NOTICE THIS: WHO ARE YOU WELCOMING IN?
Updated: Oct 4
The other day my husband and I went out looking for a mat for the front door. Very exciting stuff, I know. This is married life sometimes. Not every adventure involves a beach, a passport and a sunset. Sometimes you're standing in a store debating what people should wipe their damn shoes on. Now, I don't really like shopping. I don't know what it is about it. Some people can wander around a store for three hours touching things, comparing things and circling back to things they already looked at 45 minutes ago. Not me. I want to get in, get what I came for and get the hell out.
My husband found a mat that said WELCOME. It was all right. Not exactly a life-changing mat, but fine. Welcome. People have been putting that word outside their doors forever. You put WELCOME at the entrance and the message is pretty obvious: come on in. And that's where my mind left the store. My husband was doing his thing. I was doing my thing. Technically we were still doing our thing together, except mentally I had apparently begun an investigation into one of the most ordinary words in the English language.
Welcome.
I started thinking about how strange that word becomes when you really sit with it. At your front door, “welcome” means come in. You're invited. Enter my space. We have welcome parties. Welcome committees. We welcome someone into our homes, families, communities and lives. Then somebody gives us something. We say, “Thank you.” And what comes back? “You're welcome.” And my brain went: wait a damn minute. Welcome where?
Now, before somebody sends the language police after me, I'm not trying to give you an English lesson or claim that breaking “welcome” into “we come” is its literal historical meaning. That's not my point. I'm talking about the way words feel when you slow them down and look at them differently. Welcome. We come. Suddenly my little front-door mat had me thinking about invitations, access, relationships, money and energy. See what happens when I go shopping?
Words are fascinating because we use them automatically. Somebody says this, we're trained to say that. Thank you. You're welcome. Hello. Goodbye. Sorry. Fine. Half the time the response leaves our mouth before we've even thought about it. But what if we did think about it? When I give somebody something—especially money, time, attention or energy—and they say thank you, do I need to say “you're welcome”? Or do I simply want to acknowledge the exchange and let it end there?
Personally, I've found myself drawn more toward saying “with gratitude.” Something about that feels different to me. You give with gratitude. I receive with gratitude. The exchange can be beautiful without automatically feeling like an open door. That's the part I kept thinking about, because maybe this isn't really about the word welcome at all. Maybe it's about access.
Who gets access to you? Who gets access to your money, your time, your attention, your emotions, your home, your peace and your energy? And how often do we open those doors without consciously realizing we've opened them? We've all probably had relationships where we gave somebody a little access and somehow they ended up with a damn master key. You helped once, so now you're expected to help every time. You listened once, so now you're the 24-hour emotional customer-service department. You loaned money once, so somehow you've become a bank. You answered immediately a few times, and suddenly someone believes they're entitled to immediate access to you forever.
That's where this little word started becoming something bigger for me. Welcome. Come in. There is nothing wrong with welcoming people into our lives. Connection is beautiful. Generosity is beautiful. Love is beautiful. But conscious invitation matters too. I don't believe we have to become paranoid about language or scared that saying the wrong word is going to spiritually attach somebody to our bank account. That's not where I'm going with this. I'm saying words carry intention because we give them intention. They affect people. They affect us. They create impressions, expectations and emotional responses.
Think about what speech physically is for a second. Air. Breath. Sound. We move air through our bodies, shape it with our mouths and somehow those sounds can make another human being laugh, cry, become angry, feel loved, feel rejected, forgive someone, end a relationship, start a relationship or change the direction of their entire damn day. That's pretty powerful when you think about it. Words are shaped air carrying meaning from one human being to another.
Maybe that's why I've become more conscious of certain words as I've gotten older. Instead of automatically saying hello, I often say greetings. Instead of simply saying I appreciate something, I may say appreciate love. And instead of automatically responding “you're welcome,” I often prefer with gratitude. Not because everybody else is wrong. Not because there is some secret spiritual dictionary we all need to memorize. Because those words feel more intentional to me.
And maybe that's the actual self-care lesson hiding underneath a damn doormat. We spend a lot of time talking about boundaries after somebody crosses them. Maybe we should spend a little more time thinking about the doors. Not every person knocking needs to come inside. Not every opinion deserves entrance into your mind. Not every request deserves access to your time. Not every crisis belongs in your emotional living room. Not every person you give something to automatically earns an ongoing connection to you.
You can be generous without being permanently available. You can be loving without leaving every door unlocked. You can give without giving yourself away. And you can receive something with gratitude without feeling like you owe somebody unlimited access in return.
My mother taught me something years ago that stayed with me: sometimes it isn't only about the words. It's the energy behind them. I understand that more now because two people can say the exact same sentence and somehow you can feel two completely different things. So no, I'm probably not going to start inspecting every syllable that comes out of my mouth like it's evidence in a crime scene. But I am going to keep noticing. That's what I do.
And maybe next time somebody says “You're welcome,” I'll smile and think about that mat sitting at the front door. Welcome. Come in. And I'll remind myself that one of the quietest forms of self-care is becoming conscious about who—and what—I invite into my space. Physically. Emotionally. Financially. Spiritually. And sometimes, energetically.
Your door belongs to you. You get to decide when it opens. You get to decide who enters. And you are allowed to close it without feeling guilty for protecting what's on the other side.
With gratitude.
Take care of you. One love—and Ase Ase for the ancestors.
— QueenB.Divine
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