Yes. I did that. I tried out “Amanda Content” and I had business cards that said “Content Content” because I loved the double entendre. It truly makes me grimace now. However, the need to separate myself from the past came on more quickly and strongly than I expected as my wasband and I grew more distant, and anger was roused easily. Suddenly in the midst of creating this brand, I found myself in the process of getting a divorce and wanting to make sure my children understood that I identified the last name “Conti” with them, that they were my family and that I would keep it for a feeling of consistency. This is something my mother did when she left my father, and I had really appreciated being the cause of her last name. As bad as it had been, I could not deny its gifts.
My family of origin, of course, encouraged me to return to “Morris,” the argument being that I would never have to change my name again and of course that “Morris” should identify me. It came up often that first year of freedom to the point of feeling a bit like badgering. I can’t say why I didn't do that except a general feeling that after all I had been through in life, and how far I had gone and come back again on my own, I felt I’d outgrown the name of my youth. Still, the name stayed on the table as I drifted through my Argentine Tango phase, my many initiations in Freemasonry, and falling in love again.
Then I got married for a second time! My name could be “Amanda Morris Johnson,” and all of the past could be erased in a moment, I thought. I changed it publicly so that I would be known by that name from then on, but somehow I never made it over to the Social Security offices. My name legally remained “Amanda Conti” and does to this day. It began because I wasn't at all sure how my kids would adjust to me being in a committed relationship with someone other than their father. (They’re doing really well with it, incidentally.)
It carried on, I believe, because the symptoms of my brain tumor started to take over my life in terms of energy for the simplest things. I became a split name, unsure of how to sign anything, how to answer the phone, how to send out messages. In one world, my friends, I was definitely known as Amanda Morris Johnson. But on paperwork, by the U.S. Post Office, by the document, the bank accounts, the health insurance cards, I was still Amanda Conti. Talk about disassociation from a name! All this to say, it is not like I never felt a fear about changing my name.
The next level of name changing that I entered, as I coped with my new life, was how to blend my family’s names into a new surname. I had seen this way of naming work really well for couples that stay together, and also for little babies whose parents did not marry each other (either because of it being against the law, or because that was their philosophy) For several years I considered “Mojo” the obvious choice for a last name. It made me laugh with delight. My kids threatened to ban me from all public situations if I actually went with it. I thought it fit my writing a Tarot book and other magical tomes really well. They swore it made me sound like a naughty woman with huge boobs from an “Austin Powers” movie, not that I’m not. Wink. My husband related it to liberal media. Har. We had great commutes to and from school laughing about the potential reaction to “Amanda Mojo,” and, when I was drinking coffee, it often had to include two letters from my kids’ last name to become “Mocojo!” Nevertheless things on the name front really did not budge at all, nor did it land.
