Why Belzile?

So where did this new name come from? Over the past year, as Carl and I have worked out our dissolution agreement, I would from time to time think about changing my last name. When I got married, it took a year or so before I got around to hyphenating. So, I figured when it came to getting divorced, there was no need to hurry. I was pretty sure I would change my last name... eventually, at my usual snail-like pace. However, this past May, I was reserving a facility at the Lake Metroparks for an event with my entrepreneurs group, and I noticed that the woman I had been corresponding with had a different last name in her email vs her voicemail. I asked her about it, and she explained that she was recently divorced. I told her that I was also in the process of ending my marriage. She told me that if you change your name at the time the divorce is finalized, it's $300 cheaper and a lot less complicated. Apparently $300 is all the motivation I needed to decide that I would, indeed, have a new name by the time Carl and I finalized our arrangement. At that point, I thought that we were really close to having everything done, so I felt a real sense of urgency about it. (Who knew it would take till September to get everything organized?)

So how to find a new name? I could use some sort of divination or numerological process. I could crowd source it. Or I could ask my friends and my family, which is primarily what I did. I asked just about everyone I encountered. My friend March suggested "Friday", which I liked, but wasn't quite ready to adopt. On the drive back from a visit to DC in May, my daughters and I brainstormed on names. Most of the ideas were nature-related... somehow associated with moss, ferns and water. The girls seemed a little uncomfortable with the idea of me changing my name, but they were going along with it. Charlotte recorded the names we liked on a piece of paper. But bottom line, nothing was "sticking"

As the weeks passed, and I explored this question, I realized a few things about names. While a name may be somewhat arbitrary, it is a vehicle, a container, for assembling one's identity. And this identity is in large part determined by the agreements we have with other people. We agree to call each other by the names we have been given or the names we have chosen. Names are a collaboration, generally... they start with what we are given, but then we make a choice about how to use them from there. Like what nickname we want to be called by, how we refer to ourselves, and, very importantly, how we introduce ourselves. Whenever we introduce ourselves to another person, that's the moment at which we "create" our identity in that relationship.

The names we are given (as women) are generally, in our culture, determined by our parents and either our fathers or our husbands. As I visualized the process of changing my name, especially to one that I was going to choose for myself, I realized that this would be quite the radical act. It represents a step away from tradition, and a step towards choosing and creating my own identity. I also realized that it would require a lot of conversations. I would essentially need to reintroduce myself to everyone I knew. And tell them *why* the name change.

In my minds eye, I view my life like an intricate web. All the relationships in my life are the filaments that form me, influence me, and feed me. And so by slightly altering each agreement I have with each person in my life, about what everyone "calls" me, this requires an absolutely thorough attention to every filament of my life. What a fascinating opportunity to intentionally step into the next version of myself.

But in order to do that, I needed a new name. And not just any name. It had to be one that I felt good about, that had some character, that had some meaning.

One Friday night this summer, I had made plans with a friend and she cancelled sorta last minute. Without much hesitation, I gathered up a manila folder labeled "Ancestor Research" and headed over to my Dad's house to flip through the family bible, which has names recorded in it going back to the 1800s. Once I arrived, I explained to him that I was on a quest for my new last name, I plopped down in a recliner, near his omnipresent bag of jelly candies, and started to let the names wash over me. The names in the bible were all pretty boring... Harding, Long, Trombly. I was even considering using first names as a last name: Irene, Ralph, Ellen. But nothing struck me. So I opened up the "Ancestor Research" folder, which contained notes from conversations with my maternal grandmother about my Mom's side of the family, the Gagnons, primarily. It also contained some questions and answers from a family tree project that I had done in 8th grade. As I began flipping through these papers, I realized that I was pretty clear about what I was looking for. I was looking for a family name that I LIKED. I was hopeful that I would read a name, somewhere in those old papers, that seemed shiny and resonant, and that spoke to me.

As I unfolded pieces of paper and deciphered notes, my Dad was having me watch various magic shows that he had recorded on his DVR, primarily Ricky Carbonaro (magician by trade, prankster at heart). We watched him freaking people out with perception-bending experiences in office and retail environments.

It was fun to read through all the French Canadian names from my Mom's side: Menard, Duguay, Bouchard. These names had the French panache, but I didn't like the sounds of any of them. So I kept looking. As I got deeper into the folder, my sense of hope that I would "find" anything I liked started to be mixed with a sense of desperation. If I didn't find anything tonight, when would I find a name? And would I even know it when I saw it? The lawyer had been asking me for weeks at this point for what my new name was going to be so that he could fill it into the paperwork.

Then, one of the things I read through was an interview that I had done with my maternal grandfather (Gerard Gagnon) in 8th grade. It was written out in my grandmother's hand... we had done an interview by mail, I guess. My grandfather never learned to speak or read or write English, so my grandmother took on the role of his scribe. One of the questions that the assignment had specified was that I ask my grandparents if their family's name had changed when they came to this country. The Gagnons came to Canada in the 1600s; they were one of Canada's "founding families". Specifically, Lucien the Patriot was the originating French Canadian in our lineage. And my grandfather had responded that yes, the family name had changed. It used to be "Gagnon dit Belzile".

So yeah, I read that name, and I just knew. There it was. Belzile. I loved it.

I told my Dad that I really liked the name Belzile. He nodded, and said "OK" in his usual non-judgmental way. That was it. We went back to watching magic shows and I left a little while later, with a little more peace in my heart than when I had arrived.

A week or two later, I found out, indirectly, from my Mom, that he was actually a little bit upset about me changing my name and losing the "Wilson". So I asked him if he would feel better if I kept Wilson as my middle name. "Yeah," he said. "OK, that's what I will do, then," I replied. [full stop]

I ran it by my girls (via text, I think, because how else do you communicate with teenagers?) and of course my Mom, and got their stamp of approval, and the decision was made. Then I just had to sit on this for a few months, while I figured out how to announce it. And, in the process of that sitting, the idea for the party was born.

What does it mean? I don't know. I haven't made much of an effort to find out. Because.... why? I like it. I don't need to know what it means. But if I had to guess or fabricate something, "bel" is probably related to beauty and "zile" is probably related to either island (isle) or passion/emotion (zeal).... all of which sound good to me. Beautiful passion? I'm in!

So there you have it, people!

Re-birth

A phoenix must burn to emerge

A few friends have asked me how I feel today, so it seems worthwhile to spend a few minutes trying to describe my internal landscape. The prevailing feeling is a deep sense of calm or quiet. After dropping Liz and Monica at the airport this morning, and then a meeting at City Hall, I spent a couple of hours cleaning the "kitchen" area at our roastery... loading and unloading dishwasher, mopping the floor, washing the chalkboard, organizing cabinets, because it just feels like all I want to do is clean. I want my outside world to be as peaceful and orderly as how I feel inside my head right now. I would have kept at that task, had I not had an afternoon appointment over at East 9th. As I cleaned, I kept bringing my attention back to my breath, and to the thoughts swirling in my head. I allowed myself to just focus on the task at hand, as if nothing else in the world mattered; voluntary simplicity, watching the counters come clean as I wiped the coffee drips off, and the rows of white cups appear as I stacked them. The thoughts that came brought a few waves of shame, in which I would become tremendously self conscious about having orchestrated an event that was so... different, impractical and personal. And then there were other waves of thought that brought such gratitude for friends who traveled from both coasts and other destinations in between to be present with me, and for the myriad people who helped with the party. Both sensations are a bit uncomfortable, and when I move towards the feelings, and let them be as big as they are, it's like my cell walls stretch a little.

Origins

Those of you who know me well will likely agree that a) I have a lot of ideas and b) sometimes I get an idea that takes me over. And when this happens, my curiosity becomes insatiable. I just HAVE to follow it through, just to see what happens. I alternate between being embarrassed about this tendency and being proud of it.

When my girls were younger, I hosted "Coming of Age" retreats for them, with the help and collaboration of my family. That process felt quite similar to the process of organizing this party, in that I got the idea, and I just HAD to live it out. My inner drive and voice about it was so strong. Notice I said STRONG ... yes, strong, but not necessarily clear. It took many others to help me clarify this thing and to bring it to life. It's like I just get the rough outline, but I need others to help me fill in the details. In the case of this party coming up, I have a list of literally more than 40 people who have helped fill in the details. I am not exaggerating. And the party hasn't even happened yet, so it will probably be more before the thing happens. It's embarrassing to essentially say to people "Hi, I have this idea, but it's only really half of an idea. I am going to live it out, no matter what, but I need you to help me figure out exactly what we're going to live out. So can you give me some guesses about what this idea actually looks like in three dimensions?" But that's pretty much what I do.

Here's how this started:

A few months ago, I was falling asleep, and I got this idea for a party I wanted to have. I saw aerial silks, and jugglers, and tarot card readings. But I didn't see quite how it fit in with the flow of my life, and so I just let it come and flourish in my minds eye for a little while, told one friend about it, and then, just let it pass, like so many of my other ideas, like a firework on a summer evening. But then, a few months later (August 2014, I think) it showed up again, in the context of this other idea, which is that I want to change my last name, in order to ritualize the ending of my marriage and the beginning of the next chapter of my life. As I contemplated a process for choosing a name, and embarked upon that process in earnest, enlisting the opinions and thoughts of my family and friends, I realized that there are a few things about changing one's name that are interesting. First of all, it's an intentional choice, it's an act of agency. One's name doesn't get changed by accident. People call us what we ask them to call us. So the name we use in the world, it's symbolic of the agreements we have with the people around us. Every time we meet a new person, we tell them our name. Our name is what people use to identify us, and it ends up being a way that we identify ourselves. The ending of my marriage was a big challenge for the way I identify myself, because I "saw" myself as a "successfully" married person. So when Carl and I decided to split up two years ago, I got to see how attached I was to that part of my identity. I didn't realize how much I correlated my "ability" to be successful in the world with my "ability" to stay married. 

When I realized that changing my name is actually a very interdependent process, I connected it to the vision for this party, which is complex, layered, and interdependent. And somewhere in the murky waters of my imagination, this idea was born as a force in my life.

This whole thing is scary for me. But I am committed to stepping towards the unknown of this, because perhaps this is an opportunity for intimacy with the divine. That, my friends, is the spirit with which I have approached this endeavor. I am beyond-words grateful for your partnership on this adventure.