Moment of Trust

I have a “Learn Something New” pottery update today. A couple of days ago I returned to the pottery studio to clean up our projects and prepare them for firing. My bestie lives an hour away so I went alone, entrusted to care for both of our pieces. The studio was full of other adult students, also prepping their pieces. As each learned that I was working on my BFF’s piece, the comment was “wow, that takes a lot of trust!”

I found that to be a curious reaction. I felt as comfortable working on her piece as I would my own, and I’m certain the same would be true in the reverse. I came with zero skills, so chances were high that I could really mess things up, but I didn’t have any more fear or caution with her piece than I would with mine.

For us, the whole thing is about the experience versus the product.

Maybe because we both have gone through the hip journey experience together – helping each other through the ugliest, yuckiest, funniest times, coming out the other side with beautiful kintsugi bodies – a garbled up piece of pottery made so by the other would be even more beautiful. Beautiful because of its made-with-love flaws.

We even say that if in the end of our hip journeys we are somehow not totally healed, it wouldn’t matter because we found each other. That is the best part of it all.

So, trust to care for the next steps with a piece of pottery is simple.

The Seven Elements of Trust

Being the total nerd I am, the comments expressing amazement at the level of trust still sitting with me, I had to go back and review Brené Brown’s elements of trust to see if I could learn more about why this was the overwhelming sentiment.

• Boundaries – We are both clear on each other’s boundaries and 100% comfortable articulating them, asking, clarifying. Check.
• Reliability – We do what we say we’ll do. Every time. And if for some reason we can’t we say so. Check.
• Accountability – Own our mistakes. Check.
• Vault – We share our weirdest, most vulnerable moments and stories and know that they will be kept between us. This is a vital piece of our growth and we know it. Check.
• Integrity – This is my top Foundational Value after health/being alive. We practice a lot of “courage over comfort”, living in our integrity together. Check.
• Nonjudgment – We are definitely nonjudgmental together! It is freeing to be able to share everything and feel better for having done so. Check.
• Generosity – We meet each other with “tell me more” when we aren’t clear, seeking to understand each other generously, giving lots of space to be different and hold different views. Check.

All of these elements are just there. We haven’t had to make a concerted effort to create them. I suppose this is why we are soul sister BFFs, comfortable working on each other’s art as if it were our own! I’m grateful that we have this trust.

Progress

I only had time to work on one of our pieces the other night. Naturally, I chose to work on her piece. (I’ll do mine next week.) I took my time to apply the new skills Sunny taught us, channeling my bestie and what I imagined she would want her piece to look like. The night we went together to throw our pieces we joked that it looked like a nuclear power plant silo from “The Simpson’s” so I kept that shape.

I don’t think my BFF and I realized that our projects were a multi-week, multi-step thing. Maybe I can talk her into coming back next week to care for my piece as I did for hers. Trust is a two way street, one that she and I have firmly, permanently marked as our own, to forever rival the character and longevity of the oldest streets in the world. We have been lining our street with all of the elements of trust, connection, fun, beauty, and now pottery, a new moment of trust.

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