It’s said that souls choose their names and try to communicate to their parents or caregivers what to name them before birth. If the parents or caregivers listen, the child tends to resonate with their name (angsty identity exploration phases still welcome!)
My mom tells me that when she was pregnant with me, within the same 24 hours, my grandmother on my dad’s side and my aunt (my mom’s sister) both called out of the blue and said … Have you thought of the name Madeline?
My mom had already been thinking of this name - and we laugh about it sometimes because if you know me, you know I can be rather persistent. We can totally see me in spirit form dropping hints to all my in-body relatives … Madeline - MADELINE … Ma-de-line … Madeline!
Thankfully, my mom got the message - and here I am with a first name that feels true to me in this life.
I cannot say the same for my middle name. My parents gave me my maternal grandmother’s name as my middle name, and to say it kindly - I’ve always had a complicated relationship with it. As a child I didn’t want to tell people what it was, so I made up a different B name instead (Bridget).
This lack of resonance is coupled with the reality that I had a complicated relationship with my grandmother. We weren’t close - she was strict when I was a child and largely absent from my family’s life from my adolescence on. This added to the frustration of having her name stamped on me. In a spiritually righteous era of my 20s, I said to my mom, Why did you name me this? You’ve given me the weight of her karma! (Currently cringing at this, sorry mom!)
My grandmother died 4 years ago, on the full flower moon eclipse in May. About a year after her death, I was enrolled in Perdita Finn’s Mothers of Magic course.
In it, Perdita presents the possibility that our grandmothers and relatives with whom we had complicated relationships at best and abusive and toxic ones at worst - can become helpers on the other side in the very areas they were challenging in life.
In other words, the things they struggled with in life are the things they can help with in spirit form. She invited us to re-imagine our grandmothers - honoring their lives, their upbringing - considering what contributed to their ways of being … and then to re-imagine them.
I started by looking up the meaning of my grandmother’s name - my middle name - Barbara. In all my days, I had never looked it up.
Barbara means traveler from a strange land.
When I read this, I sat in stunned silence for a good amount of time. While the name itself felt more like a weight than a blessing throughout my life, traveler from a strange land felt like being seen and understood.
I then felt into the legacy of my grandmother Barbara ~ she who was born on Christmas. She who was quite religious and LOVED angels. She who sang in choir ~ she who was a phenomenal artist and painter who rarely showed her work. She who always cut her hair short ~ the hair everyone says I inherited from her. She who raised 3 daughters and then remained distant to her 3 granddaughters. She who died peacefully with dementia.
I then re-imagined my grandmother … here is the invocation that thundered through me in a 5-minute frenzy:
Barbara oh Barbara, Traveler from a Strange Land
You were a song feather born into quicksand
Creative, so Creative – with numinous gifts
Angelic Painter & Sparrow Spinner
Devotional Weaver & Harp Singer
You drank your sorrows
You sung the prayers
You read the Bible
You cut your hair
You told your daughters to clean their rooms
To sit up straight, to not talk back
To hold their legs shut – and keep quiet at that.
You listened when your husband said these are The Rules
You did as he said, you did as they told you to do.
It wasn’t long before parts of you started to fly away
To flee - to go home
To escape the suppression of this sorrowful stay.
Barbara, oh Barbara I see your hair long
You’re laughing and cackling and painting the stars
You’re singing and dancing and tending the flames
You’re loving freely and wildly and you’re not apologizing for anything
You see me and Know that I know your note
I sing similar songs
I’ve traveled parallel slopes
I am me – I am different – you are you and how brave
You traveled into this world like a moth to a flame
Barbara, oh Barbara I call upon you now
To help me be wild, be free – to be me
To grow my hair long
And laugh loud by the flames
To sing my own songs
And write the true names
Barbara oh Barbara I call upon your grace
To help me live free of suppression, trauma and shame.
my grandmother Barbara
When I read this, I feel a closeness in spirit with my grandmother that I didn’t have the opportunity to experience with her in life. I feel a deepened kinship with my matrilineage and the opportunities for healing suppression, trauma and shame … and (still somewhat begrudgingly) I let out a sigh of acceptance for my given middle name.
I don’t want to couple my story too closely with hers - there remains a resistance, a boundary there. But I can acknowledge that even though I have always felt my mom got my first name right and my second name wrong - perhaps she didn’t miss at all.
Some names fit from the start and some names we grow into. Some names send us on a quest from which we never return the same. And some names were never ours to keep - for those of you who have changed your name, I trust you know this well.
What are your grandmothers’ names? If you have a complicated relationship, what might it be like to re-imagine without bypassing your experience?
In this season of songs between worlds, I am thinking of my grandmother and I am re-imagining her. Amid so much heartbreak, I am dreaming into a world where the children’s children’s children are free of suppression, trauma and shame.
With love,
Madeline
PS: On 11/8 I’m teaching a free class called Breathing with Angels - a place to breathe with the helpers on the other side and be with whatever is present, complicated questions and all. It’s a taste of my upcoming 6-week series and you can sign up here.