Charné

“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, Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul

“Allow your inner artist to develop through the conscientious application of passion, personal resources, and natural inquisitiveness. Devote your life’s work to giving light to your virtuous ideas and accomplishing deeds worthy of entering Elysium Fields. While performing elemental labor to meet the biological necessities that secure survival, remember that devotion to public services, performing acts of kindness, and engagement in artistic creations is what makes us human. Art has a more profound impact upon civilization than all the standing armies in the world. Art expresses our humanity while warring reveals our inhumanity.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Self-love is loving yourself exactly as you’d love the person you love the most. And that love actually feels like love and looks like meeting your own needs.”
― Najwa Zebian, Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul

“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.”
― Najwa Zebian, Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul