Najwa Zebian

Somewhere along the way of trying different things that we think will help change us, we may be misunderstood to be trying too hard, to be fake, and to be different than what we really are. Compare this to the metamorphosis of a butterfly. Halfway through, it looks nothing like what it ends up being. It is your choice to either stay halfway through or to continue your journey once you start it, to reach that destination of the person you know you can be.

Never settle for just existing. The world is full of stories. Create your own.

How can a mother sacrifice years of her life, put her career aside, make her dreams wait, without waiting for a paycheck at the end of the month? Would a paycheck bring her the same kind of happiness anyway? Not. Even. Close. We don’t make ourselves compassionate; we are born compassionate.

I may have been successfull at giving,
but I never know when to stop.

I loved the person that you once
were,
not the person that you are today.

Remember when we talked about the pain of realizing that the survival mode ship is finally sinking? And how it takes a while to learn to swim in your authenticity?

Do you know what it feels like to be wounded
and told that you caused the
wound to yourself by choosing to be
where
the harm landed?

You made him king, but there was no kingdom to rule. You put suns in his sky, but the night was his home.

I knew and still know that they are good people. They’d never willingly do something like that, but I’d always wonder, How could you not have known that leaving me behind for so long, and that not connecting with me emotionally, was wrong?

Every day, tell yourself this:

Keep your heart kind
no matter how dark the world gets.
You own only yourself.
You can only control your actions.
Keep your heart beautiful.
The world needs that.

I say it to myself
too.

To all the people I pushed away while I was healing: Forgive me for not being able to welcome you when I really wanted to. I was scared. I was scared you’d judge me. I was scared you wouldn’t understand. I was scared you’d ask me how I couldn’t have known better. I was scared you’d push me away and remind me of all the reasons I don’t deserve to be loved. I was scared. Everyone I welcomed before you either lied or left or took more than what I had to give. Everyone I welcomed before you only stayed as long as I was who they wanted me to be instead of who I actually am. I’m sorry I made you feel I couldn’t trust you when the truth was I couldn’t even trust myself.

Do not focus your healing on making sense of why someone would want to cause you pain. You will never know their true intentions or whether they actually intended to hurt you or not. It’s better to aim to accept instead of to decode, dissect, or justify what happened. Getting stuck on trying to make sense of it is a form of resistance to feeling it or an escape from it. And all that is a distraction from doing the real work. From going back to the root and extracting the pain from the source.

doesn’t matter how much we change ourselves, when we are surrounded by the same people who make us feel that being ourselves is wrong or too much, that change just feels more imprisoning. Because now we know what we are worth.

The late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani wrote: “The female doesn’t want a rich man or a handsome man or even a poet, she wants a man who understands her eyes if she gets sad, and points to his chest and says ‘Here is your home country.’

I can tell you the truth, but I can't make you believe it.