Toronto-based singer-songwriter Betty Strings has released a new single that lays bare years of personal trauma, recovery, and hard-won self-belief, marking a pivotal moment in her artistic evolution.
Born in Macedonia and now based in Toronto, Strings — born Elizabeth Anne Cook — this week unveiled Trust Myself, an emotionally direct track that documents her journey from survival mode to healing. The song, co-written with Brian Melo and songwriter Paul William Stephens, transforms deeply personal experiences into a broader message of self-reclamation and trust.
At its core, Trust Myself explores what happens when the inner voice meant to protect instead becomes a source of harm. Strings said the song grew out of an unusually candid songwriting process conducted over Zoom, where she shared what she was grappling with in real time.
“We all got on Zoom, we decided on a topic I was struggling with that week—for instance, TRUST,” Cook explains. “I told my story, Paul took notes, Brian came up with a beautiful melody, and we all wrote the song together, in one session. It was beyond any of us. It was magic.”
The track was written in late 2022 but deliberately held back from release. Strings said she needed to complete significant personal healing before she could perform the song with integrity. That decision reflects a growing emphasis on authenticity that has shaped her recent work.
Lyrically, Trust Myself captures the painful process of learning to believe in oneself again after prolonged exposure to abuse and emotional instability. The song includes lines such as, “After all the pain they put me through / Never believing in my magic / And now you’re telling me I have it / And I can trust myself with loving you,” underscoring the tension between self-doubt and renewal.
Strings said the song chronicles what it feels like to be offered unconditional love after a lifetime defined by chaos.
“My normal was toxicity, addiction, and abuse. I became so addicted to the chaos that the light was so foreign to me,” Cook shares.
She said the song also confronts the unsettling reality of becoming one’s own abuser — when an internalized survival mechanism turns into a barrier against truth and connection. According to Strings, her therapist encouraged her to approach her own thinking patterns as an addiction, even suggesting she apply a 12-step framework to herself.
The five-year healing journey behind Trust Myself involved relinquishing control and confronting long-standing fear, she said, including asking God to free her not only from past trauma but from self-destructive patterns that had taken root over time.
The track is further shaped by instrumental contributions from Matt Fasullo, whose banjo work adds emotional texture and warmth. Together with Melo and Stephens, Strings said the collaborators helped guide her story without diluting its vulnerability, allowing the song to remain both intimate and accessible.
Trust Myself is one of six songs Strings wrote with the same creative team in 2022. Each track, she said, circles back to themes of self-sabotage, trust, and learning how to exist outside of pain. Holding the music back until now was a conscious choice tied to her belief that the work needed to be lived, not just written.
“I wasn’t ready to bring them fully to life until I’d done the work, so I am able to sing and talk about them, in all of their authenticity,” she reflects.
The result is a song that positions Strings as an artist willing to mine her own experiences for meaning, transforming deeply personal struggle into something widely resonant. With Trust Myself, she offers a message of hope to listeners navigating similar paths, suggesting that even after years of damage, the ability to rebuild trust — both inward and outward — remains possible.
As she continues to release music from this chapter, Strings is emerging as a distinct voice in Canada’s independent music landscape, unafraid to turn personal debris into art and to chart a way forward where healing and honesty take centre stage.
