The Speed of Trust: What I Learned While Parenting, Pivoting, and Starting a PhD

I usually write these on Monday or Tuesday. I let them simmer in the background all week… moving things around, cutting paragraphs that feel too tight or too clean or too dripping with metaphor or misplaced disdain, returning to the parts that come to me in a dream as “not quite right,” and I hit “schedule” Thursday night or Friday afternoon.

This week blatantly refused that rhythm.

A norovirus swept through my kids’ school, teachers started dropping, classes closed, and we made the call to keep our boys home from Wednesday onward. And next week is Thanksgiving, so school is closed again. Yaaaaay.

(Please note the sarcasm — not because I don’t adore my children; I do. But also because I very much adore my work, and the Venn diagram in which both coexist harmoniously is… theoretical.)

So I’m writing this on a Saturday morning, kids freshly loaded into my in-laws’ car so I can get last week’s work and next week’s work logged. And instead of forcing a single coherent narrative, I want to share a few threads that have been rolling around my brain this week (and occasionally knocking things over in there).

1. The Commitment I Didn’t Know I Was Making

Earlier this year, when I committed to working with a coach, we were asked to make declarations for the program. Mine originally involved a revenue number, until I realized that it was entirely counter to my entire ethos to center revenue. Revenue is a lagging indicator.

So I changed it to this:

“I will center relationships in everything I build. I’ll measure success by whether I’m in relationship with people and things who give me energy, align with my values, and feel generous and fun.”

Relationships first, shown through energy, alignment, generosity, and fun.

What I didn’t expect was how much that commitment would reorganize my entire life.

I wrote that intention on a random page of a notebook that also happened to include a phone number, the one I dialed that same morning, without overthinking, to ask a stranger about a PhD in transformative social change.

I didn’t know that one small act, in the middle of an already overloaded year, would pull me into a 5–6 year journey in humanistic psychology.

Just like I didn’t know that “retiring from running other people’s businesses” would lead, indirectly but undeniably, to joining the journey of co-creating a whole new one with my husband.

Relationships first, even when the relationship is with the next version of myself.

2. I Got Accepted

I got accepted into the program. The PhD in transformative social change.
Classes start January 2nd.
I’m filling out the FAFSA, trying to remember if my 20-year-old FSA ID still exists under my maiden name.

It’s bananas to be in my 40s starting something this big, and, I acknowledge even more bananas that I’m doing it while:

…raising two little kids
…running my strategy studio
…and co-building a tech company with seven team members (so far), a product in development, and meetings on the calendar that genuinely feel like they’re pointing toward something… real.

Nothing about my life looks “streamlined.”
But everything feels strangely aligned.
Not neatly organized and not simple… but it feels true.

3. The Speed of Trust

This year has taught me something I’m honestly embarrassed I didn’t understand earlier, especially since I quoted it and taught it and believed it:

trust isn’t a lever you can pull or an energy you can demand.
Trust is slow.
Trust compounds.
Trust is earned.

It can’t be bought through charisma or secured through certainty, and it definitely can’t be proven through being “right.”

The framework I’ve been returning to, and interrogating, is one that circulates widely in leadership literature:

Trust = (competence + character + caring) × consistency 

You’ll find versions of it in leadership writing and organizational psychology. Sometimes it’s framed as competence, character, and consistency; sometimes as competence, character, and caring. One of the clearer citations of the “three C’s” appears in Psychology Today, which describes trust as emerging from competence, character, and caring (Fletcher, 2016). Another variant, competence, character, consistency, appears in business leadership publications and cross-cultural consulting, though none cite a primary academic origin.

In other words:
It’s a framework with roots, but not a single author.
That tells me it’s a pattern more than a provenance.

Here’s how I understand it now:

Trust is earned over time (consistency):
By showing real caring for others and for yourself.
By demonstrating competence and being honest when you don’t have it.
By revealing a character grounded in honesty, integrity, and respect.

And what I know for sure is this: the people I trust most right now aren’t responding to or displaying perfect execution or a flawless track record. They’re displaying something more durable, and I hope to display the same:

accumulated evidence.

Trust is slow by design.

4. Building the Company I Swore I Was Done Building

A few months ago, I sent an email saying I was retiring from running other people’s businesses.

That was true. I’m still retired from that.

But now I’m building a company with my husband, one we’ve spent the latter half of the year architecting from the ground up, and it turns out I’m not retired from this.

We have seven people on the team.
We have a product in development.
We have engineers, designers, advisors, collaborators.
We’re building something I’m genuinely proud of and terrified by at the same time, which I think might be the right combination.

And this week, I realized something: I still move through this company I co-own as if someone else is going to yell at me.

I was raised to CYA.
Cover your ass.
Document everything.
Make yourself unimpeachable.

My dad wasn’t trying to make me paranoid, he was trying to help me survive. He was giving me corporate training before I ever set foot inside a corporation. And for the past twenty years, that skill has served me (sometimes more than I want to admit).

But now that I’m running my own company, with my own values, I’m seeing how deep that reflex runs.

I keep forgetting this is our company. No one’s going to get in trouble. I’m so used to doing everything to cover other people. And then I do it for myself, too. 

My nervous system hasn’t caught up to my reality:

I’m not an executive inside someone else’s hierarchy anymore. I’m not protecting anyone “above” me. Or anyone “below” me. Not in this company.
There is no invisible HR file waiting for a misstep.
There is no CEO waiting to reprimand me for moving “out of order.”

And yet, that reflex to CYA and COA (cover other’s asses, not because anyone asked me to but because that’s how I learned to survive corporate spaces.) sits at the base of my spine like an old survival script; it’s in black and white. It’s out of focus. And it’s time for a remake of that particular film. ‘Cause…

It shows up when I over-document.
It shows up when I over-function.
It shows up when I hesitate to delegate because I still feel like everything has to pass through me for it to be “safe.”

These patterns get ingrained.

And yet, my intention is that this company doesn’t ask me, or anyone else, to shrink to belong.
But my body is still operating like it expects the shrinking to be required.

Part of this season of building isn’t just the product, the team, the strategy, or the pace.
It’s also unlearning the protective instincts I developed for environments that no longer exist.

Remembering. literally reminding my body, that I’m not going to “get in trouble” for building the company I actually want to build.

And sometimes that’s the hardest part.

5. A Note on Pace (Mine, Yours, Everyone’s)

If this year taught me anything, it’s that life is not linear and growth is not clean.

I’ve spent years believing momentum equals alignment, and this year has proven the opposite: sometimes the real evidence is in…

the nights I sleep through,
the conflict that doesn’t escalate,
the work that doesn’t hijack my nervous system,
the ease that wasn’t available to me when I was contorting myself into other people’s expectations.

Building out loud, for me, isn’t about broadcasting every milestone.
It’s about telling the truth inside the process. (Even the unglamorous pieces. Even the parts I haven’t figured out yet. Even the ones that make me mutter ‘oh lord’ under my breath. Which my two-almost-three year old now also mutters under his breath. Or shouts loudly in the grocery store. Which is… a new stage of personal accountability I wasn’t prepared for.)

6. Questions I’m Sitting With

Here are the questions I keep returning to this week:

What am I centering without meaning to?
What relationships feel like alignment and which feel like obligation?
What’s the slowest timeline that still honors the truth?
What am I willing to build without urgency?
What does trust actually require of me right now?

Feel free to borrow any of these for your own reflection.

That’s what I’ve got today.

Saturday morning, a long (but exciting) to do list, and a year that somehow feels like the most surreal combination of “WTF” and “this is GREAT.”

Thank you for being part of this little corner where I get to build out loud; not to teach or be right or flex, but to practice.

xo,
Brittany