What’s in a name?

I lost access to my LinkedIN acct this past week. I wasn't too freaked out by it at first. Figured the remedy was rather simple. Turns out, I have been wrong in that thought. Turns out LinkedIn is notoriously lacking in Customer Service. Turns out twelve years worth, of content, connections, referrals and recommendations can be gone in a single stroke.

I am going through the channels available to me to reclaim the profile. Kate Bringardner, in that form exists somewhere, but I don't have access to it. A strange thought.

It also got me thinking about all the masks we use. Digitally. Socially. Professionally. The first half of life is spent acquiring these masks. Does that make the second half of life about removing them?

The name, Kate Bringardner is not my first name or my birth name. It is in fact a creation. A co-creation.

I changed my name to Kate when I moved high schools between my junior and senior year. An ideal time for reinvention, no?

My name changed again, this time my surname, when I married. I am now unmarried.

It’s not unusual for woman to have more than one name in their lives. As if switching names, and the identities that go with them, is as easy as apple pie. (Have you tried making an apple pie. From scratch?) We live in a world where people CAN, and do, in fact switch identities. A world where changing one’s identity is both a more simple process and a more gnarly one than ever before.

Truth be told, it’s been on my mind a while to rename myself. A Post Modern, Post Divorce. Post Pandemic. Post LinkedIN opportunity to stake a new claim and seek a new direction. Perhaps the loss of my LinkedIn profile is a not so gentle nudge from the universe. Perhaps I need to take the hint and hit refresh.

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