About Me — Melissa-Jane Nguyen

If I could choose my own name …

Who am I?

Years ago there was a profile feature on Facebook where you could add a little quote or sentence of your choosing. I had no idea what to put there but wanted something that ‘felt’ like me. At the time I was addicted to a band called Bayside and their album The Walking Wounded, but ultimately, it was my husband who suggested these lyrics from the Bayside song ‘I and I’:

If I could choose my own name
I’d choose something that’s bold and fits
Like anger, aggression or cunningly brash
By the skin of my teeth but with timing and class

It felt right and it truly felt like me at that time.

Since then I’ve become a wife and a mother, which hasn’t changed the essence of who I am, but it has changed my life. And with life change, of course, comes character growth. I’d like to think those lyrics still represent a part of me, but there’s much more to me now than that.

Not too long ago my sister Dayle posted on her Instagram profile about the Medium publication we run (see more about that below), and in that post she described me as ‘heart strong’ whereas she’s ‘head strong’. She went on to describe our…