(04) 2023 & my 7th and final last name
Officially removing my identity from the patriarchy, and reflecting on another roller coaster year
🧠 first draft emotions:
Continuing my obsession of documenting personal history, I explored a fun medium while embarking on the beefy task of reflecting on 2023… creating a scroll-y mobile mini website with lots of photos, gif’s, and one-sentence-long summaries of notable events that feel like hyperboles, but aren’t. It felt fitting for what was the most volatile, most packed, most unpredictable year of my life yet. I invite you to ✨click✨ and look around… but if you prefer a summary, its this:
We started the year in the largest deficit the company had ever seen thanks to a series of spectacular f*ck ups from the worst leadership in company history, and ended up dedicating our lives to turning things around in 2023. A year later, we ended the year with the highest revenue AND highest profit in the company’s decade-long history. What was almost a complete shut down / write off, turned into stories I’ll not soon forget. To say I am proud is an understatement. To say I am exhausted – another understatement. I also kept Zizi alive + thriving for another entire year – also a proud, exhausting achievement. ❤️
i’ve informally gone by several last names in my lifetime, but last month I was awarded the third and final legal change to my last name, turning my given middle name into my surname… and in one fell swoop, I exited right on out of 3+ decades of a patriarchal-driven naming convention 👋. I feel relief and a sense of liberation. I no longer am desparately absorbing another other man’s identity as my own, something that gave me a lot of anxiously-attached feverish purpose + joy for many years. I even created a small business around one of my surnames i’d collected along the way. But inevitably, after I stopped loving my last name(s), I stopped loving my own identity, and it all felt so suffocatingly misleading. Your name is the first thing people come to know of you… and since I was born, my name has just plain been wrong (my birth certificate lists an incorrect last name and incorrect birth father… and neither parent thought to fix this 😂). As someone who cares about details, this lifetime administrative oversight is a VeryBigProblem™️. I have a core memory of asking my dad if he had issue with my birth certificate not proudly touting HIS last name… surely it must bother him?! “Eh" – he dismissed with a wave of his hand – “i know whose kid you are. Who cares what the paper says.” Turns out, I do – and always did. So here I am! Decades later, adopting the last name Adel, which is the English version of my maternal grandmother’s first name (in Hungarian, “Etel”). She was the type of woman who at 80+ years old broke a few ribs falling on her walking cane while boarding an international flight, only to barely wince and subsist off a few Ibuprofen for a 12+ hour flight without complaining. An actual badass, who was equally sweet and calm and witty. This is a name I can embody, and do. So for the first time, legally and emotionally accurate… let me introduce myself:
Hi. I’m Emily Adel. ❤️
✨ learnings + unlearnings
Ornithophobia lite // I went to Busch Gardens in Tampa for the first time and learned I am not terrified of roller coasters, but instead, i’m terrified of holding very cute + colorful birds. 🤷♀️
Letting kids ✨be✨ // We always think of ways we’ll teach kids, guide them, correct them, etc… but I’ve been pondering the importance of sitting with them and just letting them be. I spent some time with my friend’s 94 year old grandpa who – 30 something years ago – did exactly that... sat with his grandkid while they learned and tinkered on a computer and just, quietly hyped him along in his own discovery. I can see now the impact of that calm + supportive presence that allowed his grandkid’s own interests, intuitions, and confidence to flourish… and it feels profound. I endeavor to remember that sometimes Zizi can just be encouraged to follow her own follies while I watch without interrupting, and that’s just as important as teaching new concepts of whatever I happen to think is particularly important.
✨ flash obsession
~ A paralyzing dive I went on this week where nothing else mattered except this topic for a very brief moment in time ~
Taylor Swift and the entire Eras Tour.
Surprising no one, I have now watched the Eras Tour film ✨four✨ times with the last time being the Apple TV rental, at home, scream-singing the songs with Zizi following suit.
I’ve been so struck with the dichotomy of feeling like a “teenaged woman”, and Taylor brings it right out of me. Every single time I’ve watched it, I get giddy and excited, and the opening number has made me emotional enough to choke up and let a few tears overflow (not to mention the part during the Red era with Kobe Bryant’s young daughter, which sends me into ugly-cries every time).
The details I am most obsessed with:
the cult-like fun of the friendship bracelets, the made up supporting lyrics the crowds chant along during select moments, the entire stadium screaming along
the extra personalized branding factors that are just ✨fun✨… like movie ticket prices being $19.89 (her birth year / name of one album), and the movie debuting on the 13th (her favorite number). It’s so benign and clever at the same time, like you can imagine the dinner table conversation where someone had that lightbulb moment and it was fun to go with it
her sidekick PR person who is extremely private herself yet fiercely protects Taylor, and the lore the fans have made about her
the Beyonce + Taylor friendship that I didn’t know existed and now adore
that she prepared physically for 6 months before the tour, running on a treadmill for 3.5 hours while belting out all of the songs in setlist order
the slow playing the release of the movie from theaters to streaming (only after the theater audiences dried up) – and then, including 4 songs on the streaming version NOT shown in theaters to make sure true-fans rent the streaming version, too
But more than anything, I love the innocent glee of unabashedly belting out songs that are easy to sing along to, marinating on lyrics that both my 13 year old self and current self could have deep feelings over, and the pride and inspiration I feel when i read articles about her figuring life out, more than ever. The calm confidence of growing into oneself… its an attractive force, and I’m here for it.
⭐️ the delight of progress
~ what is life without the last 13 years of data? ~
I’ve used the MyFitnessPal app since I was 24 to track my fluctuating weight. This morning, I’m lower than my lowest weight in the app – tracking 13 years of [both emotional and physical] ups and downs. Since June 2021 (my peak weight), i’ve lost 54.8 lbs, and this all feels incredibly profound… yet also, extremely mid at the same time. It doesn’t actualy feel like much has changed at all, despite 50+ lbs feeling like a staggering figure. As someone who tends to think of the timelines of life through how much they weighed during certain periods [cringe but true], it feels incredibly strange to rewind the clock 13 years and be 0.2 pounds less than who that person was back then.
13 years ago was:
4 jobs ago, including two failed start-ups
A couple of divorces + weddings ago
a 40 hour labor / emergency c-section ago
a 3 and a half year old baby girl ago
several versions of Emily’s ago (with last names to boot)
Thinking about all of this gives me a very “dolly zoom” sort of feeling.
💌 notes from the archives
~ that i’ve never really shared before ~
🚧 disclaimer: these are snippets of thought, throughout the many years.
some born from me, some borrowed, some real, some made-up.
there is no order, or timelines, or dates, or names – on purpose.
On the topic of body image + expectations… ⤵️
I didn’t feel good today
So for dinner,
I ordered from a drive through
Something I haven’t done for many months
It ultimately made me feel worse
My body is not used to that type of meal
Eating mindlessly
Numbingly
In a dark parking lot at 8:13
With exactly 17 minutes of more alone time
Before more expectations are had of me
Before I go present a version of myself
To a human I was made from [mom] and
A human I made with this body [zizi]
The body that I am currently abusing
The version of me I will present
Will be “acceptable”
for them to see
It won’t be the truth
The parking lot is a deserted after hours lot
Of a Smart and Final grocery store.
Smart and Final
A clever summary of my life when it will be over
A day closer to that end,
every single day
I’m that much closer
Can’t tell if that’s terrifying or relieving
It’s uninterestingly neither
Maybe I’ll request a grave site
in a Smart and Final parking lot
The one next to the Coffee Kiosk
In this town I never had the courage to leave
Five minutes away from my destination
Of familial responsibilities for the evening
What would my life be if free from any expectations?
Imagine living for your own expectations
Imagine being taught to have them of yourself
In a joy-is-the-goal kind of way
Instead of be-the-person-i-expect-you-to-be kind of way
Imagine being rewarded for dreaming
And not slapped by reality at every
Emotional and financial turn
I finish far too many calories in a record 12 minutes
While responding to 14 text messages,
Handing out advice on love and sex to one friend
And how to manage colleagues to another
And a half-assed message to a potential lover
As not to show too much interest
But not too little either.
What productivity!
And now past midnight, even 4+ hours later
I feel such physical discomfort
from the food I should not have consumed.
The start of a deprecating cycle
Many people know all too well
My belly, my body
It all feels so gross
I think when we don’t feel good
We binge to feel worse
For some its more food, for some its more people
For me its both
We (I) do it to forget why we didn’t feel good
in the first place
Because now we have a worse problem
That’s newer than the older problem
And now it’s a distraction
To focus on
But this new one
Will seem to fade away in 12 hours
It might start a new chain of bad habits
As that’s how catalysts start
But it will fade
And our distraction will feel like triumph
“I feel better now!” I’ll exclaim when I wake
But it’s all fake
And none of it was healed or solved
Just more fat
And more calories
With no offset
More late nights
More wasted energy
And no creative output
No dreams, thoughts, expansions
Just consumption.
* * *