Keddmia

There are decisions that seem small but are actually scalpels with which we cut our soul. Decisions we make thinking they are the best, that will protect us, that will give us a break. And yes, sometimes they do… for a while. Until one day consciousness awakens, and the body starts screaming what the soul can no longer keep silent.

I tore off a name.

Not a nickname, not a label, not a war name. I tore off a sacred name. One given to me at birth, but that I rejected for years as if it were a stain, a sentence, a shame. My name is Olga Keddmia.

But for a long time, I did not want to be Keddmia.

I hated it. I felt it strange, ridiculous, too weird. It was the perfect target for mockery, bullying, and comments from others who never understood the weight, nor the beauty, nor the root. So when I had the chance, I let it go. I deleted it. I erased it from my documents, from my history, from my public identity. Legally, it no longer existed.

And I thought I had won.

But no.

What I did was mutilate myself.

I did not know it then. I could not know it. I was just a child trying to survive in an environment where being different was a sentence. Changing my name was a way to defend myself, to find beauty somewhere else. To create a shield.

But now, many years later, life returned the truth to me.

Studying Kabbalah, learning Hebrew, getting closer to the mystery and the root of names, I wanted to see if the one I use now had any spiritual meaning. Searching for something outside… I ended up finding what I abandoned inside.

Yesterday, almost by accident, (reading a chat from many years ago) I realized what I had overlooked all my life:

Keddmia has a Hebrew root.

A beautiful, ancient, powerful root.

It has to do with being “before God.”

With walking with divinity.

With presence.

With the sacred.

And then my hands trembled.

A strange cold ran down my spine.

Because I came with that name. With that burden. With that gift.

And I rejected it.

My dad was the one who chose it.

And as he always did, he gave it his own personal touch.

Because he was like that: he transformed everything, gave it a twist, turned it into something unique…

But I, in my broken childhood, did not know how to see it.

I focused on the sound, not the soul of the name.

And there… I broke.

I didn’t break into tears. No. I broke completely.

As if my chest was tearing from the inside.

As if the screams I never let out as a child were waiting for this moment to come out.

How could I have denied it? How could I have rejected that name that contained my soul, my purpose, my spiritual heritage? How didn’t anyone tell me? How did no one know? Or did they and didn’t care?

Keddmia was not ugly.

It was not weird.

It was sacred.

And I killed it.

And although I know I couldn’t have known then… it hurts. It hurts with an anger that is not anger. It hurts with the scream of a girl who just wanted to be seen, loved, not mocked for a name that, now I know, was bigger than them.

Today, I can’t change the papers. I can’t go back to the notary and say “give me back what belongs to me.”

But I can do something bigger.

Recover it from the soul.

Today I say:

My name is Olga Keddmia. And even though I denied it, it is alive in me.

Today I embrace it. Today I invoke it. Today I write it, pronounce it, honor it.

Today I use it as a flag, a prayer, a bridge to the divine.

Because no matter how many times we have denied who we are.

There is always a way back home.