I spent most of my childhood living under a name that didn’t belong to me.
Reclaiming my real name as an adult wasn’t a glow-up moment or cute identity arc. It was a full-on reset. This is the story of my stolen name and how I took it back.
I grew up as Birgitte Theresa in Denmark, never imagining my name could be treated as negotiable, until my mother remarried an American. I was six when I learned that my name would not survive the move to the United States. There was no discussion or curiosity about what I wanted. Just this: “When we get to America, you’ll be called Theresa, shortened to Terry.”
“I was expected to adjust, adapt, and quietly disappear.”
No offense to Terrys, but I thought it was the ugliest name I’d ever heard. I cried for days.
That was my first lesson in identity trauma. Adults could rename me without hesitation, and I was supposed to fall in line. Years later, I realized the situation also brushed up against American exceptionalism, the subtle pressure to make anything unfamiliar more convenient. Easier to pronounce. Easier to accept. “Welcome to America” turned into “we’ll take it from here.”
Looking back, the whole thing feels like the kind of haunting that queer people know too well. A stolen name is just the surface-level version of a deeper pattern where families, cultures, entire systems decide who you get to be. Queer people inherit a long lineage of erasure, stories rewritten, names buried, identities ghosted. I didn’t have the language for queerness yet, but I can see now the pressure was the same. Be someone easier for others to accept. Be more convenient, more palatable, more “normal.”
As part of the name change, my stepfather adopted me. I was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. During that process, he asked if I wanted to change my middle name. Middle. Because that’s what I’d been told Birgitte was now.
The question didn’t feel optional. It felt like: You will change it, so what will you change it to? A child’s illusion of agency.
“Here’s the queer truth of it: pleaser personalities are a straight world’s tool.”
My mother was pregnant at the time and tossing around girl names, one of them Siv. I liked the sound of it—simple, sharp, Nordic. And with that small acquiescence, my birth name was rewritten. I accepted it because children survive by staying compliant, and that compliance shaped me into a pleaser, someone who made herself small, agreeable, safe. It haunted my adulthood for decades before I finally started to rebel. Here’s the queer truth of it: pleaser personalities are a straight world’s tool. They train you to disconnect from yourself, to smooth out anything inconvenient. Like names. Or identity. Or queerness.
I grew up as Terry, a name that made the world feel big, frightening, and hard to control. My stepfather’s presence terrified me. My mother felt out of reach. I was a fearful child bending myself into whatever shape kept the household quiet. And shrinking, because shrinking was safer.
When I left for college, that fear followed me until, as a freshman, I fell hard for a college professor. Talk about messy, complicated, trauma-spiked. But it gave me an unexpected door to my past when my stepfather responded to my plans to marry with fury. His big anger gesture was to send a box of documents that included my naturalization papers, birth certificate, and passport. It was his own personal “I’m washing my hands of you.”
Inside that box was the truth. My name had always been Birgitte Theresa. Not Theresa Birgitte. I hadn’t changed my middle name. I’d changed my first.
I’d been misled into giving up the part of me tied to my identity, my connection to Denmark, and the steady, uncomplicated love of my grandmother—the person who shaped me most. Maybe my step dad meant well. Maybe he thought America demanded a more “American” name. Maybe he thought he was helping.
Once I realized what had happened though, I changed my name back. I reclaimed Birgitte, not out of nostalgia or rebellion, but because it was my first truth. I stopped answering to Terry. That version of me felt like a role I was cast in without ever auditioning. Terry wasn’t me.
“You are allowed take backs. You’re allowed to be the person you want to be…”
Reclaiming my name became the first time I said, “I get to define myself.” It felt a lot like the moment I finally owned my own queer truth as an adult. Same click. Same sudden alignment.
For anyone who has lived under a name, a label, a story that was never yours I have this to say. You are allowed take backs. You’re allowed to be the person you want to be, even if you learned late who that was.
I became Birgitte again. And eventually I realized I was also queer Birgitte. The truest version of me were the ones I got to pick, not the ones I was forced into.
Crooked Craftwork:
To create identity tension in your story, give your character a world that tries to rename or reshape them, and a pleaser reflex born from childhood survival, one that teaches them to shrink, comply, and ghost their own truth, especially if they’re queer. Let that false self follow them into adulthood (or some plot-related story point) until something—documents, memory, confrontation—snaps their real identity into focus. Their reclamation moment is when they finally name themselves instead of being named. And when they do, the whole story should shift, revealing who benefits from their silence and who fears their return to themselves. Lean into how that drives the story arc, and your character’s healing journey.
In the end, identity reclamation is what ties the character’s inner healing to the story’s forward motion. Just like it does for you.