The New Leslie

I am no longer Leslie J. Evans.

I am now Leslie Evans Thorne. My new social security card came in the mail today. It’s official.

It is a strange thing to change your identity. Sure, you can say that it is simply a name change and nothing more, but that’s not how it seems to me.

The Leslie J. Evans of yesterday doesn’t exist any more. She has been replaced by Leslie Evans Thorne.

I liked the Leslie J. Evans. She was fun and she liked to have fun. She would swing dance and figure skate and go to hear classical music and swim at Bally’s gym and network and meet people and walk in the park and give church services and hang out with her friends and go to Connecticut to see her parents. She was independent, single, a career woman. Well, not really a career woman, not in the sense that she sacrificed her life for her work because she sees her “work” as an opportunity to express who she is in the world and in that sense, “work” is “play.” And, since she loves to play, she loved to work.

Who is the new Leslie Evans Thorne? I don’t know yet. She’s married to Landon, which is a dream come true, and she’s living in South Carolina in a beautiful home with lots of love and support, for all of which she is grateful. But, she knows that she is in a chryallis state, a state of becoming. What will she become? Who will she be? Time will tell…

Will she become a horseback rider? Will she become a media star with an Internet TV show? Will she ever finish her two books? Will she become a farmer? Will she become a cook? Will she fall in love with the Lowcountry and not want to leave? Who will she be inside? Will she be loving and generous and grateful and full of grace? Or could she become bitter, unhappy, sad?

The exciting thing is that if she stays fully aware and is conscious about the choices she makes in her life, she can create the Leslie Evans Thorne of her choosing and help her to become the woman she always wanted, and knew that she could, be. Fat or thin, blond or brunette, these things don’t really matter. What matters is that she is able to grow into the woman she aspires to be. And, that is her personal definition of success.