Storm Girl – All in a name

I learned about spirit names from my Aboriginal friends and teachers, and thought it time to set the record straight and change my legal name, Roberta, to my spirit name, Robin. I think everyone has a spirit name, that name that came to their parents in a dream, from the spirit of a relative living or past, from the spirit of a character in a book or movie, from the spirit of the calendar or nature, or even like in my case from the spirit of a nurse.

My mother told me the story of my naming many times while I was growing up. Because my birth was such a stormy process for her and because of the October gales blowing the night I was born, my parents decided to call me Gayle. In hindsight that name choice seemed to foretell of the many storms this life would travel through always finding safe harbor in the end. But it wasn’t to be, and Great Spirit told this to my parents through the Spirit of a young Scottish Nurse who cared for me. Everytime she brought me to my mother for feeding, she would say, “Here comes the little Robin”,  my tiny mouth resembled that of a baby robin searching for it’s next meal. The name stuck and I was brought home as Robin. The next Sunday in church the very passionate monsignor in his sermon, stated clearly that it was time for people to stop naming their children after birds, flowers, months etc. I would guess he was looking for strong biblical names, and so it was, my legal name on my birth certificate was Roberta Claire. Claire is my mother’s name and I carry it proudly as a sign that I am the perfect balance of femininity and masculinity for me, with the strength of character that comes with that harmony. Roberta has always been shortened to Robin, and was only an small annoyance when it had to appear on my social insurance number or when a manager at work would pick up on it from employment docs and call me Roberta to get a reaction…Of course they did. More recently, I went through the process of getting an enhanced drivers license to use as identification in place of a passport, and found that all my government I.D needed to be changed to show Roberta as my given name. I am being paged at airports as Roberta...When I go to the doctor I'm Roberta...I feel like I am in the middle of an identity crisis and now it has become a problem…a small storm to go through…and believe me I have been storming.  Here I am 61 years later, setting the record straight, and legally reclaiming my spirit name as my legal name.  I am Robin…I am Robin Claire…I am Robin Claire, the storm girl who always finds safe harbor!