Call Me By My Name?
My story started nineteen years ago in Kenya. Well, actually my story began outside the hospital with a woman who will, to me, be forever faceless and nameless. That is not to say she is not deserving of a name and does not own her face; this is just to say that somewhere along the road my birth mother decided to go to the hospital to give birth and my life began. I was given the name Lydia Wangare and then sometime in the days after my birth, my mother slipped away under the guise of a fake name and was never found again. I call her my mother because that is all she is: the woman who gave birth to me. My mom is the one who raised me into the woman I am today. At eight months old my dad picked me out of an orphanage and I was adopted into an already made family. I was given the name Karen and Wangare stayed as my middle name. We always joke that Karen is a middle age, white-lady name, and though it may be, it is also my name. I am called, proudly, in the footsteps of Wangari Maathai, Nobel Prize winner. I used to think that being named after a women of major impact in this world would make me great. Maybe it still will, but perhaps it is with whom we surround ourselves and the experiences we have that make our names more becoming of us and take us beyond.
I like to say that I have spent my life flitting out of planes and doorways and sitting around different tables. Perhaps this is a bit of an exaggeration, but having spent my life between two different countries, that is the closest example I can give of what it feels to come home. After I was adopted, I lived in Kenya until I was four and then my entire family moved to Virginia for seven years. My childhood was relatively normal. Although, in retrospect, I think I lived it with my mother tongue on the tip of my lips, not quite able to come out, but not quite able to be completely swallowed. However, when it came time to move back to Kenya, I decided I wanted nothing to do with the country I was born into and even less to do with my given middle name, Wangare.
Moving was the catalyst to learning to accept Wangare, without letting go of Karen.
Moving was the catalyst to learning to accept Wangare, without letting go of Karen. There are many moments within those seven years that are well deserved to be memorialized in writing. I choose to dwell on gratitude because I am profoundly grateful for the experiences I have had living and traveling in and throughout multiple countries. I have been given the ability to interact with and embrace all sorts of people.
Fast forward a couple years and I was known as Karen and Wangare. I have a group of friends from all over the world who encourage one another to love others like the best version of themselves, even on their worst days. Somehow through a love like that, combined with the exposure to new situations, I end up introducing myself, both names, with pride. I was given a new name at my adoption, and I kept my name from birth. I am all of the jigsaw puzzles, scrapbook pages, and snapshots of everything else in between.
-K
