Reframing Our Names

Our image of world leaders Nelson Mandela and Adolf HItler have little in common. One is credited with the destruction of apartheid in South Africa, the other is synonymous with the word genocide. Both, however, had names with tenuous beginnings.

Born Rohihlahla Mandela, his name meant “troublemaker”. While in school, it was an English teacher who gave him the name Nelson meaning “champion.”

Hitler’s name meant “noble wolf.” His desire to be an artist was a source of contention with his father, a traditional-minded, authoritarian man who considered the idea ridiculous. Adolf described himself, even by age 7, as an aggressive ring leader.

These men’s life stories are much more complex than these few facts, but they illustrate the truth that though we do not choose our names, what we do with them is crucial to who we will become over our lifetimes.

In his book To Be Told Dan Allender writes:

“The journey of our story truly begins when we start to see that the name we have been given is not our truest name.”

Once we realize the names we carry are not our truest selves, entering into greater freedom requires their reframing. To reframe means to see in a new way or express something differently. The painting below of a Chicago skyline demonstrates how frames can minimize and cheapen, hide and overwhelm or draw out and display with reverence the beauty in a work of art.

But how is something invisible, such as a name, reframed? What does it mean to shift how others define us and how we have always seen ourselves?

The clip below (until 3:37 time stamp) from the movie Silver Linings Playbook powerfully captures how words of identity, within the context of relationships, are reframed.

Though reframing almost never happens within a three-minute conversation and the battle with our inner voices, rather than someone else’s view of us, is typically more fierce, it is the data of the story that makes reframing possible.

What names have you been called in your lifetime? What given names, nicknames, adjectives or phrases were spoken over your identity growing up? What stories of those moments, if told, would invite you to see yourself in a new way or express yourself differently?

Dangerous Disguises

In the past few months I’ve come across two remarkably similar quotes, both from men with first hand experience enduring violence. Though their suffering ran deep, it seems it was not the power of their enemies that left them terrified but the way harm disguised itself.

In 1963, in a letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. penned:

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

In 1987, in his book One Generation After, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote this prayer:

“As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers, but not Your countenance.”

When have you encountered trauma that wore a superficial smile or spoke pleasant platitudes? Where are places in your story you showed signs of wounding but the presence of harm was bewilderingly masked? What punishment or rejection, if clearly seen, would have been less disorienting to engage?

Subtle Loss (Part 2)

And now a passage from Fredrik Backman’s novel Us Against You, demonstrating the loss of intimacy through subtle shifts in language.

Children notice when their parents lose each other in the very smallest ways, in something as insignificant as a single word, such as “your.” Maya texts them each morning now and pretends it’s to stop them from worrying about her, even though it’s actually the reverse. She’s used to them calling each other “Mom” and “Dad.” As in “Mom didn’t really mean you were grounded for a thousand years, darling,” or “Dad didn’t demolish your snowman on purpose, he just tripped, darling.” But suddenly one day, almost incidentally, one of them writes, “Can’t you call your mom, she worries so much when you’re not home?” And the other, “Remember, your dad and I love you more than anything,” Four letters can reveal the end of a marriage. “Your.” As if they didn’t belong to each other anymore.

When do you remember words changing in your story? When did an affectionate nickname cease to be used? Or an adjective change from fiery to stubborn or from strong to pudgy? When was an inaccurate gender pronoun used in mockery or an accurate one refused to be spoken? What subtle shift in language is signaling you to name a loss of belonging in your story?

Subtle Loss (Part 1)

I often tell close friends and clients, who come from “tidier” stories than my own, how deeply I respect the difficult work they do to name subtle loss in their lives. The inventory of my history is full of what I call “headline” words: abuse, divorce, adoption. These labels mean I’ve always had ample, justifiable evidence for deep dives into seasons of healing. It’s those I know and love who lives are filled with more covert abuse dynamics, emotional neglect and well-masked trauma who often wrestle for decades to find the words that describe their story.

Fiction writer Fredrik Backman is masterful at painting the subtle shifts of loss in everyday life. In his book Us Against You, he describes the physical and verbal evidence of a deteriorating marriage. This week I’ll share a passage about the physical drift of intimacy and next week a verbal example. Though these excerpts highlight one type of relationship, they are lens through which we can imagine what loss looks like with any person in our life.

“A long marriage consists of such small things that when they get lost we don’t even know where to start looking for them. The way she usually touches him, as if she didn’t mean to, when he’s washing up and she’s making coffee and her little finger overlaps his when they put their hands down on the kitchen counter together. His lips brush her hair fleetingly as he passes her at the kitchen table, the two of them looking different ways. Two people who have loved each for long enough eventually seem to stop touching each other consciously, it become something instinctive; when they meet between the hall and kitchen, their bodies somehow find each other. When they walk through a door, her hand ends up in his as if by accident. Tiny collisions, every day, all the time. Impossible to construct. So when they disappear, no one knows why, but suddenly two people are living parallel lives instead of together. One morning they don’t make eye contact, their fingers land a few inches further apart along the counter. They pass each other in a hallway. They no longer bump into each other.”

When have you experienced a loss of physical closeness? When did a caregiver’s illness, a move at a young age, a natural disaster, your developing body or the fickleness of a friend steal a comforting and secure experience? What clarify of grief comes when you consider a physical drift of intimacy in a current relationship? If Backman were describing a scene between you and this person, what picture of subtle loss would he paint?