What's in a Name?
I love this quote because the reality of it has hit me very hard in recent days. Even at my age, the child in me still believes it has no rights, that its feelings are wrong and that they are judged harshly for how some things affect them. I have never told the full story of my childhood because I'm still a child. I still have a living, breathing parent and I have no siblings to validate or to share my lived experience. To have an only child and to create such havoc in an emotional storm for all these decades must surely equate to winning the game. Right? News just to hand and a conversation about what it means to be given a name has just set off a series of after shocks that while I know I will recover from are currently causing some enormous mental tidal waves. A name? How can such a small thing create such a huge issue in someone who is not even remotely involved in the decision? How can nobody who knows you so well even pick up on these devastating effects? And why is t