Finding and holding the place where too much ends and not enough begins takes time, practice and a lot of self-reflection. In the healing process, we often hear ourselves saying “never again” or, worse, we make our new opportunities pay for the sins of prior offenders.
Learning to trust after a betrayal isn’t easy, but it begins with trusting ourselves. That learning includes clear-eyed self-examination of how we choose friends, mates, elected officials or business partnerships. If we trust someone with our heart, our confidence or their promise, and any of those trusts gets broken, the fault isn’t with the other…it’s with ourselves: we trusted unwisely.
Once our wounds heal, we can reflect on their origin, our missed signals or ignored intuition: we can take ownership. It is this ownership that helps us keep the wound “right sized” allowing wisdom to replace the impulse to punish (ourselves or anyone else). Ownership of the wound takes our power back, allowing us to “trust forward” with confidence.
Einstein said “Experience is the best teacher because she gives the test first, and the lesson afterwards.”
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