Secret Agent Man

How do I go about just switching over to something new? Granted, I very much like my new Name (it is so much quicker to spell out Roe than Counts for all the people in the world who don't know how to count, much less spell it), but I feel as though I am shrugging off my old family and ridding myself of identifying with them, or that I am not acknowledging their role in my life these "long" 21 years.

But, I guess I have to accept that is exactly what I am doing. I am leaving my old identity and taking on a new one as the wife of Josiah. (Man, that is hard to write - much less accept. "GIving up" of myself, independence, etc has been the hardest part of the whole shenanigans.) Fortunately, it has all been worth it.

Everybody needs to get themselves a Josiah:)

Good stuff--neat to consider from you perspective. I love the last line :)
I've spent the last 2 days watching a couple become parents. It is the wierdest thing to see 2 self-absorbed people give everything to give life to another person, and just be in awe like never before in their life when this person pops out and starts breathing. It is the most intense thing I have ever seen. God made that dark blue/pink hard shell the tip of a living being--their head, and it can squeeze together w/out hurting the cerebral tissue--in fact being important to their transition to breathing life. Amazing what HE makes us do!

Welcome to the dark side.
[insert maniacal laughter]

Ruth,

LOL. I have never considered birth from the baby's perspective before. Very interesting, and icky!

:) April

A lot of my friends and I got married around the same time two years ago. We found that we all experienced similar feelings. Almost mourning at the lost of one identity and not quite sure what to do with this new one. Not that we weren't all happy to be married! but I think it surprised us all how attached we were to our maiden names...not just the sound of your name, but all that it entailed. Personal independence of sorts, dependence on a family, the identity that we had been creating for ourselves (almost not realizing it) through college. It's also startling because you spend all that time of being engaged longing desparately for the wedding day, and then the honeymoon is over and you think "hey! who am i?! is this part of the bargain, too?" It took me at least 6 months for when I didn't inwardly cringe every time I said Jeannette Jones instead of the much cooler sounding Jeannette Di Bernardo. (The only positive side to my new last name was its brevity.) Anyway...so all this is to say...what your feeling is normal. It'll probably revisit you throughout your married life in different forms. I'm sort of going through my own existential reevaluation right now, but I feel a whole lot more secure in my identity as a wife...and a lot more happy, too. So anyway...by way of encouragement, I hope I'm not being invasive. ;-)