FOR DAUGHTERS WITH NAMES THAT TAKE A FEW TRIES TO PRONOUNCE After Warsan Shire Your mother gave you this name for a reason. It won’t come out as easily as spilled white wine or melted butter, but it will make you memorable. Better a woman with a name like a grenade pin waiting to be pulled than a name like shrapnel that’s already landed. Always make anyone who claims to love you pronounce it correctly. If they can’t handle your name, then they won’t be able to handle your heart or body. That’s a time bomb ticking down to the last few seconds. That’s an hourglass turned on its side. You will feel like repeating it over and over again is too much like drawing blood, or shooting an arrow and pinning a slice of the moon to an oak tree. This is the burden you have to deal with sometimes. That’s the beauty of a woman with a complicated name and an even greater strength. After months of pronouncing your names for strangers this toughens the tongue- that’s the mark of a poet. And daughter, remember Scheherazade, how she read stories to the king until he fell in love and spared her life to make her his queen. Remember how Salome performed the Dance of the Seven Veils before King Herod Antipas. Remember Malala Yousafzai, who stood up for her beliefs in the face of death and became the youngest Nobel laureate. Your name does not have to be simple to be powerful. Biology has found that lobsters are scientifically immortal- this refers to a stable or decreasing rate of mortality from cellular senescence. They reign over the animal kingdom. A name like yours, daughter, is immortal too. It will live on long after you do. Make it count.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 04:11:42 +0000
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