Tending to Trust in Times of Deepening Distrust
Six Guides to Help You in Trusting Just a Bit More
Introduction
We are living with a great contradiction: The growing need to trust one another amidst a deepening culture of hate and mistrust of anyone labeled “other.” Everywhere we turn there are dominant narratives of who we should fear, who is a criminal, and who is deserving of punishment by the state. It is fueled by a system (mainstream media, corporations, and government) that does not and cannot care by design. All is meant to burn us out, keeping us disconnected from that which can aid us most: mutual care, understanding, and support.
At AllThrive Education, we practice being love in action both with our clients and amongst our team as an antidote to the systemic burnout fueling our disconnection and deepening our distrust. This includes regular check-ins as a team about how we understand, make meaning of, and practice core concepts of our mission, “We all thrive being love in action.”
These check-ins, or as we call them “portals”, bring us deeper into relation with one another, so that we can unflatten our individual perspectives and start cultivating mutual understanding. We do this all with space, grace, and care.
On Friday, February 21, 2025, we–Wendy Martinez Morroquin, Vanessa Rodriguez Minero, and Jason Wyman / Queerly Complex–gathered on Zoom. Initially, it was supposed to be a working meeting about our Culture Tending Commons / Collective. But as we checked in, we realized there was something more pressing for us to discuss. We turned our “meeting” into a “portal” and dove into a core question each of us is facing: How do we tend to trust in times of deepening distrust?
We took space-time to be with our own thoughts, letting silence fill our virtual “room.” We spoke only when finally moved to do so. Each gave a deeply considered, thoughtful responses, ones that expanded personal insight. By the end of our “portal,” we were grateful our transcription software captured our conversation because we realized we generated collective wisdom, which acts as a reminder for our team (individually and collectively) and (maybe) can be a beacon for others searching for some guides on trust building.
Six Guides on How to Tend to Trust
1. Use “mirror work” to cultivate trust in one’s own being.
“What's helping me trust myself is lots of mirror work. I literally stand there and face myself, you know. Just to see myself like, ‘Wow, you've overcome a lot of things; you're wise,’” shared Wendy.
Mirror work, whether actually in front of a mirror or imagining your being in your mind’s eye, makes you look more closely at your reflection. This deep witnessing can help you embody trust. When trust becomes embodied, you have the possibility to become more vulnerable with the people you care about. Shared vulnerability between friends, allies, accomplices, neighbors, or comrades has the opportunity to strengthen or deep trust. This is especially true when your shared vulnerability helps ease stress, overwhelm, or burnout mutually.
For Wendy, she’s witnessed the transformative power of mirror work and shared vulnerability through AllThrive Education. She is facing challenges and asking for support. Most importantly, she is showing up for herself, her family, and her neighbors and comrades.
2. Replace rigidity with curiosity; develop an inquisitive mindset.
“Over the last five years, I didn't set the expectations of traveling abroad, but I was curious. And when the opportunities came to me, my curiosity is what made travelling abroad possible,” Vanessa shared.
Learning how to keep one’s mind open and flexible helps make what seems impossible possible. One’s thoughts create pathways, patterns, and crevices that make navigating the world more familiar, which can breed a certain amount of comfort even with things that do not serve us. An inquisitive mindset facilitates questioning those pathways, patterns, and crevices so they do not become trenches from which we cannot climb out. Remaining curious to the outside world, one’s own interiority, and the dynamism between the two is a way to become unstuck, climb to varying heights, and experience the totality of the cosmos in new ways.
For Vanessa, holding a desire to travel abroad while releasing expectations of how it was going to happen inspired curiosity. Her openness invited possibilities, which ultimately led her to trips to Mexico and South Africa. This is creating a feedback loop that is both disrupting bias and encouraging her to trust in even larger, bolder, more liberatory dreams.
3. Forget your own definition of words; listen for how others use and practice their words.
“I'm finding it hard to trust the meaning of words, and whether or not we all have the same understanding of what words mean. There's so much that is so misunderstood because everyone's sold something different from their own reality,” shared Jason.
Everyone has a different reality from which they experience and make meaning of the world. It is formed by many factors that are personal, social, systemic, generational, and cosmic. One’s unique positionality creates a multiplicity of understandings of words, ideas, and concepts. To cultivate plurality (or an awareness of the multiplicity of understandings), it can be helpful to let go of one’s own definitions and understanding, so you can become more aware and attuned to the way others express their words.
For Jason, learning how to forget their own definitions is a lifelong pursuit. They sometimes still get tripped up when there is a large gap in understanding between people. One thing that has aided them is taking a pause to observe where they are and where others’ understanding lies. This helps them reorient themselves, which makes it easier to trust in plurality.
4. Engage in vulnerable, reflective conversations with your communities.
“I couldn’t have arrived at the wisdom that we arrived at today on my own or in any other format that didn't feel constructive and authentic. It feels really important to have access to this kind of vulnerable, reflective community space,” shared Wendy.
It can be risky to reveal the richness of your being to others and invite introspective conversation into the things we do not understand, fear, are passionate about, desire, or celebrate. Taking this risk, though, is a way to strengthen, deepen, and widen who witnesses us and who we witness. Witnessing is a step on the pathway towards trusting one another, developing mutual understanding, articulating collective wisdom, and practicing love in action.
For Wendy, AllThrive Education is a community with whom she can be vulnerable. AllThrive’s “Portals” invite her to more deeply share her beliefs, ways of being, and biases with the team. This exchange deepens trust between team members, which makes trusting others a bit easier.
5. Let go of control; embrace autonomous collective actions.
“Trust the culture that you've actually tended. Like, let go of it all. It's a collective effort, and you actually need to see yourself as part of the collective,” shared Jason.
One way to tend to trust building between a group / groups is by acknowledging and affirming everyone’s autonomy, or each person’s ability to make decisions and take accountability for their decision. When trying to move towards a collective destination, letting go of the exact way you get there opens up opportunities for more people to decide to take personal actions towards it. Facilitating autonomous collective actions is especially critical now as the landscape around us constantly shifts, making large-scale, coordinated action more difficult.
For Jason, gathering as peers is (and has been) the mechanism by which autonomous collective actions most naturally spring. When everyone gathered contributes towards mutual understanding, it inspires peers to articulate possible actions that can instigate movement. And Jason trusts those actions will be taken when they need to be taken by those that need to take them. Jason has experienced this phenomenon time and again, especially with their work with AllThrive Education.
6. Reflect upon unresolved conflicts, and how you desire to face future conflicts (even if you are unsure you will face them the way you desire.)
“I didn't successfully face a past conflict with care for myself and the other person, and I've been having trouble trusting that if this were to happen again, will I really be vulnerable enough to admit my vulnerability to the person I'm in conflict with,” shared Vanessa.
Contradictions arise when there is more than one perspective present. How you face contradictions mediates whether or not that contradiction becomes a conflict. Reflecting upon past contradictions that became conflicts, especially unresolved ones, can help you discover your biases, shadows, and boundaries. Once named, you can better articulate how you want to mediate contradictions before they become conflicts.
For Vanessa, an unresolved conflict with a once close friend, who is a fellow undocuorganizer, resurfaced when she saw their name recently. It reminded her that she failed someone. Vanessa has proof from other relations, including Wendy at AllThrive Education, that she has grown. And it is her doubt that reminds her she can trust herself to be courageous when facing future contradictions and conflicts.