Sabrina Giacalone

Tag: trust

  • What Faith Feels Like

    Faith disarms fear by making it visible and choosing trust anyways.

    My husband left yesterday.

    He is in the military and has been sent away for six months, something we had no say in. Last night was my first night without him since our wedding, and I’m existing in a strange space right now.

    There is a version of faith I used to think that I understood. The kind where everything is stable at home, life is predictable, and each day has a routine way about it that makes it predictable and easy to explain. This is not a normal day for me, and I am uncovering that there is another kind of faith. It is the faith you learn when everything looks the same but feels no different. When the day is full of children and motion to keep your mind busy and your heart full…then the quiet of night arrives, and the stillness is deafening.

    I am learning that when your body is afraid, small physical reminders become a tether. A shirt that still carries his scent, waking on his side of the bed, choosing to use his favorite mug for my morning coffee. Ordinary objects, yes, but also enormous anchors.

    Because fear is loud, and if I am honest, it knows my name.

    I am learning that faith doesn’t pretend that fear is not there. Faith names it. Looks it in the face. And refuses to let it drive. Because when we lean into trust, fear is disarmed.

    This is the kind of faith I am writing about this week. The kind that helps us discern what is true so we can disarm our fears.

    Read the full letter on Substack: What Faith Feels Like to Me

    Yours in ink,

    Sabrina

  • Navigating Shadows: Finding Strength in Connection

    Navigating Shadows: Finding Strength in Connection

    Sometimes the way out of the shadows is not through force, but choosing to move toward the light together.

    Two sisters holding hands on a misty forest path, walking beside a pale-tailed fox.
    Strength through togetherness.

    Sometimes it is easy to mistake the shadows for truth—especially when you’ve been walking in them for so long.

    Voices echo.

    Shapes distort.

    And what is real can begin to feel uncertain.

    This week’s Letter to the Netherwood is about togetherness. As practice. As a form of discernment. As a way back to truth when fear starts inventing endings in the silence.

    In Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince, Sera and Lily experience this again and again. The world shifts, the forest disguises itself, and doubt tries to blur what they know is real. But the turning point isn’t the absence of fear, nor is it a map.

    It is the decision to stay connected.

    There is a kind of strength that rises from standing beside one another, through the quiet presence of someone who does not turn away. Togetherness doesn’t always feel comforting. Sometimes it is simply proximity while your mind tries to spiral.

    But light returns differently when it is shared.

    It steadies.
    It clarifies.
    It reminds us what is real.

    If you’ve been walking through something heavy—if the shadows feel convincing, if your mind keeps trying to invent endings—this letter is a gentle invitation:

    Find one person. Reach. Not to be rescued, but to be accompanied.

    Where have you been trying to walk alone, and what would it look like to reach for togetherness this week as a way back to truth?

    Read the full letter on Substack: Strength Through Togetherness

    Yours in ink,

    Sabrina

  • Navigating Trust and Trauma in Relationships

    Navigating Trust and Trauma in Relationships

    An Excerpt from Letters from the Netherwood

    Trust is one of the deepest themes woven into Sera, Lily, & The Fox Prince. Not as a soft idea, but as a backbone. As an invisible thread that holds when fear gets loud, and doubt tries to speak in a voice that sounds like your own.

    I didn’t realize how personal that theme was for me in my youth through my early twenties.

    There was a season in my life when I trusted with all of myself—open, full-bodied trust that didn’t keep a tally. And then, little by little, trust began to fracture. My parents divorced but remained close for a time… until a new influence entered the picture and relationships shifted in ways that changed the shape of my world. Later, in my early twenties, I found myself in a marriage where self-sacrifice was not romance—it was survival. If you want more of that context, it lives in my Wild-hearted Bravery letter.

    After enough breaks, I developed certain “truths” that were really just protection in disguise:

    Everyone will let me down eventually.
    Trust nobody.
    Enjoy it while you can… until the other shoe drops.

    That “other shoe” became an inevitability I carried—armor that felt like wisdom.

    But therapy, time, and healing love have taught me something different: trust can be rebuilt. Not blindly. Not perfectly. But humanly—through repair, understanding, and the steady proof of someone who continues to show up.

    This is the fervent kind of trust I wrote into the heart of the Netherwood. It is the kind that holds even when fear arrives wearing a familiar face.

    Read the full letter on Substack: Letters from the Netherwood → https://substack.com/home/post/p-189641086?source=queue

    Content note: the full letter includes references to divorce dynamics, relational trauma, and emotional abuse. Please read gently.