Anatomy of a name

My pseudonym.  The name I chose for myself, cobbled together over the years from significant events and moments from my life.

The last shall be first: Diaz DeLeon was the last name alias I used when I was 19 and seeking services from a local street youth service center to help some “friends” out.  I was portraying a girl, five years younger than my actual age, who was the younger sister of a young man that the real me had a severe crush on.  It’s been 24 years, but I remember using that as the last name.  Maybe it was his legal last name and he had id and I was just playing his tag along little sister.  Maybe not.  I use it now as part of my chosen pseudonym partially as a reminder of how far I’ve come and partially because there’s something about it that feels like it belongs to me.

Where does Kina come from? Kina is an abbreviation of two different names/concepts. The only geographic place I have ever felt I was home, was when I stayed on the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i several years ago. At that time, I was in a period of spiritual seeking and growth and I chose the Hawaiian name Pilialohaiokina, merging two names to form the meaning, Beloved [seeker whom] God will develop. It is also part of Shekinah, the manifestation and majesty of God’s Divine presence and serves to remind me that I am loved, being grown, and continually surrounded by God’s presence.

The person behind the name

Mother, daughter, niece, cousin, sister, friend, neighbor are all roles I have in my current life.  The assumptions, expectations, and realities of each of these combine and conflict within me, contributing to who I am and defining the outline of who I think I should be.

My body and my mind have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and depression, creating further tension between who I aspired and desired to be and the limitations of who I’ve been.  Insomnia, chronic pain, mind-numbing fatigue, interspersed with and exacerbated by the emotional numbness and apathy of dysthemic depression, that regularly dips into hopelessness and despair.  The doubt, derision, and debilitating negative perceptions of who I am and who I’ve been are how I have defined myself the majority of my life.

However, I know there are good things about me and that I am capable of being more than the things which have limited me. I just read a  post by a pastor of mine and this jumped out at me, “If you can’t let go of what you have now, you can’t move forward toward what you could have.”  This is me, learning to let go of all the negative burdens of self-misconception, so that I can move into what is possible for me to have in self-realization.

Disclosures, Factoids and Tidbits

Broken

A picture of sin

Your latter will be greater

Being honest with myself: Chaos, Crisis, Codependency, and Compulsive Overeating

The me I used to be

Changing your fate: Conflict and relationships

Throwing myself a party

Six Word Friday

Mommy Needs a Time out (part 1)

An Award for Blogging?

I don’t want the world to see

Six Word Friday: Found in July

F.O.U.N.D. in July: Six Word Fridays

Liebster Blog Award

2012 Awards Season: Sunshine Blog Award