Choose To Treat Trust Like A Flower.
Trust. It’s that ever-elusive rooted-ness that our parents, partners, and society tells us is extremely desirable, yet difficult to obtain and easily lost.
We are told not too give it away generously, but scrupulously, as if trust were an object, a precious stone or a hunk of gold.
Indeed, investing in trust not yet earned is a mark of naivety, of youthful innocence. As if the breach of trust were a right of passage into an adulthood of bitterness.
Does viewing trust in this way really work to serve and protect our unbound, limitless souls? Does associating trust with scarcity make it more valuable?
A capitalist outlook would certainly say so. Yet, the stars that splatter the night sky are an innumerable cliché, as are the seeds in the fruits of our labors, and we would never dream of discounting their value.
If trust were more commonplace, like a tiger lily in a Midwestern July, would that diminish its worth?
If trust can be abundant while maintaining its significance, why not think of trust as a flower? Imagine it as something alive and responsive, something that dies back and produces seed, multiplying itself after having led a rich life.
It is true that living things are much harder to control and protect than physical objects; they die, grow, and reproduce. Living trust may be unruly, it may wax and wane, but it is also resilient. It cannot be lost, broken, bartered, or earned.
It is not the Holy Grail of relationship, lying hidden in myth and legend only to be exhumed by an epic quest. Living trust, or trust viewed as a flower, is precious not in its singularity, but in its power, beauty, and potential.
Whether it has put out its first bloom or gone skinny with seed, it endures. Even in pain or death, living trust can heal or compost itself into a brighter birth.
I choose to treat trust like a flower. I nourish it, I give it away, and I honor it, both given and received.
Yes, I know this puts me at risk of being hurt, but being my own healer, I know that I can recover from any hurt dealt when my trust is violated or betrayed, when that flower is plucked in its prime or rotted from the root.
I love myself enough to know that the infinite gifts of a generous heart and open spirit far exceed the risks. Also important to note are the seeds of wisdom that lie in those hard lessons of healing.
Suffering trust initiates the healing process, both for the ones who hurt and the ones who do the hurting. I choose to love and trust my partner not because he has earned it through faultlessness.
How could I put that burden on him, when I myself fade and falter? No, I choose to share my trust with him because the process of healing through our hurts has improved the quality of our lives and our relationship, ultimately and indelibly.
I choose to trust other women in my path because it lightens my heart and mind, robbing my demons of their favorite drugs: fear and insecurity.
It allows my relationships to expand into higher expanses and deeper depths, enriching our soils while our branches lean heavy with fruits. Through choosing trust, I have also freed my intuition.
I can now differentiate between those telltale gut feelings and the acid reflux of jealousy.
Trust is the antidote to fear. When I walk through life with trust, I can give more of myself and receive more for myself.
When I sow seeds, I trust they will grow. Should they not, I heal and learn from the disappointment and try again with a fresh batch.
Don’t let your trust be hard and heavy like a diamond mined with the blood of the Congolese, but rather soft and hardy like a plant in the soil. Be generous with your love and with your trust.
Give yourself the ultimate gift of self-love, claiming your fears and telling them to go to hell while opening yourself up to heaven. Tell the Universe, “Bring it on! For I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am enough.”
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Jessica Sobocinski is school garden teacher by profession, and a hiking, dirt-worshipping friend by nature; however, she is mostly just a young woman attempting to live fiercely and authentically. She is happiest when she is nude, nurturing living things, cooking, running, dancing, turning compost, sunbathing, and hugging.
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