Previous installments of The Toast’s advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons can be found here. Last time: Advice on Yappy Coworkers and Being Poorer Than You Want.

I’m currently in the middle of a complicated, messed-up situation in which everyone has hurt at least one other person very badly. As a result, there’s been a lot of talk of “rebuilding trust.” But what does that mean, and how do you do it? Is it just a matter of letting time pass and not screwing up again? Is there anything one can actually do to rebuild trust, or does trust just have to heal on its own, like a wound?

Nicole: Trust! Fascinating. Also, man, this sounds juicy, I wish I had all the gory details. Trust, in my opinion, can be restored, but it’s kind of a bitch. You need to look at the people involved, and decide if it’s worth it. Are you three best friends who’ve secretly murdered a dude and need to keep a united front in front of the police? Then you need to rebuild that trust (via, yeah, letting time pass and not screwing up again, along with–ideally–a conversation involving lots of “when you did X I felt y” phrases.)

Previous installments of The Toast’s advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons can be found here. Last time: Advice on Relationship Inertia and Past Badness.

In a post-Christmas cleanup effort, I’ve been trying to rid myself of excess baby stuff, including a huge box of diapers my daughter growth-spurted right past, and a bunch of formula that my OB-GYN pushed on me. I kept it in case breastfeeding didn’t work out, but it did, and I know that stuff is expensive, so I’d like it to go to someone who needs it. Ditto the diapers. 

I attempted a donation to the local women’s shelter, but was told they don’t go through baby stuff fast enough to accept diapers or formula. She gave me the name of a local crisis pregnancy center instead. So now, I have a dilemma. This crisis pregnancy center is definitely the type of place that claims to be nonjudgmental but will absolutely pressure women not to have an abortion. On the other hand, they do appear to provide desperate new moms with donations. I hate to support manipulative pro-lifers, but on the other hand, maybe this is the best way to get expensive baby stuff to women who could use it? 

Previous installments of The Toast’s advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons can be found here. Last time: Dating Disclosures.

My sister is a blonde, blue-eyed white girl and just went away to college earlier this fall. I just found out that she wants to transfer to go to a “less urban” college. 

She’s actually my half-sister, via my father and stepmother, but we typically don’t make this distinction in my family. Due to our 12-year age difference and the fact that we didn’t grow up in the same house (I lived with my mom and visited my dad for summer/holidays), we aren’t super close. We talk on the phone occasionally, text, and I of course visit her when I visit that half of my family. She lives in Texas, which I wish was not such a key part of this situation, but I fear it just is.

We’ve chatted a few times since she went away to college about her part-time job, classes, and missing her boyfriend, who attends a different school a few hours away. I was surprised when I talked to my dad a few weeks ago and he mentioned that she is working on a plan to transfer to a new school. The first red flag to me was that she wants to transfer to her boyfriend’s school, which…eww in general. It’s also not as academically challenging and my sister is very smart. The second red flag was much, much worse–she feels uncomfortable with all of the black, Hispanic, and gay students on campus. Her plan is to transfer to this other school, with is much less racially/ethnically diverse and located in a rural area. My dad is basically like “I don’t want her to be miserable” and “It’s too much of an artsy atmosphere to have anything for her socially” and is caving to her desire to transfer. 

I really want to talk to her about this. I’m just not sure what to say when I get her on the phone. 

Nicole: Oh, man, this is a pretty shitty situation.

Previous installments of The Toast’s advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons can be found here. Last time: Death.

I am marrying my absolute favorite person in the world next year. It’s wonderful, glorious, I’m brimming with happiness, blah blah blah wedding planning is hard, blah blah blah, but there is a specific point of etiquette I’d like to ask about, and I don’t have any real-life people to ask who won’t think I’m ridiculous. The wedding is going to be a fairly chill, barbecue-in-the-backyard-of-our-home, low-key sort of event. I’m trying to figure out favors, and think it might be nice to have little bags of wildflower seeds, and I would like to attach little paper cranes to the bags with our names and the date written on the wings. I learned some basic origami years ago in the girl scouts, and it would be a relaxing diy-sort of project for me, and I think the symbolism behind them is beautiful (I read the Sadako book in grade school, obviously cried inconsolably, became a raging librul pacifist, etc., but I really like the idea of folding a thousand of them and bringing myself and my family a thousand years of good luck) but my fiance and I are both just your average white, USA-ian type folks and I am having trouble figuring out whether paper folding is a pretty craft project that can easily cross cultural borders, or if bringing them into my wedding is going to evoke imperialism and orientalism and atomic bombs, or seem really appropriative and icky and like I’m adopting a symbol from a culture that’s not my own because I don’t *like* the symbols from my own culture as much. I don’t think I have any Japanese friends that I can ask (I mean, I haven’t reviewed everybody’s citizenship forms, or their grandparents’ forms, but it hasn’t come up) and I would feel weird about asking random friends of other east-Asian ethnicities, because damn, white girl, no. And I’m pretty sure if I ask the generality of facebook people will tell me I’m overthinking things, but I’d really rather not be a presumptuous jerk if I can help it, and I know the commentariat at the Toast is varied and culturally aware and kind, and I’d like to hear opinions that might be more well-thought-out and sensitive than “shrug, do what you want, it’s just a decoration.” Or, if it is just a decoration, maybe just the opinion of someone who probably at least briefly considered that it might be more than that.

TL/DR: Paper cranes: pretty decoration that a white girl can use in her wedding, or significant cultural artifact that white girls should probably avoid?

Nicole/Mallory: We’re also white ladies, and while we both lean toward the “better not to do it” camp, we thought it might be wise to broaden the circle beyond “a handful of white ladies.” Official polls demonstrated a moderate “yeah, just don’t do it” consensus; but we also sought the specific counsel of friend-of-the-Toast Sarah Jeong. Take it away, Sarah! Can you stay and help us answer the other questions too? Yes? Awesome!