As my name started to slip, I imagined it like a sunny-side-up egg slithering down the face of a refrigerator door. "How did that egg get up there?" I wondered. And yet, there it went, an exclamation point with a golden tail.
"Chelsey?" "Kelsy?" These misspellings and misnamings once drove me wild. Now the hot prick energy that previously arose within me and politely insisted on the correct lay limp. "Yep," I'd say to the barista scribbling the cup or the volunteer coordinator requesting my phone number. But it wasn't only people who didn't know me who were impacted by the errant egg. I watched friends I've known for years reach for something once so familiar and come up empty. In these moments, a settled spaciousness arrived to meet their mortification. "I know your name!" they'd say. "I swear, I still have baby brain."
I have some idea of how that egg got up there. Madre Jaguar flipped it at the Witches Confluence in Golden Gate Park, where I attended her more-than-packed session on ancestral healing last November. Madre Jaguar. Her name leapt from the Confluence program, and, out of curiosity, I squeezed in and sat on the cold linoleum to hear her speak. "Well, the ancestors brought me here. What should we talk about?" she began.
What should we talk about?
Simply An Expression of Being
That egg, a frequent symbol of new life and rebirth, was, for me, simply an expression of being. Audacious? Perhaps. Comical? Maybe. But also, exactly what it is. I don't remember what we talked about with Madre Jaguar. I recall how she made a seat out of the old radiator in front of the room, her gentle pause before answering each question as if seeking a larger guidance. How lovely she was. How human. How completely herself.
She reminded me of when I first moved to the Bay Area from Colorado in 2014. It was the Seussian foliage that struck me. My eyes widened at trees with magenta feather-duster flowers, orange bulbs with stinger-like yellow-tipped petals, and ombré purple blooms with psychedelic filaments and crisscross stamens. Prized Calla Lilly's grew wild, erupting in the shady medians of unkept yards. Giant spiked Aloe, sparking images of brontosauri, twisted and curved in courtyards. I watched my neighbors walk past these everyday displays with nary a pause while I reached up to feel the soft petals of the bottlebrush, investigated the spindles of the Protea, got lost in the heart of the passionfruit, and mimicked the shape of the Aloe in my own body. "This is why people move here," I thought. "You can be exactly who you are."
My name was slipping away, but also a more contained version of myself. It wasn't that I didn't like Kelsey. She is driven, a champion for naming the unnamed, committed, curious. She shows up and knows how to get a job done. But there is also a way she learned to tuck in her wildness, to collapse the longing of her creative urges, and to make less visible the process of becoming in favor of the responsible, acceptable, and desirable. Perpetually pricked for the applause (or lack thereof), her being looked to the external to settle her internal.
With the arrival of the egg, something below the known gained courage. How would I name myself?
How Would I Name Myself?
Nyala? Esy? Fern? In the sea of potential vowel and consonant combinations, I imagined a string that was just mine. Perhaps a West African name to honor my ancestry? A derivative of my birth name? Something earthy to cultivate more ground in my life? What began as a curiosity became an idea that would not let me go.
Clay, my partner, liked "Rock" for its simplicity and straightforwardness, though it was hard to imagine this moniker with a straight face. Rock and Clay? My friend Catherine suggested Rael or Blaze, both of which worked nicely with my last name, Blackwell. These felt closer, but still not quite.
It wasn't just the name, but what this renaming process represented. Like that egg audaciously making its way, choosing my name was a shedding of the polite and a release from the expected. Similar to the flora that had immediately "made sense" upon landing here, it was extending outward what felt most accurate inward, regardless of strangeness or intensity. I wanted to say my name and feel a "yes!" in my body rather than indifference.
Trying on possibilities was like trying on a new blazer. They were all a little crisp and unfamiliar. Was I Rael? I needed to walk around with her for a minute, turn my head this way and that, feel how she moved with me.
Everyday Emergence
The clouds did not part when Soleil appeared. Yes, he is the French word for "Sun," but Soleil did not make sense because I have Gaelic ancestry, a special connection to Western Europe, or speak French. I don't. Soleil did not come to me in a dream or a message from an ancestor. There was no psychic epiphany. More simply, I like what Soleil evokes in me, yes, the sun, but also a particular kind of warmth. As my body curves around her, I feel stone heated to its whole essence and then wetted drop-by-drop by a growing thunderhead. These freshly rain-soaked rocks, redolent of late summer, I'd always had an inclination to lick.
Soleil smells like Acqua di Gio, not from the memory of any particular body, but because my nose had followed the trail in Dillard's one day. Bright and woody. Clean and salty. Masculine and soft. Not quite a contradiction, but unexpected. My 16-year-old self held the sprayer to her nose and sucked in deeply, the closest she believed she could come to a scent for boys.
Soleil! When they call me them, a white rose blossoms from my belly to my toes. I stand a little taller, feel a little kinder toward what approaches.
Her first syllable rolls slick and round, followed quickly by the joyful second. It is the top of the arc on the swing, the moment just after the leap.
But who did I think I was changing my name at 43? Of course, there was trepidation. I tiptoed Soleil out cautiously, waiting for the scoffs and casual glances of disdain. Maybe Soleil would have stayed protected in a heart-shaped locket just under my collar if not for the enthusiastic many. She reminds me that even in our reclamation, we are strengthened by affirmation.
"So-lay? It's so you!" they say.
"Like the sun?"
"S. O. L. E. I. L, right?"
Then, there's my favorite question: "Why Soleil?"
I see the egg comet with its yolky trail, a witch holding court, the twisting Aloe, and that answer comes clearly: Because I like it.
Wow! Great reflection. You are such a beautiful writer! I especially loved this line, “there is also a way she learned to tuck in her wildness, to collapse the longing of her creative urges, and to make less visible the process of becoming in favor of the responsible, acceptable, and desirable.” I relate so much to these images you’ve conjured.
I love this for you, Soleil. Come to think of it, Kelsey never seemed to entirely fit you. It's off-the rack whereas Soleil is bespoke. You have spoken the bespoke! And thank you for this writing. A benefit of changing your name in your 40's is how aware you got to be of the process.
I changed my name at 13, entering a new school in 8th grade. I just started introducing myself as Rie and signing Rie on my papers. I had a vague sense that Marie, my birth name, was a little prissy, overly cautious, a bit of a teacher's pet. I left those things in the first syllable and went on as Rie. Later as I learned Spanish, I found that Ríe means "she laughs." Even later I understood that laughter is a superpower, a release, a grounding, and a way to remind myself to be humble. Sometimes it comes straight up out of my body unbidden, and there's nothing better!