Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul

by Najwa Zebian

The mistake most of us make is that we build our homes in other people in the hope that they will deem us worthy of being welcomed inside.

That thought alone—to tell someone I wished I were in their presence—made me blush uncontrollably. I somehow felt ashamed for expressing that…for wanting that…for admitting that.

How do you say goodbye to someone who’s already gone?

I said to myself Why are people always so okay with not having me in their lives?

Home is the place where you don’t have to work hard just to be loved.

What was the point of expressing myself if no one heard it? What was the point of writing my feelings down if I wasn’t able to do anything to change my reality?

And it’s kind of like an ah-ha moment when you say, “Now I understand why that moment in the past happened.”

I could stand on stage and give the best speech on self-love. I could write endlessly about self-worth, empowerment, and value. Why couldn’t I actually feel it?

To know you are in the wrong place, but stay where you are.

I stayed in friendships when I knew I was being taken advantage of, because I thought that having part-time friends was better than not having any at all.

You can’t deprive yourself of the belief that you deserve that until you look like, feel like, and have the things and people in your life that you believe will make you have that.

The foundation is built from two things: self-acceptance (you must feel worthy of the foundation) and self-awareness (knowing who you are).

I’m certain that you are an excellent advice-giver when it comes to reminding someone of their worth.

Because if I myself saw my worth, I wouldn’t base my worthiness on someone else’s seeing it.

To accept yourself, you must have no ifs.

And, thankfully, I went back to accept the girl who knew she had a voice and that her opinion mattered.

You see, the problem was that I was so stuck on understanding myself in my current state that I forgot that this “me” is a product of a history that made me.

Who was I without those labels? A nobody, I thought. As long as you are operating from that story, you’re not at home with yourself.

The feeling of home is the feeling of I’m together with myself.

Before you can genuinely love yourself, you must believe that you are worthy of love.

When you believe you are worthy of love, you will start seeing love around you.

Self-love is loving yourself exactly as you’d love the person you love the most. And that love actually feels like love and looks like meeting your own needs.

Giving is noble. Loving is noble. But not if you aren’t included in that giving and loving.

self-love is a process of self-discovery.

And every time I’d deplete myself in giving and wonder why none of that was being reciprocated, I’d feel like I was being selfish for even wondering that. I felt guilty for actually wanting to receive something.

You can be the most beautiful gem, but in the hands of someone who doesn’t value gems, you will be devalued.

just because someone doesn’t love you, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

Making someone stay is not your responsibility.

Love is not in words. Love is in action.

I was constantly feeling unworthy of love was that I was blocking my eyes from seeing love from any source other than the places I was seeking love.

And that’s why your boundaries aren’t based on being in defense mode, but rather being in a self-loving, self-valuing mode.

So on top of trying to heal your own wound, you are worried for the person who was carrying the knife that cut you in the first place.

The act of accepting a thought and the feeling that it leads to, or vice versa, takes away from its power.

Here is a powerful way to bring awareness to your self-talk: Switch to self-love mode.

If your home felt so safe to you and so welcoming of you, why would you be constantly reaching out to someone else or something else to give you those feelings?

I am not defined by the love that others accept from me, but by the love I have within me.

But when you do have your own home, you’ll be able to go back to it and eat the pie yourself. Or serve it to someone else who actually likes pie.

Before you give love to someone in any form, ask yourself, Is my intention to truly love this person? Or is it to receive validation that my love is worth it?

As long as your definition of self-love involves others, you are not in a state of self-love.

It is a reminder to stop waiting for any symbol of someone else showing up for you.

All that I am willing to give someone just so they can love me in return I will direct toward building my own home.

Do not seek a cure from the person who caused you pain.

Forgiveness is a practice in letting go.

Just because you can’t let it go doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

Making sense of the pain and the trauma was not enough. I had to make sense of myself.

Making sense of why you reacted the way you did to a painful event will increase your self-awareness and knowledge of yourself.

We get so focused on becoming the person we were before, but that’s like trying to fit into a shell you’ve outgrown.

The one who broke you cannot heal you.

And the moment we can separate their actions from what we think they mean about us, we can understand ourselves better. And we can also understand the other person better. This is what happens when we use “I” statements.

You’re healing not from the event, but instead from what it told you about yourself.