Call me by my name...
Anne. Anna. Hānā. Ananda...
I walked through the airport arrival doors and there standing to greet me was my mother and her mother, my grandmother.
I was home.
With my three very full suitcases in tow, it was a relief to see my family ready to receive me.
Ready to support me.
My mom ran ahead of the eager groupings of people, all awaiting their loved ones, and pulled me in for a hug.
My body softened into hers.
“You are home,” she breathed into my ear.
I was home.
My grandmother came over next and we had our usual kind yet slightly awkward greeting.
It has taken a lot for us three to be here.
And I do not take it lightly that they were both at the airport ready to receive me after what felt like a journey that could not be separated from them.
A journey that in many ways was, and is, so connected to my mother line.
At a biological level, I have spent time in both my mother's and my grandmother’s wombs.
Their life experiences are intimately woven into the literal fabric of my being, my bones, and my blood.
Epigenetics confirms what many of us have always felt or known—this deep, unspoken connection.
A thread, as I like to think of it. A red thread that ties me to them, a mitochondrial truth that embodies the biological reality of matrilineal inheritance.
And so, while I may carry the name of my father’s mother, Annette, and the surname of my father’s ancestors, Müller, it is in my blood and my bones, and most profoundly in my mitochondrial cells, that I carry my mother’s line—my matrilineal heritage.
I recall during my first ever shamanic training this message of ancestral connection, this understanding that whatever I choose to work through in my body, I am essentially unraveling in the bodies of seven generations before me, and seven generations to come.
Knowing this has always inspired courage in me.
A courage to keep going.
A bravery to break through my egos fears and needs for comfort or conformity.
A willingness to keep feeling, and to keep failing.
A commitment to keep treading - and sometimes crawling - a path that feels so very strange, and so very lonely at times too.
If the path ahead is clear you are probably on someone else’s…
Since the age of seventeen, I have quite literally surrendered to a path that seems infinitely un - clear.
A path that makes itself known, moment to moment.
Step by step, I await a nudge, a sign, an invitation…
Arriving home to Cape Town, after five months of being on the road, always comes with a familiar exhale of relief, tinged with a nervousness of how will I ever begin to explain what I have been “doing.”
What do I have to show for all of this meandering?
All of this “searching” as my father often snubs it.
“How was your trip?” my nanna asked innocently.
“Let’s get a coffee...” My mom responded, her maternal instinct kicking in, knowing that the answer to that question would require some warmth and some caffeine.
I wheeled my trolley over to the Woolworths cafe as the word transformational circled inside of my mouth.
I played with unraveling the word etymologically…something I love to do.
“Trans”… meaning to cross or move beyond…
And “form”… to change shape…
Hmmm, I thought, that was precisely my experience of these past five months.
A literal shape-shifting adventure.
A crossing from one form or shape into another.
“Transformational,” I responded only fifteen minutes after the initial prompt.
My nanna looked up, taking a moment to understand what I was responding to.
My mom smiled.
Somehow, with very little phone contact whilst I was abroad, other than the occasional images or meaningful quotes or questions, she knew.
I like to think that she felt the shift too.
Not only was my physical structure transformed through an accident, but my character was different, my sense of self felt different.
I felt different.
And from this place, everything around me was different.
One of the most significant changes was a change in name.
Or at least, an alteration in name.
I have always been very curious about names and the way in which they shape our experience of reality.
Words are spells right, and so of course, our very own names hold a particular kind of spell.
A kind of conjuring that occurs every time someone calls us by our names.
In my family we pass on names, I am my father’s mother’s name. My sister is my mother’s mother’s name. My brother is my father’s name, his newborn son is his name and so on…
With such proximity to relatives with the same names, you get to see the similarities, the essence of the name, and what it carries with it.
The good, and the not so good…
My late grandmother Annette was the first woman in South Africa to be chosen as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in Pretoria. She started a traveling agency and explored the world during a time when a woman, let alone a single woman, rarely traveled outside of their hometowns.
Annette was a trailblazer, as my dad liked to say.
She was stubborn and outspoken.
She was also Aries.
(of course).
Annette raised five boys and was known as a woman who stood up for herself. I recall my dad telling me about a fight she had on the farm when she stood up to her father-in-law who proceeded to assault her for attempting to cross him.
She left the farm that day, with my father in tow, another act rarely followed out by a woman of those times.
Naturally, I have always been curious about the traits of my grandmother, of my namesake.
Of Annette.
I have also, more recently, rolled around with the word in my mouth, unraveling its etymology.
Annette is of French origin.
The LeRoux’s, my ancestors on my fathers side, were French refugees (also known as Huguenots). They were some of the very first refugees to flee religious persecution in Europe.
(There is lots to say about this more recent discovery but for now, I will focus on the name).
Annette is the French diminutive for Anne, which comes from the Hebrew name Hanna which means “grace” or “favour.”
In Arabic, the word "حَنَا" (Hānā) means bliss or contentment.
And so Annette quite literally translates to little grace or little favour, but as ChatGpt says, “not as in having less grace or favour but more in a sweet affectionate tone, as if speaking to a child…”
Someone little…
Why is this significant?
When I started my solo trek through Egypt no one called me Annette.
Somehow my new Egyptian friends could not quite get it right… “You mean Ana?” they would ask.
When my first host, and now dear friend, came to collect me from the airport, he simply asked, may I call you Anne?
Anne… I thought.
For some reason, Anne always sounded quite ra ra, posh, old, and… formal.
But in that moment of being asked, my head nodded and I spontaneously agreed.
“Yes,” I blurted out.
I recall my mornings in Luxor with such sweetness, waking at the crack of dawn to the bleating goats and relentless sounds of roosters with their “cock-a-doodle-doo”.
Hassan would arrive before the sun was up with my French coffee (an Egyptian spin on Turkish coffee with a touch of milk and cardamom) for our adventures to the temples.
“Anne,” he would call from behind the red-rusted gate.
“I am here Anne…”
Hassan was committed.
He adored everything about his homelands, especially the hidden and often misinterpreted worlds and stories of ancient Egypt.
Unlike most “tour guides” Hassan revealed the secrets underneath the placards.
I was blessed to be traveling with him for his dedication meant we were the first in line at the gates and sometimes the only visitors inside the holy halls.
There is something especially different about sitting with Sekhmet, uninterrupted.
A kind of stillness and sacredness that I can only thank Hassan for.
“Anne, you can relax,” he would tell me.
“You can just be here…”
It was like he knew what I needed without me even knowing it myself.
He understood that when I left Sekhmet, after spending most of my time with her in tears, that I would need some sweet tea and a night indoors without any interruption.
He cleared the afternoon schedule without even having to ask me.
When I later had a more romantic connection with an Egyptian lover up in the Sinai, he insisted on calling me Hanna… as in “ḥanā” (imagine it being said with an almost voiceless but breathy pharyngeal “ha” - something Arabic speakers do so very beautifully).
This “Hānā" I was being referred to also landed in my body, like hhhhoney…
Like an exhale…
Like bliss…
I embraced my new names wholeheartedly - and whole-bodily - and with them, I seemed to have embraced a new self.
A new form.
It was delicious.
And spacious.
I suddenly went from being Annette with all her stories and familial histories to a totally new and rather light, and mature version of who I was.
Or who I had been.
There was no need for the diminutive.
No need for the mollycoddling.
Just like that, I could split away from a piece of myself.
With such a small shift in name, I could drop generations of hurt and fear that Annette so bravely carried with her.
A kind of armoury - or badge of honour - at least my small self thought.
There was a freshness to being called by a new name.
Almost like meeting the world anew.
It came with a lightness that was viscerally liberating.
I was Anne, divine grace.
I was Hānā, bliss, and contentment.
I was free to discover who I was, for me.
Away from the familial burden of responsibility,
Away from the confines of my own tightly held story.
A little interesting side note -
In 2019 I apprenticed on a farm in upstate New York with my very first elder and herbal teacher (AKA witch) where at the end of our journey, a group of other young witches and I were initiated into the Wise Woman Tradition of Healing.
We gathered in the wet mossy forest of the Catskill mountains witnessed by the tall standing beings (trees) and called in the directions and elementals.
A few days before the initiation ceremony we were asked to bring our new names. A name that would signify this change in form, or rather, this moment of maturing into our medicine woman archetypes.
For three days I sat desperately wondering what on Earth my new “name” would be. I was pretty attached to Annette and certainly had no other names floating about that I could imagine myself being called.
I did not even have a second name…
A few of my fellow medicine sisters had already chosen their names and others told me to just “trust,” it would come.
“Maybe ask the dreamtime,” one sister offered.
I waited and waited and still… no name.
When the day of the ceremony finally came I was a little panicked. My teacher at the time was rather frightening, as a true old school shamanic teacher would be, so I did not feel it appropriate to complain to her about my lack of a name.
I know she too would say something along the lines of … “trust, it will come.”
I remember us all excitedly getting dressed into our ceremonial outfits, robes, and colourful dresses, each piece of clothing chosen with a clear intention.
We were also asked to come with our commitments, our vows that we would share aloud, witnessed by the gods and goddesses who would protect and support us.
When it was my turn to step inside the circle, my heart was racing.
What on Earth will I call myself, I wondered…
“Trust, it will come…”
It was in that moment that I understood the art of surrender and the magic that comes when we empty our minds and offer ourselves up as a vessel.
I distinctly remember coming to a place of submission, realizing that there was nothing I could do.
If I had to, I would simply say… “I do not have a name.”
I would admit defeat.
There was no way I was going to make up a random name on the spot, and I knew my teacher would tell if I was being authentic or not.
“Annette, please enter the circle…”
Shaking in my boots, not from the chilly winds but from the realisation that this was actually happening, I walked over to our earth altar…
When prompted to call forth my name in the presence of the trees and rock beings, sky gods and goddesses, elementals, as well as my teacher’s teachers, a name flew out of me with zero hesitation, quite like that moment when I blurted out to Hassan that yes, he could call me Anne…
I stepped into the circle…
And then suddenly before I could even comprehend what was happening, a name quite literally flew out of me…
“ANANDA” I called out to the awaiting audience of living and more than living beings.
My teacher looked at me with a kind of cheeky glimmer in her eyes.
I looked back, a little startled.
The name came so clearly, and so precisely, but let me tell you I had zero connection to that name, and no idea what and who or where Ananda even came from.
My teacher seemed to know for she walked forward and nodded,
“Yes, Ananda..,” she smiled.
“Goddess of Bliss.”
Over the five years since that initiation ceremony, I have never claimed the name Ananda or even told people this story.
Somehow, I was not quite ready to meet her.
This essence.
This bliss… and grace-like….state.
I had no connection or knowledge of the Sanskrit origins of Ananda and what she represented.
All I knew was that I was not quite ready to meet her.
Not quite ready to take on this new form or identity.
(I also found the whole name-changing thing in ‘spiritual’ communities quite cringy).
Interestingly though, it was this year of 2024, for the first time in a long time, that Ananda started making her way back to me.
She first arrived in the form of a bracelet, gifted to me by a dear sister.
Later, she showed up in a book, until finally calling me forth to Bali.
There are sprinkles of her essence throughout this story, woven into an intimate encounter I had with a tantric sister, as well as my sudden obsession with reclaiming the colour pink…
It is difficult to put into words the synchronicities that continued to unfold, for they are deeply personal, yet all I can say is that Ananda - or the essence of what she symbolized - grew louder and louder.
When I found myself veering off track, treading the all-too-familiar path of the poor maiden Annette—desperate for the attention of a not-so-suited suitor
—whack!
The universe would quite literally slap me back into shape.
Interactions that lacked the essence of grace or favour were very quickly ripped out from beneath me.
I lost a lot of people this year.
I also gained a lot of me this year.
It was the year I finally stepped fully into myself and with that, stepped out of other selves — other selves and their entanglements.
A clearing took place, one that I am still busy integrating.
All I know is that these names—these spells—were determined to find me this year.
Determined to be witnessed by me.
Determined to be acknowledged by me.
Determined to be embodied by me.
And though these names have slightly different etymological origins, their shared essence of spiritual and emotional elevation, I realize now, is unmistakable.
I was being asked to elevate.
Demanded, in fact, to “make lighter.”
To break free from any remaining shackles holding me back from the bliss that is my birthright—
from the grace required to reach it.
There have been moments in my life where I have tasted a flavour of ecstasy, experienced an unbridled expression of joy - a lightness that had me almost levitating.
But somehow, in that same split second, I would be pulled back down by my story, back down by my history and my hurts, back down by an infinite list of worldly worries that I had heroically attached myself to.
I was aware of it when it happened, but I’ve never quite known—nor perhaps wanted to know—how to shake it.
A kind of addiction to the depths, to the weighted darkness, to the blanket of shame or guilt that would have me cover my brightness,
dim my lightness…
A sort of… “who are you to…”
That looping and intrusive … “you have no right to…”
Well,
Not anymore apparently.
Something in the power of Anne and Ananda and Hānā has brought me the medicine of grace.
The medicine of favour.
I will no longer be jolted out of my joy.
I will no longer be apologizing or explaining away my bliss.
I am light.
And full of fire.
I am love.
And full of peace.
This will be the year that I claim the original etymology of my name.
I will let go of holding onto my diminutive, my smallness.
And claim fully the divine grace and bliss that my soul has always known itself to be.
(Imagine a kind of drum roll here…)
So uh… what does this mean in reality?
Honestly, I have no idea.
Perhaps I will change my name, or maybe just my medicine name or acting name…
All I do know is that this year has indeed been transformational,
And for some reason that has included a change in the form of my name.
“I would like to be called Anne,” I announced to my mother and my nanna over our coffees.
My mom almost coughed up her cortado.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she laughed at me.
(Clearly not sensing my grand transformation as much as I had hoped).
“You will always be our Netty Noodle,” She winked.
Well, at least that solves the family part of my deliberation.
For the rest of the world, who knows…
For today,
I sign off as Anne.
xxx
Have a blessed end-of-year break,
I send you all my love and best wishes.
I would love to know if you too had a transformational year…
(Write back to me).
And PS,
Remember to delete Instagram from your phone over this period (it is such good medicine).
Xxx
Thank you Anne🌹 I love you