July 18th, Names Can’t Hurt You...
-Says who?! I still cringe and have slight-trauma from my childhood nicknames. My mom would call me, I do not even like writing it, embarrassing and with vulnerability… “Queeny”. My siblings repeating it with satisfaction and thinking it was sooooo funny. I didn’t, don’t like the name because – it felt insulting, and it hurt. Why ‘pick on’ a little girl’s ability to ‘take charge’…I wasn’t doing it ‘on purpose’ at that age? (Or how the school kids, called me Tiny Tina – if you were going to name me Christina, mom, I wish you would have called me that.) How did ‘queeny’ factor into a complicated mess of stuff? Mother, daughter dynamics…decades later admitted as jealousy, being threatened by my capabilities. Sibling competition…subconsciously interpretating I was ‘one-upping’, which makes sense as to why it became a quest to ‘dethrone’ me years later. My own self-worth…wait, AHA moment...positively… is it the motive for seeking to show all that I was ‘common’...rather than embrace the country club I resented any image of privilege. For surrounding myself with a wide variety of friendships. For paying my own college tuition... so I valued the education. For insisting I contribute to my wedding expenses. For my hands-on, hard work ethic… never feeling entitled to but earning my career in the family business by respecting the legacy and being appreciative for opportunities, never expecting my team to do something I hadn’t or wouldn’t do myself. For recognizing sensitivities to my strengths...attempting to channel them in the spirit of working as equals. (Or I hated being short and coveted my 2 -3” heels!) Perhaps more examples exist, enough belaboring the point. Oh, the lessons that stuck, I am just now realizing. A nickname harbored as criticism rather than endearing, looks like I evolved into being life altering, a lifelong cause...for the betterment, I believe…even if it still feels really icky to hear or write. I am truly blessed by an abundance of resilience and courage to act.
It is nice my current nicknames are more around name variations (omitting tiny!)… “T”, “TB”, “Trina”… and I embrace them as sweet, simple.
Hmmm, it’s all in the name… Day 6!
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