Abby Falik explores trust beginning with the very young who learn to trust authority, test scores, and approval “to override our inner knowing before we even know it’s there.” Modernity tells us we can control and trust the certainty of metrics, titles, credentials, authority, instant answers – what’s legible, the map over the territory. But trust is fraying such that the world around us carries “a low hum of suspicion: Is this even real?” “And control is what we reach for when trust feels too risky.” Abby begins within, “The more I trust myself—not to be perfect, but to be present—the more trustworthy I become. Not because I’m right or certain, but because I’m whole.” “By trusting myself, I give others quiet permission to do the same.” An even greater trust of wholeness, the “quiet pulse of spirit” reminds her “we’re held by something larger.…” Finally, repairing trust is “a species-level survival skill— the one that moves us from fear to flourishing.”
