I’ve come to a momentous decision, and it’s been growing in me a long time, since I read ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ a few years ago. Having changed my name once already, I know it’s a big deal, and I apologize in advance for the inconvenience (and it is inconvenient) to my friends and beloveds.
Still, I’ve been Phoenix for a long time now, and there’s a limit to how long anyone can be comfortable as a Phoenix. It’s a turbulent path! Sooner or later, I have to just, well, Bee.
My birth name, Debra, means ‘The Bee’. I’ve always loved that, about as much as I disliked the name itself. Not that it’s a bad name, it’s a fine name! I like it fine on other Debras and Debbies I know. But it happened to be the commonest name for girls in my age group; it felt like a generic name, a non-identifier.
Once, when I was a shy new bush kid in town, a kid yelled across the street at a group of girls I happened to be standing near, “Hey Debbie!” Nobody answered, and after he called again several times, I dared to imagine he might mean, gasp, ME… and he was cute, and I hoped… so I tremulously answered, “What?”
Well, he fell down laughing, gasping, to the mass hilarity of his audience, “I knew it, I knew there’d be a Debbie, there’s one in every crowd!”
Please believe when I say that was a ‘please kill me now’ moment! Ever since, I knew I must eventually find a way to change my name. I couldn’t find one that worked, though; then back in the winter of 87, my buddy Sir said, “I have the perfect name for you! You’re Phoenix!”
And I said, “Phoenix? That’s not a name!” But Sir is a wise woman, yes indeed. I couldn’t forget the damn thing.
I happened to be moving to a little Gulf Island where everybody seemed to have odd names. I decided I’d just try it on, just in case, you know. And nobody laughed or acted surprised even when I introduced myself (except a guy who said, “Phoenix? Isn’t that an awfully strong name for a woman?”). Then after a month I had a dream in which somebody called me Phoenix and it just stuck.
It’s time for now for me to let go of the Phoenix phase of my life and move into a Bee phase. I like its simplicity, I love what it says. The bee is a singer (buzz buzz), a dancer (they dance to show the hive where to find the pollen), an explorer in service to its folk, and those are all things I both am and aspire to become more of.
I am also taking out the hyphen in my last name and including Wolf as a middle name. I will be Bee Wolf Ray, or Bee Ray, or Bee W. Ray. Wolf honours my motherline (it’s my mother’s birth name), while Ray is the surname I was born with and the one I still feel most at home in.
Thanks for understanding, y’all… this is a stretch for me, despite having done it once before (I was much younger then! And I no longer live on that little Island! And people don’t even give their kids weird names there anymore! And I’ve changed my name once already, how many times in one life does a person need to change her name?).
I don’t anticipate needing to do it again. This fits very comfortably and gives me lot of room to grow. I’ll take my time with things like changing business related stuff like brochures & advertising, if I do so at all. I may just keep Phoenix as a business identity, it’s a familiar brand locally because of my horoscope column in the Word. And because of this domain name! I can still be found, and I will still answer to Phoenix and Phee for those who find change difficult (this means you, Mom 
).
But me, as a person, I’m going to just Bee.
With love,
Bee Wolf Ray