t seen in 7 years or more on a whim. Always with a bright side. That stranger is now my friend, that rest area gave me a gorgeous sunrise, and those friends were excellent company that I still keep in touch with.

A takeaway from this is in the trust. When I planned out every detail of my wardrobe it was an exertion of control over something I could control. I had little trust in the outcome of my actions and took careful efforts to ensure that I did something I wanted to do. When I began traveling on these mini-walkabouts, it was trusting that I would be okay wherever I ended up. I was rarely in a situation that was scary. There was one, but I think I handled it well because the car that was following me gave up after nearly running me off the road a few times. That was scary. It was also my first mini-walkabout, and it didn’t scare me off of trusting my travel. In my mind, I’m like River Tam, those two guys didn’t know what they were dealing with. But, in reality, I’m grateful that I handled it well enough that they turned off and left me alone. I didn’t have to fight that day. I trusted my instincts, though.

I think trust is in flow. If we trust the outcome then our actions are in flow because we are trusting (yielding) instead of forcing. Trust in yourself, trust in others, and see the world open its arms to you. There are limitations to that, but trusting is good for us.

May you find those you can trust and have the wisdom to give it to them. With love, -S.