Reclaiming the Gift of Being Beloved

What's in a name? Everything.

My mother’s first gift to me is one of such honor and power that it has helped shape my life and afforded me some of my most important lessons. As I mark my 49th birthday, I am writing with a full and thankful heart for my beautiful mother and the gift of my name: Habeebah Hadiyah.

My mother explained the story of my name to me many times over the years. As a child, I dutifully listened as she conveyed the meaning of my first name as “beloved” and the meaning of my middle name as “gift.” She lovingly selected my first and middle names because I was her beloved gift from God. And though I heard her words and wanted to believe, the world around me and the people in it were telling me a very different story as I grew up about who I was and what my name meant to them…