Glory, a Name

This next poem is a classic 5 - 7 -5. This is Day 3 of “30 for 30 Decolonization through Poetry” from the Center for Babaylan Studies. Prompt is simple, “Write your name story.” Here it is:

thought Luwalhati
pronunciation foreign
Jessica Christine

©Jessica C Strom, 4.3.2020

The background watercolor portrait of me was by my cousin Adrian, one of his first watercolors when we were in secondary school based off of photo taken by him during a middle-school field trip to caves.

Elaborating on this Haiku

Luwalhati, was a name that my father considered naming me, a traditional Pilipinx name that translates to “glory”, with peaceful connotations . My mother was concerned that with a tricky last name for most American folx at the time—“del Rosario”—that a combo of two tricky names would make it harder for me to adjust to this new country with spelling it and correcting others. Eventually, it was decided that I would have the name Jessica Christine, which makes my name effectively Jesus Christ of the Rosary when it is translated from feminine to masculine and from Spanish to English. My father was cognizant of this, and is partially a reflection of the strength of Catholicism in the Philippines, a lasting legacy of Spanish colonization. Jessica is also a pretty common name in America—lest we forget that I am also American after all. While I would have loved the name Luwalhati, I have always loved my given name. I am proud of a maiden name that represents me, my family, my ancestors, and a rich, complicated, simultaneously beautiful and painful history. There is a sense of glory I feel for myself and all my ancestors when I think of my journey. My acts of not settling for the status quo, that seem “rebellious” are an act of self-preservation, self-actualization, and a part of my re-claiming of old ways, the first ways that reside deep in my bones. I’m starting to listen. I’ve heeded the ancestors that come to me in dreams and visions, a spirituality that was first cultivated through Catholicism. I believe in both, my own kind of religion and breed of spirituality that respects the old and mixes it with the new. Despite Luwalhati not being my given name, it is still a part of me. She has found her glory as the name of a character I play in one of the homebrew games of Dungeons & Dragons that my husband runs. Luwalhati, me, is an elf druid who is part of the Circle of the Moon.

My last name is now Strom, which I chose to take when we got married. To me, taking his last name is my way of forming our “new” family clan. This doesn’t erase the del Rosario from me in any way. Instead, I continue to grow, expand, re-member. Strom comes from the part of my husband’s ancestry that is Swedish, which translates to “stream” or “flow” in English (hence our website name ☻). He is an ecologist, with parents with professions as landscape architects. What an apropos last name for people who remain connected to the land, to our earth. He is also part Irish, and I see the history and attempted magic-suppression within him from a similar history of colonization. There is an unspoken camaraderie there as we lament the generational effects of colonization and a broken capitalistic patriarchal society together.

I take this name as I move forward on my journey to re-member, to cultivate my gifts as a priestess, a Katalonan, a Babaylan. I am not “changing”, but re-membering. My knowledge, connection to the earth continues to deepen as I study as a Sacred Warrior Apprentice, a student of the plants. These practices of healing, re-membering, re-wilding and learning from nature will support me as move forward in my life and career, to birth creations, ideas, hopes, and foster healing for myself and others.

Ingat. Hasta sa liwat.
Take Care. Until Next Time.

Jessica