Self-Trust

A mom I work with recently found herself in a situation I suspect many parents know well.

Her child needed an emergency dental procedure. A situation that seemed manageable quickly became something more serious.

But what troubled her most wasn't the procedure itself. It was the story that came after.

How did I miss this?

Why didn't I realize how serious it was?

I should have prevented that from happening.

If I were a better mother, I would have seen it coming.

Beneath those thoughts was a painful conclusion: I can't trust myself.

As we talked, I noticed something many parents struggle with. She was holding herself to an impossible standard.

Somewhere along the way, she had come to believe that being a good mother meant being an expert… in everything. That she should know in advance what to look out for, anticipate problems, and prevent difficult things from happening.

But no human can do that!

Not because they aren't paying attention or don't love their children enough. But because we rarely have all the facts. Parenting requires us to navigate an ever-changing landscape with incomplete information. That's just life.

So, we keep moving forward.

As she spoke, I could feel the tenderness and concern underneath the self-criticism. Her guilt wasn't coming from carelessness. It was coming from love and concern. The kind of love that desperately wants to protect against pain, disappointment, illness, heartbreak, and hardship.

When a child is struggling socially, we wonder what signs we've missed.

When a diagnosis arrives, we retrace decisions we've made and wonder where we could have gone wrong.

When our child is hurting, we might search for the mistakes we’ve made that explain it.

We scrutinize ourselves with a level of harshness we would never direct toward another. 

Beneath the guilt lies a pervasive, unspoken expectation: I should have known.

We all long for certainty. Certainty feels safe. It gives us a sense of control and, albeit falsely, promises that if we just pay enough attention, work hard enough, learn enough, excel, and love enough, we can avoid the hard things.

But uncertainty is woven into the fabric of parenting and into life. 

Our children are growing, changing human beings. Their bodies change. Their emotions change. Their needs change. New information appears every day.

Loving others asks us to care deeply while living with uncertainty. That can feel so incredibly vulnerable.

When we love this much, we naturally want guarantees. We want reassurance that they're okay, that we're doing enough, that our decisions are the right ones. Yet life rarely offers those guarantees.

As we sat together, she untangled the truth about what had actually happened.

She noticed that something was wrong. She sought support. She followed through. She took the next right step, and then the next, and the next.

She didn’t have all the information at the beginning, but she was paying attention and responded as new information arrived. And her child was okay.

What if that is what good parenting looks like?

Not preventing every problem and certainly not getting it “right” all the time. Just staying present enough to notice, flexible enough to learn, and courageous enough to respond.

When we feel vulnerable, it is easy to confuse uncertainty with a lack of self-trust.

We might imagine self-trust means we have to have the right answer, make the right decisions, and do it ‘right’. 

But perhaps self-trust is not the assurance that we can prevent things from happening, but the confidence to know that we can handle what does happen.

Maybe it is believing in ourselves enough to rely on our judgment. When we don't know, we can learn. When we feel overwhelmed, we can ask questions. When we need help, we can reach out.

Life is full of surprises. We make thousands of decisions while trying to protect the people we love. 

Whether you are raising children, supporting aging parents, caring for a loved one through illness, navigating a life transition, or facing an unexpected challenge of your own, we are all asked to make important decisions with incomplete information.

Perhaps the invitation is not to become more certain or more prepared, but to trust that when the next hard thing comes your way—and it will—you will gather the information you have, lean into the support available to you, listen to your inner wisdom, and take the next right step.

And then the next.

And then the next.

Just as this mother did.