Sometimes, people ask me about the handle I’ve had for over a decade now. I usually say it has to do with “The Ugly Duckling,” and leave it at that.
For people who are curious, here’s the story in fairy tale format:
Once upon a time, there was a shy, fat little girl. She loved to run, jump, and play like other little kids, but unlike other little kids, she took way too long to learn how to ride a bike, whistle, tie her shoes, swing, or do any number of things…and she was still fat, and on top of that, she was different from everybody else, so people called her “weird.” Her peers rejected her, and she was sad.
Fortunately, she had a cousin who was fat like she was, but this cousin had blossomed into a svelte beauty, and she wasn’t weird at all. The little girl’s parents often voiced hope that she would lose her “baby fat” and blossom as her cousin did and change into someone universally loved…but it never happened. The girl just kept on getting fatter and fatter, and while she had some friends, she was still strange, and a social outcast. She wrote stories, sang, performed in plays, but she was still outside looking in. She was still “other.”
The fat little girl became a fat woman, and she went to college, got a degree, got married, got a job, got divorced, moved to another state, had a baby, moved back, and lived with her family again. Meanwhile, she had won awards for her writing, her art, and her photography, but all anyone ever seemed to see was the strange, fat little girl.
While she was in high school, the fat girl felt very unloved and unwelcome. She came to identify with the Ugly Duckling, and she hoped that one day, she too would become a beautiful and beloved swan. She took the name Cygnet, because cygnets become swans. When she went to register it as her email address, though, “cygnet” was already taken, so she chose the name “LadyCygnet,” and it became a part of her, over time.
Now she is a woman almost middle-aged. She is still fat and weird. She has accomplished much, but it is hard for her to see it, because she never became thin, beautiful, and beloved. She does have a child, though, and her child is thin, beautiful, beloved…and just as weird as her mother.
But even if her little girl were fat, ugly, or both, the fat, weird woman would love her child just the same, because she doesn’t want her daughter growing up thinking that her worth depends on her weight or her ability to fit in with others. She wants her daughter to know that she is more than her looks or her social standing.
They are both odd ducks…but they are also swans.
And they lived oddly, yet contently, ever after.