Na ceste za sebaláskou

by Najwa Zebian, Zuzana Budinská (Translator)

Autorka Najwa Zebian predstavuje revolučné chápanie vnútorného domova pre dušu ako bezpečného miesta, kde sa duša a srdce cítia v pokoji, kde môže každý z nás prejaviť svoju zraniteľnosť a uvedomovať si svoju hodnotu. Mnohí z nás si tento domov budujú v iných ľuďoch, lebo veríme, že naša hodnota sa odvíja od toho, koľkí nám dovolia nazrieť do ich vnútra. No keď potom vzťah s nimi ochladne alebo sa nadobro rozpadne, cítime sa opustení a osamelí. Až vtedy pochopíme, že je dôležité, aby sme si pevné základy vybudovali v sebe samých.

V knihe Na ceste za sebaláskou Zebian prvýkrát rozpráva aj svoj osobný príbeh – odchod z Libanonu v šestnástich rokoch, jej príchod ako mladej moslimky do Kanady, kde žije dodnes, a budovanie novej identity, keď sa naučila byť k sebe a ostatným úprimná. Po viacerých zážitkoch, pre ktoré sa od svojho pravého ja vzdialila, dospela k presvedčeniu, že je dôležité vybudovať si stabilný domov v sebe samej, akúsi identitu neovplyvnenú a neovplyvniteľnú kultúrnymi vzorcami a očakávaniami druhých. Uvádza rôzne praktické rady a zároveň čitateľov povzbudzuje v tom, aby sa snažili pochopiť a počúvať samých seba.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Poetry, Psychology, Mental Health, Personal Development, Memoir

336 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2021

About the author

Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese-Canadian author, speaker, and educator. Her passion for language was evident from a young age, as she delved into Arabic poetry and novels.

The search for a home—what Najwa describes as a place where the soul and heart feel at peace—was central to her early years. When she arrived in Canada at the age of sixteen, she felt unstable and adrift in an unfamiliar place.

Nevertheless, she completed her education, and went on to become a teacher as well as a doctoral candidate in educational leadership. Her first students, a group of young refugees, led her back to her original passion: writing. She began to heal her sixteen-year-old self by writing to heal her students.

Since self-publishing her first collection of poetry and prose in 2016, Najwa has become an inspiration to millions of people worldwide.

Najwa has become a trailblazing voice for women everywhere and was name dropped by the New York Times and CBS News among others.

Drawing on her own experiences of displacement, discrimination, and abuse, Najwa uses her words to encourage others to build a home within themselves; to live, love, and create fearlessly.

Reviews

[Noel نوال · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The biggest mistake we make is that we build our homes in other people. We build those homes and we decorate them with the love and care and respect that makes us feel safe at the end of the day. We invest in other people, and we evaluate our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us. But what many don’t realize is that when you build your home in other people, you give them the power to make you homeless. When those people walk away, those homes walk away with them, and all of a sudden, we feel empty because everything that we had within us, we put into them. We trusted someone else with pieces of us. The emptiness we feel doesn’t mean we have nothing to give, or that we have nothing within us. It’s just that we built our home in the wrong place.”
~Najwa Zebian

I came across a video of Najwa Zebian giving a Ted talk about building homes in other people. Never having heard of her before that beautiful talk I dove into the internet and found out she was actually releasing a book about the very topic that day. "Welcome Home" is a beautiful book with such a powerful message to help in healing and teaching us not to put our self worth into other people, jobs, institutions, and etc. There were so many insightful lessons in this book that had me pause and reflect. I will definitely be coming back to this warm hug of a book over and over again to take out every ounce of wisdom contained within its pages.

[m · Rating 2 out of 5]

dnf @ 76%

I appreciate what the author was trying to do here - but with only her own experience to draw from and no research or professional opinions (aside from a brief mention of a conversation with her therapist), I’m not sure what entitles the author to be the one to write a book on how to live one’s life? Her thesis that a person should make a home in themself and no one else is unuanced, the same few events are used repeatedly to make very similar points, and the prompts and questions are leading. Overall, this book disappointed me.

[Jahan Evren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Young girls would benefit from reading this book tremendously. It coaches women & girls how to create home within ourselves by us for us; it guides you on the path of self love. It's a good self-help book with a few useful behavior/mental health tips & coping mechanisms. For me it was quite hard to finish the book as information started being a bit redundant, but this is purely due to the fact that I paved similar path and came to identical conclusions. Young adults and teenagers, who have not had bitter experiences, might benefit a lot and draw life-changing conclusions, refrain from self-destructive behaviors, learn how to stand-up for your grounds, how to act through self-love and not self destruction. 

[Sudha Subramanian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to abandon this book. I don't do this very often. I gave it my everything , yet, if I have to pant and sweat to finish a book, it is simply not worth it. It is wordy, repetitive, the idea of building a home is simply overdone. I appreciate the little bits here and there but if I have to scan thousands of words to look for a GEM, I would rather not do so. The tone was unbearably difficult. Had to abandon it much against my principles.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tapping out early. Some poetic nuggets of wisdom that deeply resonated, but not vibing with the way the book is structured or the writing style, including “remember when I told you the story of X?” Yes…that was 3 pages ago lol. Found myself getting a bit frustrated and finding fewer resonate passages so ended early.

[NL · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ll get more detailed in my dec 2021 wrap up, but idk how I feel about it. I thought there were some true gems of wisdom in this book but the author went in circles for a lot of the book, repeating the same things over and over.
it took me almost five months to read it & I basically skimmed the last 20 % of the book bc I just wanted to be over with it.

idk me & this book r in a complicated relationship at the moment

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…every moment we live is connected to all the other moments. Some moments we live now are connected to moments ten or twenty years from now. And we don’t see the connection until that future moment happens. And it’s kind of like an ah-ha moment when you say, ‘Now I understand why that moment in the past happened.’”

I am a big fan of Najwa Zebian. For those of you who do not know her, she is a Lebanese Canadian author, educator, and speaker.

Years ago, a passage from one of her books, Mind Platter, was read out loud in my yoga class. After class, I immediately visited the local bookstore and purchased that book and The Nectar of Pain. Now, I have Welcome Home to add to my collection.

From the back of Welcome Home: “Najwa Zebian shares her revolutionary concept of home - the place of safety where you can embrace your vulnerability and discover your self-worth. It’s the place where your soul feels like it belongs, where you are loved for who you are. Zebian shares her personal story for the first time, from leaving Lebanon at sixteen, to coming of age as a young Muslim woman in Canada, to building a new identity for herself as she learned to speak her truth.”

I have a hard time putting into words the power that this book carries. Najwa Zebian has taken the word “home” and has given it new meaning - one that I never thought of before, and one that I will carry forward.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my gifted copy!

[Nitesh Dudhey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The biggest mistake we make is that we build our homes in other people. We build those homes and we decorate them with the love and care and respect that makes us feel safe at the end of the day. We invest in other people, and we evaluate our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us. But what many don’t realize is that when you build your home in other people, you give them the power to make you homeless. When those people walk away, those homes walk away with them, and all of a sudden, we feel empty because everything that we had within us, we put into them. We trusted someone else with pieces of us. The emptiness we feel doesn’t mean we have nothing to give, or that we have nothing within us. It’s just that we built our home in the wrong place.”
- Najwa Zebian

One of the best self help books I have ever read. The book kept me engaged throughout the time.
This is one of the books I'll keep on reading often

[Liv]

DNF. I was wanting a cozy book that would just help build my independence. I’m really happy with my life, but this seems to be perfect for someone who’s emotionally lost. Maybe I’ll come back to it if I ever feel that way.

[Chelsea (chelsea.wilde) · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book found me when I needed it most. your 30s tend to be a lot of self discovery and diving deep into realizing why you are the way you are. your wants, your needs, your desires, what gets your out of bed in the morning. it is also a time for transitioning into a different part of your life, a part that may be scary when you still feel like you’re 22.

anyway, it’s a very good book about coming home to yourself and making peace with what has happened and surrendering control of the future.
10 billion stars

“The biggest mistake we make is that we build our homes in other people. We build those homes and we decorate them with the love and care and respect that makes us feel safe at the end of the day. We invest in other people, and we evaluate our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us. But what many don’t realize is that when you build your home in other people, you give them the power to make you homeless. When those people walk away, those homes walk away with them, and all of a sudden, we feel empty because everything that we had within us, we put into them. We trusted someone else with pieces of us. The emptiness we feel doesn’t mean we have nothing to give, or that we have nothing within us. It’s just that we built our home in the wrong place.”
~Najwa Zebian

[Saba Khaliq · Rating 1 out of 5]

The forced sketching of Islam as a liberal religion to complement one's healing as a liberal is not OK for me. If, at any cost, we have to mention Islam in our journeys from broken to strengthened, we have to first see if the representation is authentic.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review soon!

[Kelvino · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd round it down from a 2.5, not that it'd a bad self-help book but it's really a combination of it not being my prefered writing style and me not finding the content that relatable. I would have ate this stuff up a few months ago but being in a better headspace now, it felt unnecessary.

The definition of poetic style writing really varies so much that it shocks me. Can one word really encompass the writing styles of this book and the Ocean Vuong one? The latter feels definitely poetic but the former ressembles a lot more spoken word type content. Not that I really care, I just thought that was interesting, I didn't like either all that much LOL.

I'm of the belief that there is no original self-help book and that's ok. What matters is the packaging of such information. Like is it a new idea that habits are important to maintain? Or that we shouldn't overly invest ourselves in others? No, but to present the ideas in a digestible fashion to different target audiences is the difficult part. This just wasn't the right packaging for me. It being laced with toooooooo many personal anecdotes that kept being rehashed just didn't make for an interesting read, as well as the extremyl extremely redundant device of repeating the first word of a sentence many times over to "multiply" its impact. E.g "He hurt my pride. My soul. My family. My everything etc." it makes me roll my eyes so hard I can't.

I sometimes wonder what the next step for self-help books is. When you feel at peace with yourself, and then what? I can't help but imagine that having your "home" properly developed implies a sense of finality at a certain point but what's after that? Are you just supposed to be fine by yourself now? Is there a logical next step in a self-discovery journey?

I've yet to see a self-help book oriented around community involvment and not hyper-focus on individual actions. I think if I were to read a new self-help book, it'd have to be something new like that, this genre is already stretched pretty thin.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just exceptional. I think i cried continuously throughout the first half of the book. I can't say anything other than that this book has changed my life, and I'm sure it will continue to change it in the future as i re-read it.

[Kimberly Vanderhorst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever read a book that left you feeling transformed? Like multiple locked doors in your soul were thrown open in the process of absorbing the author’s insights? “Welcome Home” by Najwa Zebian is such a book. The kind that fills you up and yet leaves you hungry for the experience of reading it all over again.

The kind you want to desecrate with highlighter—but no, it’s no kind of desecration to embrace the words that speak most deeply to you, that find roost in your heart-marrow and whisper that you can dare to be happier and healthier than you previously knew how to be.

“Welcome Home” is such a book. Many of my dear ones will be receiving copies shortly because it unlocks a level of joy that insists on being shared. 🥰

[Soha Ashraf · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really intrigued by the title when I saw this book. And the start of the book did give me something new to dwell on; however, after a few chapters, the book became very repetitive and she was adding in the findings of other books and incorporating her life lessons to make a link somehow which didn't feel very authentic.

Moreover, I felt like the author had so much to say but she could not find the right words to comprehend her opinions properly and thus failed to engage the readers. Her words felt scattered towards the end because her thoughts were all over the place. She could have done a book with fewer pages and more coherent sentences and it would been so much better.

[Tisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A random post came through my newsfeed about 6 or 7 months ago. The post was about a small part of the book "Welcome Home". At that time, I never thought about reading this as my TBR list was pretty much long already. Then I guess one day, while I was feeling low and miserable about myself, I forced myself to read it. And finally, after taking 2months to finish this, I can definitely say that my home is under construction. I will definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a home in someone else's home rather than building their own.

[Isabelle | Nine Tale Vixen]

I received an advance review copy from Rodale Inc. through Netgalley; all opinions are my own and honest.

DNF @ 11%

This has a lovely central concept and a flexible structure that invites the reader to customize their own journey. Personally I found the writing style more suited to a TED talk than a book — it's a bit corny, with flowery analogies; it's not bad by any means but not really my cup of tea.

[Lynnette Aizpurua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend the audio book. It is very well narrated by the writer but there are moments you have to pause and take a step back. If you are going through a personal growth process and it’s a great book to read but warning somethings are hard to hear but necessary. Beautiful book.

[mana · Rating 2 out of 5]

it took me a long time to finish this book and i have very very very mixed feeling. were there is a beautiful and genuine good story, i feel like the essence of this book was a bit wobbly. this is a non-fictional story with a hit of stories from the live of najwa.

especially the part about the hijaab was kinda disturbing. “unveiling” her self/being free. stuff like that is imo not friendly. i would like to tell najwa that she set herself free of choices she didn’t make for herself. not unveiling herself from the hijaab. after the chapter of the clarity room, i lost interest in this book.

nonetheless, a good story to build a home within and not in others.

[Dana]

RATING: 4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Welcome Home by Najwa Zebian is a self-help guide for building home within yourself. By doing this, you will always have a home no matter where you go!

Najwa goes into detail in the book on how to do this by telling the reader that it’s important to first create your rooms one at a time. They are the following six items:

1)Self-Love: Learn how to build an individualized self-care routine to reflect your daily needs.

2)Forgiveness: Learn how to allow yourself time, reflection, and space to accept and let go of painful events.

3)Compassion: Discover the three different types of compassion and learn how you can let people in while maintaining boundaries.

4)Clarity: Learn how to remove the walls you put up around your authentic self.

5)Surrender: Learn how to lower your defenses and give yourself space to feel and process your emotions.

6)The Dream Garden: Learn how to nurture your dreams and create an authentic, original path.
 
The author gives you so many tools throughout the book to help you with building each of these rooms. There are pieces of poetry to engage and enlighten, meditations, journal prompts, and more!

I highly enjoyed reading and working through this book. It was helpful to visualize improvements of myself through the rooms of a house.

Thanks to Netgalley, publisher and author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Yogendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mistake most of us make is that we build our homes in other people in the hope that they will deem us worthy of being welcomed inside. We feel so abandoned and empty when people leave, because we’ve invested so much of ourselves in them.

I have tried to read self-help books before, after a point, I could not connect with them anymore. I realized it's because there is so much emphasis given to external validation directly or indirectly.

This book resonated with me on so many levels and shattered my perspectives and how! not only does it challenge your thinking, each lesson provides solutions on how one can apply these thoughts! I will keep coming back to this content as I strive to build a home within myself.

[Vivian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed with this one, it is challenging to even finish the book which is all over the place, clumsy and clunky, repetitive and not very creative. This is from a reader who loved her previous books. I wish I could see some more of a crisp writing instead of this…

[Sarah Michaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to be one of my forever books. I’m reading the library copy, but have plans to purchase one for myself to read again. Needs more than one read through. Very gentle yet firm. Great way of organizing information. Loved it.

[Nida Kazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

My very first self healing book and it did not disappoint. I feel like I've healed almost 80% when I was reading this book. It moved me. It taught me the importance of self worth and self awareness.

When I read the first chapter I realised it hit close and the person she is talking about is me and I've feel like I'm doing a bad job of writing this review but I'll come back to revitalize this

[Linnea]

I.... I don't know how to rate this.

This took ages for me to read, which may be a good thing? There were so many instances where I put the book down simply because I didn't want to absorb what was being written. I will have to get back to this book many more times.

[Ana Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I was a book, I would be this one. Feels so much like home. It’s so easy to read and to understand. The amount of love I felt while reading was amazing.

[Bassmh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Najwa's strengths lies in her ability to morph her pain into insight that gets voiced out in a way that resonates with people.

The audiobook is a light listen.

[Hisgirl85 · Rating 4 out of 5]

High 4 stars. I really enjoyed this and feel it's speaking to me where I am right now. I am going to reread and do the exercises now that I have finished the audiobook.

[Ploi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that she’s not just chanting in your ears to love yourself. Although it is mostly about self-love and the understanding/acceptance of one’s self, she presented it as the state of being at home with yourself/building a home within yourself and I really like that idea. I thought I would be bored and get too skeptical (as I usually do with self-help books) and eventually give up on the book but surprisingly I finished it. Some concepts in the book, though might be fairly familiar to others, were somehow foreign to me and I can say that I was surprised I didn’t think of things in this way my whole life. There were times when I was just reading nonchalantly and some sentences just sent tears to my eyes like… bro… that is so true??

I realized the biggest reason why I usually dislike self-help books is that I hate their voice; some self-help books really have this imposing, overly encouraging (or sometimes looking down) tone which makes me just want to stop reading and permanently use it as my laptop stand. I did not detect that kind of tone when I was reading this one. When I read this I felt heard, calm and understood, and that kept me reading on.

Personally I think anyone would benefit from reading the book, but anxious, overthinking, low-self esteem young women would benefit most, I guess. (If that ain’t me)

Also want to say that it isn’t like I agree with every idea in the book. I found some parts repetitive but I don’t really mind. I did sift it and adjust it before I applied only some of it to myself that works and is relevant. And I think it is supposed to be like that.

I might try reading this again in a few months and see whether I still agree with it or not. Also want to know if I like this book because of how and who I am right now or whether it really makes sense, hence the honest review here for my future self. Anyway the book really is useful for me at the moment and that’s what matters most, so 4 stars for that!