Between Two Names, I Found Myself

The day I chose my name was the day I began choosing myself:

There was a time when I believed a name was just something given to you, something you carry without question, like an inheritance you never chose.

Sunita was that name for me.
It held my childhood, my family, my fears, my conditioning, my roles. It carried the echoes of expectations, the weight of being seen a certain way, and the silent stories I lived through.

Sunita knew how to survive.
She learned to adjust, to hold, to endure.

And then came a moment that changed something quietly, yet deeply.

The day I got married.

A day where the world expects you to take on new roles, new responsibilities, sometimes even a new identity.But in that moment, I made a choice, one that seemed small on the outside, yet profound within.

I chose to be addressed as Saira.

I didn’t fully understand it then.
There were no deep explanations, no long reflections.

Just a feeling.

A knowing.

Saira didn’t come from the outside.
She wasn’t given, she was felt.
She felt like breath after being held too long.
Like softness where there was once rigidity.
Like a quiet courage that didn’t need permission.

Looking back now, I see it clearly.

At a time when identities are often handed over,
I claimed mine.

Saira is not separate from Sunita.
She is not an escape.
She is not a replacement.

She is an emergence.

For a long time, I wondered if becoming meant leaving something behind. If growth required rejecting who I once was. But healing doesn’t work that way.

True healing is not about abandoning who you were, it is about making space for who you are becoming, without erasing where you came from.

Today, I don’t stand as one or the other.

I stand as Saira-Sunita Jethnani.

A name that holds both the one who survived and the one who awakened. The one who learned through pain and the one who now chooses with awareness. The one shaped by the world and the one reshaping her inner world.

Sunita is my roots.
Saira is my wings.

And I no longer have to choose between grounding and flight.

Because I have learned,
I can be both.

And in being both,
I have finally come home to myself.