Talitha Michele

I was molested as a child and I had substantial baggage from that. I was molested by someone who is an immediate blood relative and saying "I was molested" is the nice, polite framing. The uglier, more accurate framing is that I was a victim of incest at the hands of my only brother.

He raped me only once, but I believe that incident introduced infection of some kind that left me suicidal. It was summer and I had recently turned twelve.

In my twenties, I went back into therapy and I eventually had an affair with my therapist because I came to believe he really cared about me and wanted what was best for me. The relationship did me enormous good.

I'm not Christian. I did briefly attend church in Germany where I worked with this therapist because I would have liked to find "my people" for talking about spiritual beliefs or whatever, but it didn't click for me and I stopped going after I was in a minor fender bender on my way to church and never made it to church.

But he was Christian and a minister. He had been a hippie drug addict and made a radical conversion to Christianity in his youth where one month he's going to discos and popping pills and the next he's passing out fliers to people trying to share the good news that Jesus loves you!

He gifted me the name Talitha and I used that online for a time while contemplating legally changing my first name because Doreen was a hurt child who had been raped and I didn't like the name at all. My German relatives and native speakers of Spanish all think it sounds harsh and unfeminine and tend to feminize the name by adding a schwa sound to the end and it's not pronounceable at all in French. I used my middle name when studying French.

My friend and therapist who gifted me the name pulled it from the Bible. Mark 5: 35-43:

35While He was still speaking, messengers from the house of Jairus arrived and said, “Your daughter is dead; why bother the Teacher anymore?”

36But Jesus overheardd their conversation and said to Jairus, “Do not be afraid; just believe.” 37And He did not allow anyone to accompany Him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James.

38When they arrived at the house of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw the commotion and the people weeping and wailing loudly. 39He went inside and asked, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.” 40And they laughed at Him.

After He had put them all outside, He took the child’s father and mother and His own companions, and went in to see the child. 41Taking her by the hand, Jesus said, “Talitha koum!” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” 42Immediately the girl got up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). And at once they were utterly astounded. 43Then Jesus gave strict orders that no one should know about this, and He told them to give her something to eat.

It's not really her name. It gets translated as little girl or maiden, but it's the story of a twelve year old girl thought DEAD and Jesus tells her to arise and she does.

It's unclear whether she was really dead and brought back from the dead or something more like comatose, but it tends to get portrayed as Jesus raising the dead. 

So he was Christian and gave me the name because it was meaningful to HIM as a person who genuinely felt SAVED by Christianity. I accepted the name because he meant something to me and the story meant something to me, but to me this isn't a Christian moniker.

It's a gift from someone who loved me for a time and breathed life into me. And it's a summary of a story about a twelve year old girl risen from the dead.

I read that Native Americans didn't have a word for incest and instead called it soul murder. To me, this meant in the tradition of my Native ancestors, my brother murdered my soul and someone who loved me brought me back to life.

I stopped using it because I became aware Christian nutters on Metafilter and elsewhere interpreted the name to mean that I was secretly devoutly Christian because it's an OBSCURE biblical reference.

I'm not. I didn't realize how obscure it was until crazy people wanting to hang their shit on me while imagining they were paragons of virtue while kicking the SHIT out of me for being HOMELESS clued me that having the name was interpreted by nutcases as a secret coded message trying to signify I know the secret handshake to their nutcase club or some nonsense.

I didn't need this kind of drama and then someone said something to me that helped me make peace with being Doreen and I began using that again.

To me, Talitha was never a Christian symbol. It was an ode to my NATIVE heritage, but, hey, those people don't want me EITHER. So whatevs.

Footnote 

This is about ME, it's not really about Natives generally. I may link to it from Native influence at some point.