WEDNESDAY · THE RECLAIMING
When was the last time someone said your first name out loud?
Not on a form or in a waiting room. In your own life, warmly, by someone who was talking to you.
Think about what you actually answer to now. Mom, honey, Grandma, Mrs. Somebody.
Each one of those is affectionate. Not one of them is your name.
Your name was the first thing that was ever yours. Someone chose it, said it over a crib, called it across a yard when the streetlights came on.
Friends said it constantly, at that particular pitch only your friends used. It was how the world got your attention, and it meant you specifically, not your function.
Then the roles arrived and stacked up on top of it. You became someone's mother and someone's wife and the person who handles things, and the name went underneath all of it.
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You may not have noticed until just now, reading this, that whole days pass without anyone using it.
That is not a small loss, though it looks like one. A name is the difference between being a person and being a position, and yours has quietly gone out of circulation.
It is close to what we sat with in being surrounded and still a little lonely. Being among people is not the same as being known by them.
So here is the reclaiming, and it is more available than you think. Get your name back into your own life this week.
Ask an old friend to use it, or introduce yourself with it fully, the way you would have at thirty. Write it somewhere, on the flyleaf of a book, on the corner of something you made.
Say it to yourself in the mirror, if the mirror is the only place it is going to happen today. That is not silly and it is not nothing.
You are not the collection of roles you answer to. You are the woman with the name underneath them, and she is the one who has been doing all of this.
THE RECLAMATION LIST
Things worth remembering about your own name:
The particular way your closest friend used to say it.
Signing it on something you made, rather than something you owed.
Hearing it called across a room and knowing it meant you, and not anyone's mother.
The version of it only your family used when you were small.
THE PERMISSION SLIP
Today you have permission to correct someone gently and give them your actual name.
ONE THING TO NOTICE
Today, notice what you get called and by whom. Count how many of them are your name.
See you tomorrow.
