I've always had some misgivings about the
concept of a woman, by default, changing her name upon marriage. I do
like the idea of married people having a joint name, as it creates a
sense of cohesiveness and family. But it seems archaic, in 2013, for a
woman to default to a man's name just because it's traditional. But
that's exactly what I did when I got married. I didn't think about it,
and I didn't attribute much meaning to it. I was in a hurry to git 'er
done. In retrospect, I wish I had done it differently. I have so much
admiration for my friends and acquaintances who took a more
non-traditional route to establishing a family name, whether by
hyphenating, creating a new name using a permutation of both, etc.
So, when it became clear that my marriage was ending, it
was a natural choice to eliminate my husband's last name from my legal
name. It would have been logistically easier to keep the name, avoiding
lines at the DMV and the Social Security Office, the frustration of
e-mail address changes, and all of the rigamarole at work. But to
continue to affiliate myself with someone who no longer will be
affiliated with me just didn't sit right. The negative of short-term
inconvenience was trumped by the positive of long-term dissociation.
Most people who change their name when they get divorced
choose to return to their pre-married name, but that's not a rule; the
new name can actually be anything. I could have changed my name to
Princess Consuela Bananahammock (Friends style!) if desired. I thought a
lot about how I wanted to be identified post-marriage, and processed
through the different possibilities with a number of people whose
opinions I value. In the end, I settled on Katherine Jane Mandt Kilian
as my full legal name, with Kate Kilian for common usage.
Changing my name back to Kate Mandt didn't feel quite
right, because that would erroneously imply that I'm returning to the
person I was before I was married. In actuality, my married years were
formative in so many ways. They changed me and grew me and molded me
into the person I have become. Kate Mandt was "husband hunting" from
the time she was 16 until the time she acquired a husband. Kate Mandt
conformed to her surroundings and was overly focused on how she was
perceived by others. Kate Mandt was self-conscious and walked with her
head down more often than not. That isn't the person I want to be now,
and I hope it's not the person that others see in me.
Kilian is my mother's last name. Neither she nor her
sister (my aunt) changed their name when they got married, and now I
have the opportunity to join them as an empowered woman, honoring my
matriarchal heritage. But beyond that, I have the opportunity to let
the world know, by virtue of my name, that I'm transformed. I'm not who
I was when I was a child, and I'm certainly not my ex-husband. I'm
creating my own identity and my own destiny.
So, as I begin a new life phase, I'm doing so with this
philosophy: I have an amazing opportunity, and responsibility, to
re-create myself and to generate something positive and wonderful out of
an unfortunate circumstance. I don't know exactly what that will look
like yet, but Kate Kilian will figure it out.... with a lot of help from
an amazing and growing network of support, and the knowledge that there
is life on the other side of all of this.
