I’ve finally done it. I’ve changed my name. I’ve changed my name, and the name I’ve chosen feels good. I announce my name on social media. Most friends and loved ones are powerfully supportive. This support fills me up. I feel so filled I cannot imagine anyone knocking the wind out of me. This is something I’ve wanted to do since at least the eighth grade, but even before then, I imagined myself wearing other names. 

It’s less than two weeks after the launch of my debut book an identity polyptych when I announce that I am Meca’Ayo. I haven’t warned anyone. I’ve just decided. I laugh at this move because even to me, it feels like a knee jerk response to the book launch, and in a way, it is. There are some things I want to separate myself from and allow space for proper healing. This book speaks to mostly painful stories about my life I have carried for a very long time. I do not want to carry them anymore. At least, not in the same ways I have in the past.

In my book, I talk about familial estrangement, being in-between things as a mixed-race Black person, abuse, harm, racism, and beginning to heal, forgive, and move towards reconciliation, even if I am not sure if that reconciliation, let alone restoration, can happen in time. 

I want joy in my life. I learn the Yoruban word for joy which is Ayo. But I don't want a name that so many of us who feel in-between because of our nonbinary sense of self choose. I can't just be Ayo. I want a name that is mine but also a name that acknowledges where I have been. I also want to acknowledge the struggles of my mothers who despite whatever adversity did the best they could in a society that constantly told them they were never enough. I especially and more specifically mean that I want to acknowledge my mother’s struggles, and the fact that she survived.

Tameca is a name my mother chose for me, as are the initials TLC. I used to joke that TLC was a gimmick my mother gave me. While I was writing my book, I realized it was a message my mother gave me. “TLC: Tender Loving Care.” This is a recurrent memory, a joy, that I want to recognize and hold on to. When I see “TLC: Tender Loving Care,” I also see and hear my mother. She says this as a soft magic, and I recognize it as a gift that I have integrated into myself. 

TLC is a message that has reminded me to walk one foot in front of the other in service of care. Tameca feels like a bookmark in the stories of my mother and my father. It also feels like a barrier between who I thought I was and wanted to be, and who anyone who called me by that name thought I was or wanted me to be. I felt a little trapped inside that name, so I have chosen to open the name up at its head.

The day after I announce my name change, I receive a notebook from Creative Strategies for Change and Palm Wine Collective. These are two Denver Colorado nonprofit organizations that focus on community healing, social justice, and abolition. The front of the book reads, “WRITE. EXPEL. MANIFEST. HEAL.” I feel eye sweats brewing. I tell the person handing me this book that it is perfectly timed, and I already know what I will do with the book. I begin listing who I am as Meca’Ayo. 

Meca’Ayo is full of love, beauty and grace; Meca’Ayo is comfortable in their own skin and in rooms full of people; Meca’Ayo feels gratitude for all forms of abundance coming towards them; Meca’Ayo is part of a strong system of mutual support; Meca’Ayo is an abolitionist; Meca’Ayo is full of health and vitality and art; Meca’Ayo gets shit done; Meca’Ayo is grounded, and their body breathes itself whole.

I write these things in service of reversing every curse against me, those wended towards me by others and those I’ve created and internalized. I write these things because my name is a blank slate in which I can step. I write these things even after my mother tells me she is heartbroken that I have changed my name. I try to explain to her that while I feel gratitude for the gift of the name she gave me it is like an old sweater that no longer fits. I cannot wear it anymore. That said, I have kept some part of it because of the memory of the gift my mother gave me, and because I love my mother, and because she has always called me ‘Meca. Meca is what my family calls me.

For a very long time, I wanted to have a relationship with my father. My relationship with him was cut off abruptly when I was ten years old. There are reasons for this, and of course I did not understand them when I was kid. I worked towards understanding over decades and by what I wrote in an identity polyptych, and via the bits of writing that did not make it into the book. I am still in therapy, sorting a good deal of what is mine and what is not mine as far as anything owed regarding that relationship to a man, that to be honest, I do not at this point know. I don’t mean that to sound cold. 

This is just to say that on my legal documents to date (and until I am able to change them), I am carrying his name as a sort of ghost. My ghost surname is Coleman and I have already spoken new names into the ether because I no longer want to carry a name of a man I do not know and who I am supposed to love despite him not being present, and who I do not know how to love.  

Meca’Ayo Cole. That is my chosen name until and if I choose to change my name again. I have cut off the man so that I no longer need to hold on to any expectation of him, or his or anyone’s expectations of me, and so that we are all free to do our respective healing. And in the future: come what may.  

Someone I know writes: “Every time I see your name, I say it three times.” I am not sure why this strikes me the way it does. My name is not a mantra for others to hold in their mouths. I respond: “My name is a protection and a boundary.”  

In another room, someone says, “You know, they say when you change your name, you change your destiny.” I respond: “Yes. That is the point. That is the aim.”

I often think of some lines from Saul Williams’ poem “Coded Language” where he says, 

Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry, crafts, love, and love.

When people accept our chosen names, we are affirmed. When we are able to choose our names, we gather our power in our hands. 

During my time at the Regis University Mile High MFA, I wrote a poem called “Preparation for a Renaming.” This poem became a gift for so many people who were choosing their own names. I read and heard and noticed that many people I know deliberated over when or whether they would be able to change their names. I watched and heard and read about so many people whose friends and loved ones brought up old names. I thought of this when someone I know approached me at an event and asked, “Is it legal?” Three simple words almost knocked the wind out of my sails. I hesitated, and I do not remember if I answered. I was not at the time able to tell them how frustrated this made me feel, and that it felt more right for this person to accept that Meca’Ayo is my name. Not ‘Meca. Not Tameca. Not some other variation that one might assume of me. My name is what I’ve chosen, and so call me that. People who have changed their names – call them by their names. Call us by our names.

And so I say it to myself in the mirror: “I am Meca’Ayo. I am Meca’Ayo. I am Meca’Ayo.”

***

I want to end with this poem because it is still a gift that I hope can encourage anyone who is ready to gift themselves with the power of their own naming. 

Preparation for a Renaming

My name feels heavy 

I’m going to take it out into moonlight 

and hold it against the stars                  smudge it

with holy smoke  

I’m going to build a fire

feed it with ghee and seeds and prayers for direction

take the name and hand it to the flames

stare into the light until it is ash

I’ll scrape it all into a deep red urn

travel the coasts and find a place upon the water

throw it in       wash me clean

About the Author

Meca'Ayo Cole is a singer, multi-genre writer, itinerant nerd and point-and-shoot art dabbler in Denver Colorado. Their work explores heartbreak and healing, finding the words for our experiences, familial estrangement, being ‘in-between’ things, finding beauty, even during times of strife, and movement towards reconciliation. Their writings have been published in pulpmouth, Rigorous Magazine, Inverted Syntax, Full Stop Reviews, Heavy Feather Review, Lambda Literary, and more. Their photography has been featured in literary magazines and in newspapers. Their first book, an identity polyptych, debuted from The Elephants on the Salish Sea Fall 2021.