Have you ever grown out of a nickname?
- So much so that it really begins to chafe every time you see it? And with social media, that's a whole lot.
That's something I am going through right now.
About 15 years ago (yikes!) when I was in college, while preparing a presentation for school, I entered my last name and spellchecker changed it from Feuerecker to Firecracker. I thought it was funny and left it there to see if anyone would notice. And they did.
Sandi Firecracker was born.
I have LOVED using this as my last name all these years. But recently it started feeling strange and not quite right. This made me sad since I associate "Firecracker" with life, spunk, sparks - the very things I have been feeling have been missing from my life lately.
Did it mean then, that not liking the last name was just accepting the inevitable? That Life finally beat me into submission??
Oh No!!
Maybe that is what it means. Life won - and it's time to just grow-up. But maybe not.
I have come a long long way from that carefree college girl giggling over a typo in a PowerPoint slide. I have been forged by Life into something very different.
Which is a good thing.
We are supposed to grow and change.
It's possible that one day I will return to Sandi Firecracker. But for now, I am going back to OG, in fact so OG that I am putting the O' back into my Irish name. (I respect why it was removed. And it feels time to reclaim it.)
I may not be as carefree as I was back then. How could I be? I am a single mom of two wild boys, I have lost friends - both to illness and for reasons that baffle me to this day. I have been divorced, and got out of a serious relationship with an alcoholic. So many other things that could have chipped away at me.
But they didn't. They made me stronger. They gave me depth.
And that is what reclaiming my name means to me.
Sandi Firecracker was full of giggles, sparkles, lighthearted wildness.
Sandi Feuerecker O'Brogan is the fireflies dancing around an unfothomly deep enchanted pond at the edge of a haunted forest.
Yeah. I'll take that.
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