Reclaiming my name. Perhaps the only thing to rival a child’s love for their parents is a parent’s (and then a grandparent’s) love for their children. The romantic attachment to happily ever after and that white picket fence made giving up the surname I was born with imperative in 1979. Keeping the married name once eighteen years of marriage had ended seemed loyal to my three children and their futures. Another eighteen years flew by – graduations, weddings, birthdays. Time, trials, love and loss, brought me full circle to reclaiming my name. The one I was born with. The one my mother still wears proudly. The one my dad treasured – close to his Polish roots. So, hello world, I am once again Lorraine Kasyan, the fifth child and fourth daughter to Francis and Margaret Kasyan. The proud preserver of the traditional pronunciation and the visual beauty of the letters: LK.

Please enjoy my mother as she pronounces Kasyan.