Title: Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul
Author: Najwa Zebian
Published: June 1, 2021
Review By: RASHID ALI Tunio
This is my first review of an English language novel; before this, I reviewed many Sindhi language novels and non-fiction books as well. I have no idea how to write, but if I don't start writing, I will never learn. If you see any mistakes, grammatical or punctuation, please assist me in making corrections. Before starting the review, I want to say that reviewing a book by connecting it to my own story and sharing the lessons I learned from it will help readers enjoy and understand it with ease. Let's begin the journey.
Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese Canadian activist, author, speaker, and educator. She is the author of other books, like: Mind Platter, The Nectar of Pain, Sparks of Phoenix, The Book of Healing, and more.
This book is divided into nine chapters. Each chapter makes us emotionally strong and shows us the way to our own home.
As soon as I dived deep into this book, it felt like Najwa Zebian was telling me my story. She was like, "Hey! Boy Look, your journey of love was not easy. Come here, sit with me, and see these mistakes, or you may say the blunders, that you made. But don't worry, it's life, it happens. Learn lessons and start rebuilding a home. Yes! A home, but this time, a home for yourself, inside you, not inside others." It was the first mistake that I identified in my story, and everyone can relate it to their own story as well.
In the introduction, she explains that the mistake we make is building a home inside others. That's what I did. She said, "We build our home inside others' souls and decorate it with all the love, emotions, joy, and care." This is the first blunder we make. We do not build the home for ourselves, inside us. Building a home inside others gives them the authority to make us homeless. Hence, in this book, Najwa Zebian shows us the path to building a home inside ourselves.
To build this home inside yourself, you need to start with its foundation. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the home will be. For a strong foundation, you need two major ingredients: 1) self-acceptance and 2) self-awareness. The mistake you make is that you wait all the time for someone to come and give you love and care. This happens because you surrender yourself to them. You build your home inside them. You live there and care for that home as if it were yours. That means you deceive yourself. While building the foundation, you need to feel your self-worth and know who you are, to make the foundation stronger.
In the beginning, it all feels like a miracle, utopian, exciting, and loving. The same happened to me. I submitted myself to her and also built the home inside her, which meant I gave her the power to make me homeless. In the end, she did it. As she did, I was wandering here and there. One day, I found this book, and a miracle happened in my life. I found myself. I rebuilt a home inside myself. The lesson I learned here is: Do not give anyone the power to make you homeless. Do not build a home inside anyone.
After building a strong foundation, it's time to set some boundaries. Do not let anyone cross over these boundaries. Limit access to those who hurt you. The first room in your home should be "self-love." Self-love is like a practice; hence, practice makes perfect. Start loving yourself as you love the person you care for the most. No one is allowed to enter this room—literally no one but yourself. It may feel egoistic, but self-love doesn't mean being egoistic. If you used to give love, emotions, care, and respect to others, now you will preserve all this only for yourself. Come regularly to this room and look into the mirror. It will strengthen you and make you feel worthy. Remember, once you build this room, they will knock at your door again, wanting to enter. But this time, you need to be conscious and do not allow anyone to enter in this room. Tell them that the person they left was broken, numb, and crumbled, but that's not the one whom they are looking for now.
Now, whenever I retrospect, I feel I was wrong. Still, my heart yearns for her; it remains waiting and stagnant at that point where she alienated me. Now, it feels like I am her marionette, and she played well. A hurricane of her memories gushes out; feelings of alienation crumbles and yell inside me. I understood that all this happened because there was no home for me inside myself. It was a dark desert inside me at first. But Najwa Zebian taught me to love myself.
In the room of forgiveness, Zebian teaches how to deal with pain. Here, she tells us that if pain knocks on your door, let it in and have some chit-chat and coffee with it. But after a period of time, ask the pain to leave. It's not a permanent residence for it.
Poem:
"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, then walk it to the door,
and tell it to leave, because it's time for you to welcome happiness."
Here, in this chapter, I learned to forgive. I learned to gather all the pieces of my soul together, which she had crushed, and trying to stitch them again with all that love, care, respect, emotions, hopes, and dreams. It is the room where you can come to sit and forgive yourself. Do not blame others for what they do to you. It was all they had, and they gave it to you. So, take it and let them go. The mistake I made was allowing the pain to settle permanently and hugging it regularly.
There are other rooms like compassion, clarity, surrender, the dream garden, the art of listening to yourself, and adapting to your new reality. Zebian teaches bit by bit how to decorate these rooms, who is allowed to enter these rooms, and the characteristics of each room. Simply, I can define this book as a masterpiece, a beautiful work of art about understanding oneself and letting go. I call it "the art of letting go" because it helped me to climb out of my darkest moments. I suffered alone inside and blamed myself for everything she did. But Zebian enlightened me about my mistakes.
In this book, she also shares her experiences. She describes what she endured and felt during her time. With her story, she tries to connect with all of our stories too. That's why I melt when I read. I named this book "The Art of Letting Go" because it taught me how to let go, how it will feel afterward, and how I should deal with it. The book is amazing, written in a simple way, with straightforward vocabulary and sentence structure. I loved it, I enjoyed it, and I learned many things. For example, I used to wait for someone to come and listen to me, but "this book taught me to talk to myself rather than waiting for someone to listen." I was looking for someone to come with the compassion I needed, but "this book taught me to love myself." Many times, I pointed fingers at others for what she did, but "this book taught me to correct my question; I started to ask myself, 'Am I not worthy? Do I not have values?'" I learned many things, and I also suggest you to read this once in your life.
Thank You 😊
by The-Sindhi785