Author: Regina Lynette

5 Min Read, What's In A Name?

My middle name is Lynette. Not many people know that.

Regina Lynette

At birth, my parents documented my first name as Regina and my middle name as Lynette. I didn’t get to choose any part of my name – none of us chooses what’s on our own birth certificates. As a very young child, I loved that my family called me Gina. Later, I learned to love introducing myself as Regina. But I wasn’t much interested in my middle name, Lynette. Then something magical happened during ages five and six, and my middle name had considerable significance to me.

Mommy had a friend who she met through the church my parents joined when I was a toddler. Of all her friends, this one was the most like a sister to her. So she was more like an auntie or godmother to me. I thought her name was absolutely perfect – Lucy Bell. It sounded just as sweet as she was to me.

My earliest memories of being a part of Ms. Bell’s world include the smells of her home – I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly, but it was unique to her and her home and made me feel safe. And she smelled just like her home. As an adult I can guess it was the usual blend of perfumes and/or soaps, hair products, moisturizers, maybe a favorite candy or gum, and she was a smoker. I would breathe her in while I sat next to her at church, wanting to lean on her but knowing somehow that it wasn’t quite appropriate even though I wasn’t really sure why. But she would put her arm on the pew behind me and I would scoot in a little closer to her. Ms. Bell felt like a treat, just in and of herself. And Ms. Bell was mine and I was hers. She made me feel like I was just as much hers as her son was – something that only true mothers, good mothers, natural-born mothers can do.  

I remember visiting her one weekend and she was suddenly pregnant. I was five and I swear she just all of a sudden was pregnant to me. And I was struck, staring at that belly while inching as far across the room away from her as I could. She and Mommy talked and random words floated by my ears – “middle name”, “spell it”, “girl or boy”, “good hair”, and “her daddy”. I know now there were conversations about the unborn baby, my hair, and my middle name. When I heard Ms. Bell say my name, I was snapped out of my stupor and was immediately present. She said to Mommy, “Gina won’t come close to me anymore.” I wondered how she noticed and at the same time I felt sorry that she noticed. Mommy said something about it – I don’t remember – and I was silent for a long time until I was prodded to respond. After I explained that I was afraid she would have the baby while I was close to her, I was assured by both of them that it would never happen that way and that the baby wasn’t due for what seemed like a long time. But I trusted what I saw on sitcoms where women were startled by sudden labor more than I trusted their words of assurance – parents said what they thought you needed to hear and not always the unadulterated truth (like I got from The Jeffersons). Ms. Bell was mine and I was hers and I had hurt her feelings by my distance so I stayed as physically close to her as I could stand but with anxiety. It wasn’t quite close enough to breathe her in nor did I wish I could lean on her.

On another visit I heard more of the conversation around the phrase “good hair” that I remembered hearing my mother and her friend mention. Ms. Bell told my mother that she’d heard that if you rubbed someone’s “good hair” while you were pregnant, your baby would have “good hair”, too. Even at five, I thought that was untrue. I think both Mommy and Ms. Bell thought it was unfounded, but Ms. Bell didn’t want to take any chances in same the way you don’t take any chances with your money by making sure to keep a black-eyed pea in your wallet. It definitely couldn’t hurt anything so whenever we were together, she stroked my plaits and smoothed my scalp. It was okay – we were having our own special moments. And if she could reach my head, I was successfully sparing her feelings while set to run away when labor hit.

Just as the grownups promised, Ms. Bell did the whole labor and childbirth thing outside of my presence and one day there was this tiny little brown baby girl at her house. I remember just staring at her, taking in all her beauty, almost trying to memorize her. Ms. Bell declared us sisters and told me she had given her daughter my middle name to seal the deal. Quietly, along that special gold thread that connected my heart to hers – our middle name, Lynette – I made a six-year old’s sisterly promises to her. Ms. Bell, from that day until the days just before she died, reminded me that I was her daughter’s sister. And her daughter was my sister.

I first embraced Lynette when I saw the importance Ms. Bell put on it by using it to connect two hearts in the same way that nature connected by blood. So I finally learned to spell it and pronounce it correctly. Neither of us sisters chose that name, nor did we know beforehand the significance of that name. But Lynette is like spun gold to me.

My middle name is Lynette. My sister’s middle name is Lynette.

3 Min Read, Why This Blog?

I am Regina. Some people call me Gina.

Regina Lynette

We don’t get to choose our own names. We are born into families – the consequences of our ancestors’ choices – without consent. We’re called blessings, mistakes or “oops babies”, miracles, and pleasant surprises, the result of the choices that led to our conception. But we wear these labels and responsibilities when we aren’t even there to participate in the choices that led to our conception. And we don’t even get to choose our own names.

My parents named me Regina Lynette Walker. Walker is my paternal surname. Regina was selected because it sounded elegant and Mommy wanted me to be elegant as well. I don’t know the story of why Lynette was chosen – for much of my early life I didn’t have much interest in Lynette. I was told that if I was a boy, I would have been Kenneth. From the beginning I was called Gina. I loved the name Gina. And my heart was broken, seriously, when I was forced to use Regina for school.

Let me tell you how serious I was about Gina vs Regina. When I turned five and would be starting Kindergarten, Mommy required everyone outside of the family to call me Regina and for my daycare center to make me practice writing my name, Regina. I would always test the limits when told to write my name on papers, writing Gina as if Regina just never happened. And when I was corrected, forced to write my full first name, I would add the “Re” far on the other side of the paper in a different crayon color. I was serious about passively expressing my disdain.

I loved what teachers did with “Gina” on my art papers in daycare, writing my name in cursive at the top of brightly colored and painted creations. I thought it was beautiful enough to be a part of the work of art I’d created. And I would beg them to write my name on my papers, that is, before they were required to use Regina. I could write that mess myself – I was a precocious child so I think that was the exact thought I had.

Why did I love the name, Gina, so? It wasn’t my choice so I spent no energy in creating the name. But I can tell you that I still hold it dear. If you are not a loved-one (family) or close-one (friends and friends of family) then I know that you were told my name is Regina. And when you take it upon yourself to call me Gina, the hairs on my neck stand on end and an icy chill ripples down my spine. I used to correct people, but that has brought on endless drama. Because that chill down my spine only lasts a few seconds, I try to roll with it.

One day after a melodramatic display of rending my garments while weeping and wailing over having to write Regina on a paper in my coloring book (melodrama was for Daddy, passive aggressive for Mommy), Daddy showed me what my name meant in a dictionary. I read something akin to the following – “The name Regina means Queen and is of Latin origin.” Queen. I was like so let me get this straight – when you call me Regina, basically and essentially you are calling me a queen. Oh, I like that, and I will get used to that! From then on, I wore Regina like a diamond tiara. When people had trouble pronouncing it, I raised an eyebrow haughtily, squared my shoulders, and lifted my chin to enunciate my name with precision, clarity and honor. When people had trouble spelling my name, I would snap it off my tongue with the crispness of biting into a granny smith apple and then spell it in syllables and in rhythm “R-e/G-i/N-a”.

Why is my name so important to me? I’m not sure exactly – I didn’t even choose it so there was no time or energy investment on my part. I know that Gina is much more intimate and I’m actually disappointed when family doesn’t call me Gina – I feel like that means there is distance between us. I know that Regina is much more formal. I work with family and I am Regina at work and Gina after hours so that non-relatives don’t call me Gina assuming incorrectly that it’s what I prefer in general.

Over the years some people have taken it upon themselves to improve upon my name or to use something more familiar of their own choosing. I have taken great offense at Gi-Gi, and I refuse it by any means necessary. I tolerated Regine/Rayjean/Rajean (yes, those are all the spellings I saw on greeting cards and notes) because of the character on Living Single whose given name was Regina but chose to be Régine instead. And then they had the nerve to shorten this misnomer to Jean. For these people, I would like to know who are you to think you should change my name from the one my parents spent months deciding on and with confidence, documented it once I was born? *There is one exception to this rule and he knows what he can call me and he knows who he is.

My name is Regina. And some people call me Gina.

3 Min Read, Why This Blog?

Then, Vulnerability. Now, Identity.

Regina Lynette

Roughly 13 years ago, I thought I was having general chit-chat with someone I was assisting with some clerical and logistic details of a presentation. He was someone I had heard about but only just met, and it turned into a mini-counseling session. I hated that – no one wants to find out they were dumping their issues on someone they just met.

It was bittersweet because he has a gift of counseling so not only was that something that he would do with anyone who has so many issues that they spill all out of your baggage, but he was good at it – hearing it, recognizing it, encouraging it, and coaxing it. He said one sentence that would change the trajectory of the following nine years of my life.

It was so simple and so obvious, but I needed to hear it and to hear it from him and to hear it on that day at that time. He said that I was comfortable with other people’s vulnerabilities – almost a safe space for them – but that I was uncomfortable with my own vulnerabilities and didn’t trust anyone with them. I mean, that’s not exactly profound in and of itself and it makes a lot of sense and could have easily just been a statement I acknowledged as an accurate observation. But for the season I was embarking on, it was a seed that landed on fertile ground. And for nine years I nurtured it, and it blossomed, and it gave me a bountiful harvest. I wrote all about it HERE.

Roughly six weeks ago, I was in a formal talk-therapy session and though we’d discussed this on some level for the last three years, she gave me a word – a seed falling on fertile ground. Identity. And just as I did with the word Vulnerability, I will explore Identity in a public way via this blog. And hopefully I will better manage the changes in my relationships and friendships that comes with this decision. I’ll continue to use literary license where necessary to protect the innocent, so to speak.

So, let’s just jump right in. As of today, I self-identify on social media with the following.

  • Sagittarius – Sagittarius is a sign of the zodiac that represents people born between November 23rd and December 21st.
  • Xennial – A micro-generation of people on the cusp of the Generation X and Millennial demographic cohorts, typically born in the late 1970s to early 1980s.
  • Sapiosexual – A person who finds intelligence sexually attractive or arousing.
  • Wounded Healer – A person who is compelled to help others because the person him/herself is “wounded.”
  • Tsundoku Sensei – A master at collecting unread books.
  • Printrovert – One who prefers the company of books to that of people.
  • Imperfectly – I have an Etsy shop selling prayer beads that I make without correcting imperfections.

That’s the easy part because I have already shared that with the general public. This information is like my music collection, books on my shelves, and the figurines I collect – conversation starters for anyone who I’ve allowed to enter my space.

So I guess, bienvenue dans ma vie!