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

by Najwa Zebian

The people you can trust with parts of your story are those who’ve earned your trust.

Would you want the people you welcome into your home to feel bad for you? Or would you want them to see you and be there for you out of genuine love?

Welcome those you know will feel with you, in empathy, not bad for you.

who will amplify your voice when it feels so faint. Those who will remind you of your value when you forget it. Those who will remind you of your logic when you are so far gone past your ability to assess your situation in an unbiased manner because of being enmeshed in it.

People shouldn’t feel so comfortable taking you for granted. They shouldn’t believe you won’t take away the privilege of being welcomed into your life.

For example, a woman’s body shape, weight, and physical features are highly scrutinized by society and judged by a set of unspoken norms. Social media outlets reinforce these norms.When you allow those unspoken norms to dictate how you see yourself, you’re allowing society’s ideals into your home, even if you reject those ideals on a conscious level.

I could never, and should never aim to, change another person’s behavior. A boundary has nothing to do with other people. It has everything to do with me.

building boundaries is about saying This is what I accept, and this is what I don’t accept.

Do not constantly walk through life in defense mode. When your boundaries are violated, respond. Do not react.

If by expressing your boundary to someone, you are expecting that their behavior will change, that is not a boundary. A boundary is free of the expectation that it will change a person’s behavior.

When you attach the validity of the boundary to the person’s changed behavior, you are stepping into that person’s home and defining your worth based on their treatment of you.

My worth is not dependent on someone respecting how I want to be treated.

Why are they continuing to hurt me when I’ve already expressed that what they’re doing hurts me?, start asking Do I accept this in my life? I do not accept disrespect. I do not accept inconsistency in communication. I do not accept someone treating me in a way that makes me see their clear lack of respect for me as a human.

You are taking your power over valuing your own worth. That boundary speaks of that value.

Their actions are only powerful over you, your well-being, your thoughts and feelings if you allow them that power.

Imagine that you’re walking outside and it unexpectedly starts raining. You will get wet. But it’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to walk away from the rain and go to somewhere you can dry yourself, or continue standing in the rain because…you’re already wet.

When we accept a boundary violation once, when it happens again, we accept it, because we’ve accepted it before. It’s familiar. We know how it will go. We know we can survive it. We know that, on some level, speaking up might cause the person who crossed our boundary to walk away. So we allow them to stomp over that boundary just so they stay. Something else you may have done is tell them that the way you feel is a result of the way they’re treating you.

It’s dependent on you not accepting the behavior after you’ve expressed where you stand on it.

Boundaries are a reflection of the value you see in yourself.

You’ll adapt your boundary to their level of willingness to respect it. For example, you might say something like At least don’t yell at me around my family.

don’t continue to accept it by telling yourself I’m already wet.

welcoming those who respect your boundaries without making your boundaries about them, but about you.

Respecting others should never come at the expense of you disrespecting yourself.

I know you believe that you are coming from a place of love and protection, but you have to respect my autonomy. Loving me should not be conditional on whether I do or say what you approve of. You might think shaming me will protect me, but it will only hold me back from being my own person. I am human. I will make mistakes. It doesn’t make me a bad…[daughter, son,…].

You are not a bad person for not accepting someone taking advantage of you or your time. You must stand up for yourself.

When you don’t know what you deserve, you’re more likely to welcome anyone who knocks on your door, because you equate someone knocking on your door with your door’s worthiness of being knocked on.

When you don’t know what you’re open to receiving, you will take in anything and later realize that it’s too little or simply not what you want.

I always felt like a burden when someone offered to do something for me. I felt bad that they had to exert that kind of effort just to make things easier for me. But that stemmed from my not knowing that sometimes people express their love through effort, through action, and that I was worth that effort and action!

Sometimes, people just want to give us love, time, attention, and affection because they genuinely see us for who we are. And they’re willing to give all that to us compassionately. And it’s our own rejection of ourselves and what we deserve that makes us believe that what they’re giving us is too much.

takes time to accept more than scraps when you believe that it’s too much for you. What’s wrong with someone actually making you a priority in their life? What’s wrong with someone putting in the effort to show you their love? You deserve that. It’s not too much. It’s the bare minimum that you deserve from someone you’re welcoming into your home.

The next time someone offers you something and your first instinct is to say no, reflect on whether you’re saying no because you genuinely don’t want what they’re offering or because you don’t believe you deserve what they’re offering you.

It’s easy to become cynical about what people have to offer you when all you’ve known is being given too little. I realized

accepted that what they had to offer me was the most I could ever get.

blanket statement that I couldn’t trust anyone. If those closest to me betrayed me that way, how could anyone else be any different?

To all the people I pushed away while I was healing: Forgive me for not being able to welcome you when I really wanted to. I was scared. I was scared you’d judge me. I was scared you wouldn’t understand. I was scared you’d ask me how I couldn’t have known better. I was scared you’d push me away and remind me of all the reasons I don’t deserve to be loved. I was scared. Everyone I welcomed before you either lied or left or took more than what I had to give. Everyone I welcomed before you only stayed as long as I was who they wanted me to be instead of who I actually am. I’m sorry I made you feel I couldn’t trust you when the truth was I couldn’t even trust myself.

When you try so hard to become who you think you should be, and to avoid who you think you shouldn’t be, you live a life that seems like an act.

It’s what happens with the mentality of “fake it till you make it.” Some of us get so stuck in faking it that we actually forget who we really are. Until it’s too late…when

confusing behavior in others makes you question yourself. You question your own sanity, your own recollection of events…your own understanding of the events…of the person…of yourself… As painful as it may be, confusion will put you eye to eye with all the changes you need to make in order

answer. In fact, you’re told to stay away and when you ask why, you’re told that there is no place for you. And when you ask why all of a sudden there’s no place for you, you’re told that there never was a place for you and you’re delusional for believing that.

You’ve lost sight of where you started, because your focus was not on the road but on who you were walking it with.

If you think about it, something must be wrong with you, they tell you. So the trauma from that moment lives inside of you, but you’re not allowed to feel it. You’re not allowed to heal from it, because you’re told you made it up. It’s like trying to heal from a disease without having anyone validate the diagnosis.

define gaslighting as the denial of your reality by someone you trust—whatever reality it is you experience with them.

The term comes from the 1938 British play Gas Light, in which an abusive husband manipulates his wife into believing that she’s crazy by psychologically destroying her perception of reality.

You are not confused. You are experiencing a confusing situation. Separate the confusing situation from who you are. If you say “I am confused,” you are implying the confusing situation is part of you. It is not. It is part of what you are experiencing. The answer to the confusion does not lie in the confusion itself. Rather it lies in the ability to step outside of it and see that you are experiencing it instead of it being you. The answer lies in you.

The truth is, getting stuck in being angry or upset with someone over them hurting you doesn’t bring you any peace at all. It’s only going to bring you more pain.

And your hope is that once you understand why they did what they did, you’ll be able to move on. But…spending all that time going over every single detail and hoping that, somehow, within the folds of those details you’re going to find your answer is like looking for a speck of dust in an ocean.

What you need to focus on is that the person who hurt you doesn’t deserve your time or yo...

Let them keep what they took from you. That’s how you spread your light in the world. Don’t fight to take it back.

It hurts because they meant something to you. It hurts because you believed them. It hurts because you saw a future with them. Because you were vulnerable with them, because you spent so much of your time and energy on them.

Instead of punishing yourself for feeling angry, ask yourself What is this anger trying to tell me? Is it trying to tell me that my boundaries are being violated? Is it trying to tell me that I’m being silenced? Is it trying to tell me that I should actually say no?