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

by Najwa Zebian

Sometimes forgiving yourself takes the form of you telling the story as you experienced it, not as someone else wrote it.

The purpose of using “I” statements is to separate your healing from the person who caused you pain in any way.

I introduce myself as someone who’s an active participant in her own life, not someone who had something done to her. Not someone who is reacting, but someone who is being.

I am not who you say I am. I am who I am. My truth is not dependent on whether you see it as truth. My truth is dependent on the truth I know I lived.

Being at home with yourself means knowing who to welcome into your home, under what conditions, and when it’s time for them to leave.

Grow the desire to help yourself.

“It must be so hard. I can’t begin to imagine feeling what you’re feeling.”

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

It’s important to be aware that people’s influence on our life often surpasses their physical presence in our life.

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

When you take ownership over what you do, how you feel, and how you think, that’s when you begin to change.

Your feeling better is not dependent on the other person’s changing their behavior. 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.

Emotions are visitors, not occupants, of your home. Separate yourself from your emotions.

There are layers around the core of who you really are that stop you from seeing yourself clearly. Those layers obscure your authentic self. They include who you think you should be and who you think you shouldn’t be. And what stands in the way of who you really are and who you think you should be is your own fear that you aren’t good enough.

don’t fake it till you make it. Live it and it will lead you to where you are meant to be.

I learned that reputation is just a word invented to keep us women living in shame.

What would your life look like if you lived it as you wanted to, not as you were convinced you needed to live it?

Don’t let anyone define liberation for you.

Once you are able to label your experience, you have already experienced clarity.

See the Story as It Is, Not as You Want It to Be, Not as You Wish It Were

You need to stop seeing others as you wanted them to be, or as you thought they were. You need to see them as they actually are.

Understand it’s not what’s inside of you that allows others to take advantage of you. It’s what they choose to do with what they see in you. And it’s not what others do with what they see in you that makes you who you are. It’s what’s within you that makes you who you are.

What you’re looking for is closure. And your hope is that once you understand why they did what they did, you’ll be able to move on.

Don’t you ever look for the cure in the poison. It’s just not there.

So stop looking for the reason someone hurt you. Stop looking for why they changed. Stop looking for that speck of dust in the ocean and look at the ocean as a whole. If you’re able to just let that closure, that person, that experience dissolve altogether in the big ocean of your life and all the people you’re going to meet and all the love you’re going to experience, give, and receive…if you’re able to do that, then you’ll see how small that person and that experience are compared to the glory of what you can experience.

there isn’t one moment that completely changes your life. There are a series of moments that feed each other. It’s like a domino effect.

Plant the seed of the tree that you wish to see the fruits of.

You might think that avoiding what scares you makes you strong. It doesn’t. It makes you a prisoner of fear. Being at home means you come from a place of power, not a place of avoidance or fear.

What is the one label you believe that the world around you sees or defines you by?

What’s beneath that—the real you? Do you see the real you without the world’s seeing it? What scares you from sharing the real you with those around you?

On one side of a piece of paper, write: What’s the story I’m telling myself? (ego based). On the other side, write: What’s the real story? (reality based).

I am safe. I am okay. I am enough. I am worthy. I am not defined by what happened before. I am not defined by what I did before. I am not defined by what might or might not happen in the future. I am not defined by what I might or might not accomplish in the future. I am okay now, as I am. I am at home with myself now, in this moment.

You see, we don’t just build our homes in other people, we also build them in other times. In times that no longer serve us. Alternatively, you might fixate too much on the what if of the future. Your home belongs here and now, with you. It is alive with you. It changes with you. It grows with you. Every moment you live becomes part of you, but the past moments must be left behind you where they belong.

“Trauma is not what happened. It’s how you respond to what happened.”

Now that you’re in your home, in a state of at-homeness with yourself, free of the shackles of the past and the future, ask yourself What would I like to be doing now? What would I like to be feeling now? and just do it.

Identify your distractions. Make a list. Remove them. Be alone with your thoughts, and be clear on what is best for you to be doing in this moment.