We collect so many monikers from so many people over the years, but do any of our accrued titles actually reflect our true self?
April 2026
My name is Gwenetta Brooks. My birth certificate says Gwenetta Marshall. My family and childhood friends call me Gwen. My relatives in Alabama call me “David’s Gwen,” referring to my father. Many people who’ve seen me perform call me “that girl who sings.” At my college, many of my young classmates would call me “Miss G.” For 12 years, to all my co-workers, and on the nameplate on my desk, I was “G. Brooks.”
When I wrote for a small Black-owned newspaper in Michigan, the name at the end of my articles was “G. Marshall-Brooks,” just as it is here with The Reporters Inc. One of my closest friends calls me “Netta.” When my adult daughter is upset with me, she calls me “Motherrrrrrrr.” And my 48-year-old son, who has never lived south of Michigan, lovingly calls me “Madear.”
My ex-husband used to call me “Wife.” At church, all the youth called me “Auntie G.” My 25 nieces and nephews call me “Tee-tee.” And all six of my grandchildren call me “Nana.”
However, I once read that it’s not what you’re called, but what you answer to, that’s important.
Now, although I’ve answered to each and every one of those names, not one of them tells you anything about who I really am. Because who I am is the composite of my many parts and experiences.
Those names don’t tell you about a little girl too smart for her own good. Who, unfortunately, no one had bothered to tell that adults don’t like being corrected by children.
Those names don’t tell you about being yanked away from almost everything that represented home at the age of 10, with about 15 minutes notice. You see, no one had bothered to tell the youngest child of the family (who, by the way, had six siblings), that she was moving to a new city, new school, new neighborhood, with new rules pertaining to a new life, until the day the family moved. No one ever taught her how to deal with the pain of change. She was much too young. And she still cringes when life throws her a sudden detour.
Not one of those names tell about the death of her father two weeks before her 15th birthday. They don’t tell how they shared the same birthday and that the hole in her heart never did quite close. Or, how 50 years later, she’s still afraid that every man will leave her without warning. And those names don’t tell how she blamed God for her hurt and actually tried to punish Him by turning away.
None of those names speak of the girl who was raped at her best friend’s house, while that whole family listened and did nothing to help her. She had no idea that “friendship” was not a word to use for people you know, but for people who care about you.
And then, the names don’t tell how many times she was used and abused, by those who did claim to care about her.
There’s not even a hint from any one of those names about her estrangement from her mother and siblings. Or the feeling of being an orphan even though you actually do have family. They just never call, or write, or acknowledge you in any way. Ever.
Or that she still feels lonely in a crowd.
Those names don’t tell about a broken marriage or raising two children alone. They say nothing about an ex-husband who was emotionally unavailable and cheated on the regular. They don’t tell about the loneliness of a loveless marriage, or how hard it is to work at a marriage all by yourself.
Not one word about the total lack of intimacy and the hungers that grew out of it. Nor how that hunger can lead to so many men who only took what she mistakenly gave, before she found out that sex was just her “drug of choice.”
Not one name tells how she thought switching to alcohol would be a ‘better” choice. They don’t describe the physical abuse she received from one of her so-called “lovers.” And none tells of the loss of her third child, who she didn’t want, but carries the guilt for anyway.
No, the names a woman is called never tell you who she is or where she has been. The ups, downs, twists and turns of her life that shape her personality aren’t revealed in what “you” call her or even what she calls herself. Because we are all just as good at hiding from ourselves as we are at hiding from others.
And no, the names I’ve answered to won’t tell you how difficult the road to healing has been. Or all the dead end streets I had to travel down in order to find my way back. Back to where, you say? Back to the real me.
Back to the person I choose to be after the mist clears and the dross settles.
You see, no matter what you call me or who people think I am, I get to choose who I will be and how I live. I get to choose how I’m defined and what tenets I will live my life by.
The bottom line is that after all is said and done I am a child of God and He has guaranteed me free choice.
So…
Hello, my name is Gwenetta. What’s yours?
G. Marshall Brooks can be reached at msgrmb@yahoo.com. She also writes the recurring Reporters Inc. column, “Life in the Key of G.”
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G. Marshall-Brooks is the author of “Life in the Key of G.”
