Sunflowers and Gravestones

I remember when I was pregnant with my kids and three main questions.

1- When are you due?
2- What are you having?
3- What are you naming her?

You read that right. Her. Both my children were girls and I knew exactly what names I wanted to give them. Beautiful, perfect, wonderful names for my beautiful, perfect, wonderful girls. My heart still fills with so much love for those precious little humans I helped bring into the world.

Fast forward ten years and my children share with me that they don’t feel like girls. As a parent who always told my kids that I didn’t care who they loved as long as the person loved them back (and could pay their own bills) this wasn’t a jarring declaration. My kids are my kids. That love that filled my heart when they were little? Still there. Just as full and even more overflowing. Love is like that though.

Loving and accepting my kids is easy. Especially the internal part of it is. Loving and accepting my kids as an action, well, that’s a little tougher. And I think that’s the part most people struggle with. For example, remembering to use the correct pronouns, especially with someone who feels more male on some days and more female on others, takes some work. If you’re like me and stumble on this one, that’s ok. The important thing is that you’re trying.

So when my child told me they didn’t like their name… you know, the one I picked out and loved and thought was just as amazing as they are … Well, that stung. A lot. Out of everything, this is the part of their journey of life that just hit me between the eyes. Not that I said anything to them. My issue with their name was my issue.

I kept thinking that they might decide on a different name, try a few others out. I offered some suggestions of other names I liked. They rejected them. I was just an observer as my child renamed themselves. And it hurt.

It hurt because it felt like that perfect little human I welcomed into the world was now gone. It’s called Dead Naming for a reason. And it felt like a death to me. But how could this part of my child be dead and gone while they are still there and whole? My mind struggled with wrapping around this loss and not loss all at once. And it hurt.

Then one day it just made sense to me. A caterpillar goes through the most dramatic change within their chrysalis. Once safely inside, the caterpillar turns to liquid and then completely reforms itself into something new. This something new is still the same being, with the same essence. But it has been changed. Transformed. It is a messy, painful, difficult process, but the caterpillar cannot stop from making their chrysalis and becoming who they were meant to be. And they were meant to be a butterfly. 

The name I gave my child is their Caterpillar name.
The name they chose for themselves is their Butterfly name.
I no longer mourn the Dead name. Instead I celebrate that my child can fly.