[I've made a little edit]
The renaming/rite/of-passage/initiation is a little less than two weeks off now and it is dawning on me that this is a pretty big deal.
With "Sasha" I let an experimental pragmatic name hang on me to see how it affected my balance, so to speak. With "Amy," I am not only taking on a new name; grafting it on rather than simply wearing it. I am not only divesting myself of "Sasha," returning it to the not-so-big pool of transitional names. I am also discarding "Graham" as a name from my extended adolescence, and shedding some of the things that go with it. Furthermore, this also doubles as an adulthood ritual (and my Archaeology assignment).
It's also a symbolic death, and judging by the countdown on my wall calendar, this particular variant of my identity has about twelve days left on this Earth.
On that note, here's what may be the most useful advice that I've picked up in the last twenty-six and some years....
The renaming/rite/of-passage/initiation is a little less than two weeks off now and it is dawning on me that this is a pretty big deal.
With "Sasha" I let an experimental pragmatic name hang on me to see how it affected my balance, so to speak. With "Amy," I am not only taking on a new name; grafting it on rather than simply wearing it. I am not only divesting myself of "Sasha," returning it to the not-so-big pool of transitional names. I am also discarding "Graham" as a name from my extended adolescence, and shedding some of the things that go with it. Furthermore, this also doubles as an adulthood ritual (and my Archaeology assignment).
It's also a symbolic death, and judging by the countdown on my wall calendar, this particular variant of my identity has about twelve days left on this Earth.
On that note, here's what may be the most useful advice that I've picked up in the last twenty-six and some years....