I was usually the one who believed the best about everyone and thought they had my best intentions at heart. It used to be easy to trust people. And in the few situations when I felt scared or not as sure of that trust, I calmed myself down by noting my own keen discernment. I was confident I would be able to detect if something were going sideways. But then, after years of correctly sizing up situations, when I started getting hit with my own shocking discoveries, I was stunned by how much I’d missed—how many times I had given people the benefit of the doubt when I shouldn’t have.
