This last holiday season, I received heaps of mail for another woman. Christmas cards, packages, and other fat, cheery envelopes. This woman was clearly loved, you know? I opened all of it.

I kept the spoils.
I went wild spending the gift cards.
I endorsed every last check to myself. 

I waited for US Weekly to tell my story. “She seemed normal,” the neighbors all agreed. “She kept to herself. None of us knew we were living next door to The Postal Pirate.” 

Piracy is so badass. Alas, it is not the driving conflict in my story, nor is it the stuff of tabloid news. It is much more straightforward: There once was a woman who got divorced. Her friends and family assumed she’d drop her married name. They addressed her mail accordingly. She wondered about this. Then she probably got hungry and ate an entire tray of Rice Krispie treats. The end. 

Denise Richards will never play me on a Lifetime movie. Sally Field will never play my mom. But if she did, the film would be called, “Not Without My Full Name.”

A logical beginning for my story is April of last year. I faced a judge in family court who asked me if I would be keeping my married name after my divorce was finalized. I affirmed that I would be. The judge did not ask my reasons. In the months since, no one, in fact, has. This may be due to the fact that when asked direct, personal questions by people I love and respect, I immediately begin fanning myself and soon after faint on a Victorian chaise, only to recover hours later when someone revives me with fake news that Harry Styles has arrived. 

Nevertheless, I had hoped someone would ask me whether I would be keeping my name. Divorce is a deeply private decision made for deeply personal reasons. But a name is public-facing. We can try to avoid calling people by their first names (as I do at all dog parks and children’s sporting events when I have once again forgotten the names of the handlers and coaches even though we have introduced ourselves over nervous laughter 7 times since last Sunday) but eventually we have to use them. Names are not neutral--just ask Barack Hussein Obama--but they are important and necessary and they shape who we are. They can even help to tell our story. 
I came into the world as Kendra Colleen Stanton. I think my parents did a great job authoring my birth certificate. Each part of my name has a lovely balance of two syllables. Clap. That. Beauty. Out. 

When I married in my early twenties, I wanted to retain my maiden name somehow, while adding my husband’s surname. I did not want to hyphenate my new name. I simply wanted to orbit among other triple threat luminaries: Mary Tyler Moore. Florence Griffith Joyner. Doris Kearns Godwin. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The names of the cast of my personal Mt. Rushmore.

Then! Lo! Hark! Social Security minted me a new name. My maiden became my middle name. My last name became my married name. I became Kendra Stanton Lee. I was excited to adopt this new appellation, with hopes of one day sharing a surname with my would-be children. 

Those children materialized. They are my greatest source of joy and financial strain. I am overjoyed that I can share a name and DNA with them. Further, they are half-Asian. I am their Caucasian mother. Their last name is one of the most common in the world, but derives from proud clan origins in South Korea, from whence their paternal ancestry line hails. After forming those children in my womb from a steady diet of Little Debbie Nutty Bars for the length of several senatorial terms, I wanted an outward emblem that we were related. Sharing this last name, even though I am no longer married to their father, means a great deal to me. 

Further, I have published all of my professional work under Kendra Stanton Lee. I own the web domain to my name, and if you think I am giving that up, you have never emptied your whole piggy bank to buy Boardwalk and Park Place in Monopoly, just because you can. This name has been a professional expression, a byline by which my work identifies me. Additionally, as my full-time hustle is as a teacher, this name connects me to hundreds of current and former students, who now send me LinkedIn requests from all over the world. My students have affectionately shortened my name to “Ms. SL” or sometimes just “SL.” When you become an acronym, you garner street cred. Like my Monopoly real estate, I am not giving that up.  

So it is with a certain bristling that I have received mail where the kindest of friends and family lopped off my last name. I trust they had the best of intentions; they wanted to honor the major life change I had just made to my marital status. Still, I wish that they had asked me, even if it felt a touch awkward or invasive. A simple, “Will you be changing your name now that you are divorced? I just want to know how to address this distribution from your trust fund” would have meant the world to me.

Perhaps this is on me. Maybe I should have issued a royal decree or at least an Instagram post to my loyal fandom to announce this intention to keep my name. In the meantime, I’ll keep cashing those checks for that other woman. Keep the lovemail flowing, fam.