The Importance of Being Gina

One of my first blog posts I wrote was about my name. So my family's always called me by my middle name, Rochelle but since elementary school I've been Gina everywhere else. To confuse matters more I took the name to college met my husband and went from Rochelle Cannon to Gina Steed. I've been Gina Steed for quite some time now and many people know me by no other name. With each move and transition in my life I consider how I might fix the problem, change the name with a fresh crowd. When we moved to Texas the only people we knew were my SIL's family and being a family connection they knew me by Rochelle and introduced me at Jamie's work as Rochelle. So when the ward showed up to help us unpack we decided on a whim to introduce me as Rochelle. Oddly enough there's another Rachelle in the ward and she's got quintuplets so everyone knows her and her kids are my kids ages (by the way there's also another 5-yr-old Weston and a couple Jamesons in the ward but no Emmas- weird huh?). Then our records arrive at church and they ask me to say the prayer in sacrament and they put me in the program as Gina, the name on my records. Then the ward's like, "who are you?" and I'm like "I don't know!" And I try to send e-mails to Texas people through my gina account and I sign papers Gina but tell people I'm Rochelle (because all legal stuff and bank accounts are under Gina). I'm living a lie! It's like I'm in the witness protection program but I'm really lousy at covering my bases. So I guess it's time to pack up and move to another state (just kidding Angie).