It’s in the Name
(8mins)
Born into this world Kelli, I chose to change how I wanted to be called during the summer of 2020. It wasn’t immediate, as I hadn’t seriously considered not using my birth name. However, because of the ample amount of time I would end up spending with myself during COVID, I started to do some digging into who I was.
I ran two barbershops in Seattle’s Pioneer Square from 2018 up until COVID shut us down. Clean Cut I purchased, and the other was my dream come to life, Andro (Everyone’s Barbershop). It was created specifically for queer folx and Black women. My schedule was booked out by at least 3 weeks during this time, and I was moving right on track with my life’s goal of working less while earning more. It was late February when my clients began to show up late, cancel, and delete their previously scheduled appointments that were in the books.
Clean Cut appprox 50yrs old. Andro was just beginning. 2018
On Friday, March 6, 2020, I was driving bare streets to work and realized what was happening. As I approached the parking garage, I knew that whatever was coming would change everyone’s life in unimaginable ways, ready or not. My shops sat on James & 7th, a major hill and familiar intersection of great restaurants and the majority of the city’s government buildings. Major colleges were closing, and Amazon, as well as Microsoft, was pulling their employees in from other countries. These patrons, employees, and officials were my clients, and these clients were now at home. The busy streets of downtown Seattle had become a ghost town.
Just before getting out of my car that day, I heard a voice in the back of my head say, “This is it. This is a clean slate. What would you be doing if you didn’t have to go to work? In what ways would you be choosing you differently?” This single moment was enough for me. That evening I got home from work and drafted an email to the hundreds of patrons that Andro had the pleasure of serving. I began the draft, “I will be leaving the shop.”
On Tuesday, March 10, 2020, Seattle was officially on lock-down. I’d collected the last payment I would receive for a very long time, and I was in for an exceedingly rude awakening.
Local artists, Zahyr Lauren and Aramis Hamer paint a masterpiece for Andro’s final visit. 2020
When I started at Clean Cut, I was working 6 days a week, taking Sundays off. After 2 years, I’d gotten myself down to Wednesday through Friday, but the Monday and Tuesday still registered as workdays in my mind and body. I was overwhelmed with just how dysregulating it felt to not have a universal Monday through Friday sense of responsibility. The days no longer mattered. Still, on the inside I was tracking my progress in life by the activities of the week and how busy I would/could be during those 5 days. Life had raised me to believe that the weekend was mine, but I had to move like I had something to prove during those other days. This was the first construct that I struggled to deconstruct and process for myself. I was being challenged to think bigger and accept the fact that I had been very shortsighted about life’s possibilities.
From March well into July, I found out that I had so much to learn and unlearn about myself and what felt authentic to me. What once felt secure was completely disrupted, and I was forced to begin asking myself some real questions. Questions about who I really was and what was I doing with myself. I’d been checking off boxes for so long that the world had to stop in order for me to check in on myself and pay attention for a moment. What was I missing while giving so much attention to making money and things outside of myself? I had no idea. I had never taken the time to be as curious about myself as I was about people and things around me. I started paying attention.
The first place I gave attention to was my body. I’d been carrying around a Mirena IUD for about ten years. I hadn't had any major issues with it, but I wanted my body back. I wanted full function without any additional hormonal help inside of me. This was step one to getting full understanding of myself. I made a doctor’s appointment.
One new nervous doctor and several appointments later, I find out that I have two ovarian cysts and a pedunculated fibroid. It was a little smaller than a grapefruit and bobbing around my insides. As I contemplated surgery, I went home and researched holistic help in the meantime.
Queen Afua’s Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind, and Spirit
My research lead me to ordering a book by Queen Afua called Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind, and Spirit. I didn’t get very far into the book, and It wasn’t that I didn’t like it or that I didn’t understand it. Ultimately, I was making my way through the text and felt surprisingly inspired. However, there was a step that spoke of renaming one’s self, and this is where I found myself stuck. I closed the book and stared blankly at my closed closet door. My first thought: “What are people going to think?” I’d shaved my hair, which wasn’t completely unusual, but timing - right. There was also the part where I was already being mistaken for being a trans person because I’d chosen to grow my beard and stopped shaving two years prior. And honestly, I probably could’ve taken it all in stride had I not spent the bulk of my life being mistaken for someone I wasn’t. Not seen. I didn’t want to feel like I had to prove or defend myself to anyone, simply because I was doing something that felt right for me. I was already way too stressed.
As I went to bed that night, I figured that if I was getting a new name, it would come to me.
Superior! This was a name that came to me during a season of heavy isolation, meditation and prayer during the winter of 2012. Even back then, I shook it off and kept it to myself. When the name came to me, it was with the understanding that Superior referred to my best version. My best version of Kelli was Superior, and this version of me was more of myself than who I had been presenting for the past 40 years. My problem was that I knew how, “Hi, call me Superior!”, would and could sound to people. Those were looks and conversations I didn’t want to have. I wasn't there yet.
So here I was facing myself again, in the infamous year of 2020. As I set out to work on my health, I’m lead to take on a new name. I lay back in bed and, “Superior”, comes through repeatedly. I’m not surprised. It’s been tucked away for almost a decade at this point and this name seems to be sticking around. Just before waking up fully, I hear this voice in the middle space. This is what I call that space where you’re conscious but not completely awake or alert; your eyes are still closed, but you can hear your surroundings. I am alone, and clear as day I hear “Swahili!”
I pull out my phone to open Google, and now I’m searching for the Swahili version of Superior. My search returns with mkuu. I say it aloud to myself, trying it on, searching mkuu separately. It is a noun, and it means chief, head, leader, great one or elder. I sat with it for a day, and 24 hours later I wasn’t really feeling it. I searched one more time, a little deeper, and what stuck this time was that first of all, I should be saying Kiswahili, and superior as an adjective in Kiswahili is iliyo bora zaidi. This was it. I’d found it, and it found me.
Iliyo bora zaidi in Kiswahili translates to, the best more. It was the word more, that caught my attention. In 2014 I opened my first business as a life coach, BeThe Light. The elevator pitch I came up with during that time was “…helping people find out what their more is.” I had no further searching to do. This was it. I needed to figure out if I was going to take on all three of these words or try on each one individually. How would I choose to introduce myself? Was I ready for this change? Who would I tell first? And then I took the leap.
“Hi, my name is Zaidi.” My closest friends got it and switched from Kelli or Kels right away, which was very sweet and endearing. I wasn’t sensitive about them catching on or not; it was a personal choice, and Kelli is the foundation, so no offense was taken when they slipped or forgot. “We all here!” is how I felt. There was also an unexpected surprise in hearing people say it. What I knew was that every time I heard Zaidi, I physically straightened up: head up, shoulders back and paying full attention. I was more aware of myself in my body. I was more aware of whether or not I was shrinking in that moment. I began noticing when I was being a version of myself that I didn't want to be any longer. I was engineering myself and getting crowd participation to help me become my best self. So, I began to request “Zaidi” when asked if there was a preference between this name or Kelli. It was a very intentional call and response as I began to create a new me. I wasn’t leaving Kelli behind: I was now becoming more of her.
Zaidi in Brooklyn, 2022