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

by Najwa Zebian

It’s hard for us to define ourselves without our pain, because all of a sudden we have to face the truth about ourselves. Most of us don’t even know who we are. I’m not saying this to sound like I’m shaming you or myself for holding on to the pain. I’m simply trying to shed light on the reasons it’s easier for us to live in pain than it is for us to live without pain. It’s not because we want to live in pain. It’s because living in pain is a lot less painful than living unanchored to something. To someone. To a memory. To a moment. When we don’t know who we are, we feel like we have no purpose. So we walk and live aimlessly, not feeling any sense of drive. Many of us would rather not live in that state of not knowing, so we go to what we know. Pain. We tell ourselves that carrying the identity of someone who experienced something is better than not carrying an identity at all. Letting go is seeing and accepting yourself as you are, without the pain. Without the story. Without the labels. Without the identity you’ve created for yourself based on the pain or the story. Accepting that you are not what happened to you. And that you are not the result of it. Instead, you are who you are, with or without it. Does that mean that what happened to you wasn’t bad enough? Or that it wasn’t significant? Absolutely not.