As you know, my name is Renee. When I was a kid, I HATED my name. I didn’t know anyone else with the name Renee, so I assumed it was a weird name. Now, to be fair, I also recall that when I was a child, I decided if I ever grew up to have any daughters, they would have names like Charity and Sweet Honesty and Clarissa and Priscilla because clearly those names were so very common haha! Regardless, I didn’t like that no one else had my name.

As I got older, I met a few more Renees. One spelled her name the same way I did. Another one spelled it Renae. Then I learned that my name was French, and for some reason, that started to help me feel like my name was okay. It spurred me to learn what my name meant in French — reborn or born again — and it inspired me to want to learn French (and despite a year of French in junior, 4 years in high school, 1 year in college, and a trip to France, I’m not fluent in it).

Once I got to college, I finally learned to love my name. I appreciated that there were not many Renees out there, and I decided it sounded pretty. I like that it’s unique but not weird. Sorry to all the parents out there giving your kids strange names (like Abcde) in an attempt to make them unique. There’s a difference between having a name that is different and one that’s just plain weird. That’s my unpopular opinion.

And I have also decided that it fits me perfectly, as I have seen myself have to be “reborn” many times, most notably after my back surgery and my weight loss surgery. Being reborn more than once is a good thing, I think, and I’ve kind of decided that I want to use my name to create a mission for myself, so I plan to be Renee in every sense of the word!