I loved this collection of poetry. Najwa creates a vision of home that I would love to have as well. This book of poems a deeply emotional conversation about what makes a home and how you find it.

DNF @35%

While there were some great nuggets of wisdom and was beautifully written, Welcome Home became too repetitive. I lost interest.

I struggled to get into this one. I attempted more than once, but could never relate with the voice/structure. It seems like it's well written, but just not for me, I guess.

ARC from publisher via NetGalley, but the opinions are my own.

I didn't know what to expect out of this book, but it was stunningly beautiful. Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese-Canadian speaking about ways to truly create your own home. She uses this analogy throughout the book, teaching us how to dig deep within our minds to create our best lives. She helps us build rooms in our homes such as; Self-Love Room, Compassion Room, Forgiveness Room, Clarity Room, Surrender Room, and The Dream Garden.

This book is part memoir, part self-improvement. She tells us why each room is important by relating it back to her story and how it has helped her in life. This book really serves to try to improve self-love, self-esteem, happiness, etc.

I very much enjoyed this and think that it would be a good read for most anyone.

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.

This is the self-help book for people who don't necessarily like self-help books. It reads like a combination of memoir and conversation with a friend. I appreciated the metaphor of building a home within oneself vs. someone else:

"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."

There are also some discussions of how to put insights into practice. I hope this book will inspire those on a journey of healing and self-improvement to continue trying, even when setbacks inevitably happen.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

This beautiful, life-changing book helps you learn how to build a home for yourself. I love it, and the tools Najwa gives to facilitate a transformation in our lives are so useful! This book can help you discover who you really are, and come home to that untethered version of yourself. So great!

Welcome Home by Najwa Zebian

9780593231753

313 Pages
Publisher: Rodale / Harmony Books
Release Date: June 1, 2021

Nonfiction, Self-Help, Mind, Body & Spirit, Health, Motivational

The book is divided into nine sections. This book talks about the importance of self-awareness, self-love, self-worthiness, self-acceptance, self-esteem, and self-forgiveness.

Introduction: The Road to Home
One: Building a Foundation
Two: Self-Love
Three: Forgiveness
Four: Compassion
Five: Clarity
Six: Surrender
Seven: The Dream Garden
Eight: The Art of Listening to Yourself
Nine: Adapting to Your New Reality

The author discusses events in her life: moving from Lebanon, living in Canada, becoming a teacher. She delves into the emotions she experienced along the way. She searched for love and acceptance but realized she had to find it within before she could find it without. She weaves these experiences along with tips for the reader to improve their lives.

Using the questions (anchors, pillars, and gems) in the book, I can evaluate the feelings I have been holding through the years. I have begun to look at my life and giving advice to my younger self. This was the first book I read by the author, and I loved it. This book should be read by everyone willing to look at and make changes to improve their lives.

Loved this book. I try not to compare but definitely gives Cleo Wade & Alex Elle vibes. This Semi-autobiographical self-help book is beautiful and poetic. She is vulnerable and honest about finding her voice while still respecting her culture. A must for finding self love.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley

An interesting book about finding your home within yourself with different rooms that are comprised of things such as self-compassion, self-love, surrender and more. She shares her journey which is great to read. I loved the journal prompts. Thank you to NetGalley and Rodale Inc.for an ARC.

This will resonate (potentially deeply) with some readers. It's personal and contains some very good tidbits of wisdom and advice. While this will resonate with those that like self-help, even those not interested in the genre may like this, since it has a bit of a different flavor than most.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

In Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul, celebrated speaker, author, and educator Najwa Zebian gets more vulnerable than ever before. In this self-help book, she provides a powerful blueprint for healing by building a home within yourself. This book includes true-life instances that inspired the author, techniques, and actions that can be easily got to follow (while emotionally hard to do), and poetry. Sections are divided by rooms in your “house” and look at Self-love, Clarity, Compassion, and more. In the end, she guides you into creating your own room-a a room that will serve only you.

Each chapter breaks down a room in your soul's house starting with the Foundation. Each area has pillars or themes and rules of what you want that room to be. Each pillar has questions to help you sort through your own emotions. But Zebian doesn't leave you to do it on your own: she leads by example sharing her life and how she made these rooms in her home.

I was supposed to read this as a reviewer but I found that I was called to this book I needed to create my own home so I became engrossed in this book. I was more than reviewing, I was growing. So is there some bias in this review? Sure. But it did honestly help me on a personal level.

I think this is a great self-help book. I'd say it's more geared towards women but I wouldn't say those of any gender range wouldn't be able to connect to the principles. As a society, we need to start with ourselves and create our own homes. Only then can we change as a society for the better,

In WELCOME HOME, Najwa Zebian shares stories from her life and experience, offering hard-won wisdom and ideas that we can use to make our own homes within ourselves and out in the world. Throughout, there are wondrous gems of insight shining from long passages that did not do much for me other than keep me moving quickly on to the next keen observation. Possibly my experience shapes my reaction to the book because I was not familiar with her or her work and presentations, so I came to this book expecting a book and parts felt like a hastily assembled summary of a powerful, memorable presentation. All in all, however, I enjoyed spending time with a unique, compelling person through her stories. I received an early reader copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

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.

I enjoy self help and often find a few nuggets in the well-worn genre. Zebian’s book was a delight. With journaling exercises as well as a clear and novel outline of ideas and wonderful “gems”, I will take away many ideas from this book.

I went into this book unfamiliar with the author or the story and it surprised me. Zebian's story is one of struggle and heartbreak and finding herself - and being stronger because of it all. I thought this would be a memoir of sorts but instead I found it woven with very helpful practical tools for unpacking and rebuilding myself for MYSELF. I feel like I need a side of therapy with this book just to fully grasp all that she explains and leads you through. The prompts for journaling and meditation are some that I feel like I need to work into a daily practice of reminding myself of who I am so as not to let anyone else take over.

I was especially smitten with her house building analogy since this is the way I have imagined my own life and growth over the last few years. This is not a light read by any means but it is definitely worth the effort - to hear her story and to learn your own.