Najwa Zebian

"The moments that you choose to be
silent
when someone's soul is
screaming at you,
begging you to say,
"My heart is with you,"
those moments leave
scars on our souls
that no amount of excuses can
erase.
If you love someone,
you love them.
You don't allow your pride to
stop you from expressing your love
to them.
If you expect them to understand
your love through silence,
don't be surprised when their soul
slips out of your hands in silence."

(For books that take an in-depth look at trauma, read Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine and Ann Frederick, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, and Oprah Winfrey, and The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté, MD.)

Often what stops us from moving forward with change, whether it’s learning how to dance or leaving any kind of relationship that no longer serves our authentic selves, is our fear of what exposing our authentic selves to the world would feel like. It’s one of those things that could

You were my home
for so long.
Now I realize that humans
cannot
be homes.
If homes can leave,
then they are not
homes.

If you ever come back, I will tell you:

The sun is closer to you
than I will ever be.
So burn,
if you wish.
You will not
see the shadow of me
even if you become
the sun
yourself.

Don’t worry about what people think of you or about the way they try to make you feel. If people want to see you as a good person, they will. If people want to see you as a bad person, absolutely nothing you do will stop them.

I was no longer me. I was in transition between who I was and who I needed to become. And my body couldn’t accept either version of myself, so I just became an empty shell, desperately gasping for any ray of life to inhabit me. I was homeless.

You don't need to explain why you're protecting your soul from harm. You really don't.

Change for yourself, not just for a goal.

I’m sure you’ve heard that you can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

The best way to identify someone who is right for you is to consider, Do they have my best interests in mind? You’ll find that those who do will always honor you where you

You say that I mean ⁣
nothing ⁣
to you, ⁣
but you search for my eyes ⁣
in the face of every woman ⁣
you meet. ⁣
You search for my warmth ⁣
in the soul of every woman ⁣
you seek. ⁣
You think that ⁣
if time and circumstance ⁣
forced you to force me ⁣
out of your life, ⁣
that time and circumstance ⁣
owe you ⁣
a woman like me. ⁣
Search, my darling. ⁣
Search. ⁣
I do not come ⁣
twice ⁣
in the eternity that passed⁣
nor in the one to come.

Broken wings are a sign of struggle. And strength.

I am not better than you because of my religion, color, culture, education, status, wealth, etc. I am not, and neither are you, I must accept, and so should you, that there are differences between us that we were born into. Why do we focus on these differences? Put your hand in mine and let us accept that our differences should not come in the way of us uniting for the basic human values that we share: compassion, peacefulness, respect, honesty, innocence, humbleness and sympathy. Does a baby born here smile differently from a baby born anywhere in the world? Do they cry any differently? We may not speak the same language and we may not live the same lifestyle, but a smile I put on my face when I see you puts a smile on your face before you can even think of it. Now, THAT is powerful. I hope that every sense of arrogance or greed in my heart is deviated to a sense of humility, so the wall of ignorance to the real issues in the world can be shattered by the common rights that I share with all of my brothers and sisters in humanity.

I am broken
beyond repair.

There is no going back
to the person I was before.

There is rebirth,
rebuilding,
reinventing,
and soul stitching
with gold
that needs to happen.