Category: Why This Blog?

5 Min Read, Donna Maria Thomas-Walker, My Body, Parenting, Smart and Pretty, Why This Blog?

I absolutely hate having my photograph taken.

Regina Lynette

When I decided to explore my identity publicly via this blog I decided to include a photograph of myself with each post. This makes me extremely uncomfortable but I thought it was an important part of my identity – the entire topic of the blog. And I believed it would be a way to become more comfortable with my appearance and photographs.

I didn’t always hate having my picture taken. When I was a kid I photo-bombed as much as possible before it was a thing. I can remember actually crying real tears when Mommy was taking pictures of someone outside in the backyard and wouldn’t take one of me. She had one shot left on the roll of film when she finished and allowed me to pose. Did she save me the last one? Was it by chance? All of that is irrelevant because I loved the photo in my sundress, arms up and out (which seems to be my favorite pose, even now).

Above: Some of my favorite photo bombs – back when you didn’t know what you had for weeks while you waited for your film to be developed. My height worked against me but I still tried to get in there.

Below: I managed to dry those tears real quick, throw my hands in the air and work the camera.

Mommy’s insistence that I smile a certain way and pose a certain way grew old. School photos became a source of mild anxiety. If my hair was not the same as it was when I left the house that morning she didn’t understand why my teachers didn’t fix it. If I didn’t smile quite right she didn’t understand why I made that face. If flaws were shown – snaggle teeth or squinty eyes – she told me what I needed to do to correct or hide them. It sounds horrible, and it felt that way, but I do understand fully what she was trying to do. You had one shot to get a beautiful picture when using film and she believed I was beautiful. She just wanted the camera to capture what she saw.

Then as I gained weight and became a fat woman, I hated documenting that in pictures. And when I lost weight I still saw that fat woman in photographs and that was usually the end of whatever diet I was trying because why work hard if I couldn’t achieve what I wanted. And today I hate to wear makeup having struggled with acne since I’m 9, contact lenses mostly because pollen and an astigmatism, and anything other than destructed denim and graphic tees for comfort. I wear sneakers everyday and fight to cover my fast-growing gray hair that cruelly started along my hairline, impossible to disguise. I don’t like taking pictures, but I take them for one reason only – family memories. Mommy reached a point in life where she hated having her picture taken, too, and we regret not having enough photos of her to show people documentation of our memories. I know that photos are your source of remembering life events and that it’s important to have them no matter what you look like at the time.

After seeing this photo, I was literally disgusted at the sight of myself. But I didn’t demand a re-take because we were making travel memories (a family member is the blurred and deleted image beside me). And no re-takes were going to make me look smaller. And I was already convinced I could never look better.

I hope to stop avoiding the camera during this phase of peeling back the layers to expose my true self. I hope that I can ignore whatever I consider flawed and begin to embrace the things that are the charm of me. And I hope that I can look back on photos and remember the joy of celebrations, the enlightenment of travels, and the love among loved ones and close ones. For now, the way that I am working on that is by posting as many photographs as I can find and take of myself (click here for the gallery updated often) while I talk about who I truly am as a whole person. It won’t be me in every post but I’ll make a significant appearance.

10 Min Read, Why This Blog?

I am Regina Lynette. I was listening. Now I’m speaking.

Regina Lynette

I remember knowing about MySpace without fully understanding it. The next thing I recall hearing about was Facebook. And by the time I’d heard about Twitter, I’d fully judged social media as an avenue for the self-absorbed, self-centered, egocentric, pretentious, and self-important to make their presence known. I would think of it as digging through the garbage cans of people’s lives, or as feeding the desperate attention-grabbing attempts of the vapid members of society. When I judge, I go hard in the paint.

Years ago, I was asked at work about my opinions on how we should use Facebook or Twitter for professional updates and I couldn’t offer any insight because I had no experience. This person, both my superior and my elder, was visibly stunned and asked me, “How old are you?” Immediately – literally, immediately – I opened a few accounts. I still had absolutely no interest in social media, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to contribute during strategy meetings and be marketable for any other opportunities.

Essentially, I’d bought the idea that social media promotes speaking at the cost of listening. I didn’t articulate it in that way until after watching Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, Season/Series One, Episode 9: Social Media Is a Great Way to Connect. That concept struck me and stuck with me for quite a while after the episode aired. Not only did it give me a concise way of articulating how I felt, but it also gave me food for thought as I was designing and creating this blog.

When I decided to disallow comments on my posts in this blog – speaking, perhaps at the cost of listening – it felt true to the purpose of the blog. When I began blogging about Vulnerability, everything was wide open and I got what y’all give – criticism and compliments. And in trusting y’all with my vulnerabilities (the whole point of that journey) I had to take the criticism and the compliments. No, I chose to take the criticism and the compliments. Now that I am blogging about Identity, the whole point is to strip off other people’s labels so I can bask in glory of who I am. So comments are disabled because for over 40 years y’all have been speaking and I have been listening.

The idea of exploring Identity in general, my identity in particular, online feels self-absorbed, self-centered, egocentric, pretentious, and self-important. This blog, this personal journey, is indeed self-absorbed, self-centered, and self-important because I have unilaterally decided that you should know certain intimate things about me as I know and grow to learn about myself. It’s egocentric, and it’s pretentious because, well, who cares about who I am? And the focus of all of it is telling you who I am. No argument there. That is speaking without listening.

Before deciding to write this blog I had been listening to people ask me “why” and “how” about my motivation and drive in certain aspects of my philosophies of life. I’ve been asked in so many words how I manage the cards I’ve been dealt. When I respond, much of what I say calls to question the aspects of my identity. In order to write this blog, when I write I have to decide that I am not speaking at the cost of listening because I listened first and am speaking now. Maybe that’s the right answer. Maybe that’s the wrong answer. I will accept the responsibility of my words, continue to consider what these words mean, and accept the consequences of my words.

I am Regina Lynette. I was listening. Now I’m speaking.

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!