Words That May Inspire You

Welcome Home by Najwa Zebian

Home is not a physical place. It is the place where your soul feels it belongs, where you can unapologetically be yourself, where you are loved for your authentic self. Home is the place where you don't have to work hard just to be loved.

Believe what you're aiming for is achievable.

People accepting what I had to give was all I needed to keep seeking a connection with them.

There's no point in waiting until you deem the plant beautiful before giving it the care it needs. It will never grow that way.

You can have dreams and aspirations but your I will feel better should not depend on those dreams and aspirations.

Self -acceptance is accepting your self. Not caring what the world thinks of this self of yours is a by-product of self-acceptance, not the other way around.

Changing your mindset about being saved is what will save you.

The love you have within you is your power, not what you get in return for it.

The only rejection that exists is the rejection of the self,

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.

When you don't know what home looks like, you take whatever you're offered.

My feeling of homelessness not only made me betray myself while I built homes in others, it also made me betray others by having insincere feelings for them (even though my feelings seemed sincere to me). In reality, I was looking to them as shelters for the scattered pieces of myself more than I was looking at them as people to love.

Would you say you owned a home if every piece of it were in a different place?

The ultimate form of self-love is for you to be the CEO of the company of you.

You can't hate yourself and love yourself at the same time. You can do them both in one day, but you can't do them both at the same time.

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.

If  wanting to feel at home with someone is beautiful, how is feeling at home with yourself anything less than beautiful?

In other words, it is not the love of others that forms the basis of or nourishes your self-love. It is your ability to see it, accept it, and truly feel it that shows how in self-love you are.

Boundaries are not about what you are protecting yourself from. They are about what you are protecting within yourself.

Forgiving yourself allows you to let go of the person you thought you needed to be. Forgiving others allow you to accept what happened and let go of needing to change it.

Do not seek a cure from the person who caused you pain. Do not wait for their apology to give yourself permission to feel the pain.

It's not up to you what pain is thrown your way or how long it takes to heal. What's up to you is what you choose to do with that pain once it enters you.

When pain knocks on your door:
Let it in.
If you don't, it will knock
harder and harder.
Its voice will become
louder and louder.
So let it in.
Spend some time with it.
Understand it.
Then walk it to the door
and tell it to leave
because it's time for you to welcome happiness.

It is not strength
to look down on a pain
that is towering over you.

The oppression of women takes on different forms around the world and is often hidden behind cloaks of policies and slogans that serve to protect deeply ingrained misogynistic hierarchies of power.

Forgiving Someone Doesn't Happen Under Their Roof— It Happens Under Yours

You have to welcome the pain when you feel it, not just know where it came from.

They didn't cause the pain. They woke it up within you.

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

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 become who I was meant to become, I needed to stop trying to be who I had been.

Empathy requires you to feel with, not for, the other person.

I have made mistakes but that doesn't mean something is fundamentally wrong with me.

Sometimes, people just want to give us love, time, attention and affection because they genuinely see us for who we are.

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

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

there was no big moment. This wasn't a Hollywood movie. There were many little big moments that had to happen. There were moments that build up resilience for other moments to happen.

Don't let anyone define liberation for you.

confusing behavior in others makes you question yourself.

we don't just build our homes in other people, we also build them in other times.

You're not a superhero for multitasking. Be intentional with your schedule.

I was seeking medicine from the pain. Because I thought the pain had more power to change the way I saw myself than I did.

Denying the existence of anything doesn't erase its existence. It just keeps you in denial.

every story has multiple layers that must be unveiled as well.

We all just want to heal.

I was so fixated on the happy ending that I forgot to make sure the right characters were in place.

Building a sense of home in other people distracts us from the real work we need to do for ourselves, within ourselves.

Accepting the ending of one story means seeing it as part of your journey, not your final destination.

No two people you meet will be exactly the same. If you loved someone, understand that it's okay if loving someone else doesn't feel the same. It doesn't mean that it's wrong for you. It just means that it's new.

To surrender does not mean to stay in your spot and wait for the world to save you. It means to surrender to the world inside of you.

Never be grateful for the person who causes you pain. Be grateful for yourself. Be grateful for the endurance you displayed in healing.

Don't let the illusion of the importance of a big end goal stop you from starting simply and on a small scale.

Don't allow someone else's life to set the bar for your success.

Don't base your success on a moment in the future.

But how could the pain go away if it's not acknowledged?

As you grow, society will push you to conform to the ideals it creates. Those ideals will always change, but who you are should never change to anything but the better.

unless you learn to see yourself for who you are on the inside, you'll always be a prisoner of what those around you think of you.

True liberation is not when you're able to pretend you don't care, but when you actually don't care.