Saturday, February 21, 2009

What's In A Name

My entrance into this world was a bit more dramatic than I would have wanted. I was sitting breach in my mother's womb and the situation had become critical. The doctors felt one of us was not going to make it, so a priest was called in. Everything turned out O.K. but while all this was happening, a Ukrainian catholic priest was asked to name me. My birth certificate showed ... Euhenia Odarka.

This whole story has haunted me my whole life. I always felt I needed to do something larger than life ... that I owed my mother for all the grief I gave her at birth as well also to God for saving my life and the priest for naming me. Well it all backfired a bit, because being catholic, the guilt is awful. I could never live up to the name and felt alienated by it. At 18 I changed it to Daria.

3 comments:

  1. Daria,
    Its not a name that makes a person, but the character of which the person choses to carry in themselves. I believe you have a strength in you and that strength contributes to the lives of those around in a way that is deep and profound. Judging by what little I've read here since I'm a new follower,your life is probably changing others in ways you hadn't thought of before.

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  2. Well Daria I to had a different name from my birth mother...Dolores Elaine....and then Loretta Joan...
    But if you have being going back on my journal you would have read that story.
    I was curious how you happened on to it.

    Blessings,

    Lori

    PS hoping to get to know each other better...

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