What’s In A (Pen)Name?

If you are reading this, you are visiting my website, DeborahTurnerAuthor.com. (I thank you very much for coming.) The photo included with this post is of my 1969 high school senior picture and the Bible presented to me by the Women’s Society of Christian Services (WSCS) of the Hillsboro United Methodist Church, Hillsboro, Missouri in May 1969.

Recently, I came across my Bible on a bookshelf beside Sophie Kinsella’s first Shopaholic book, Confessions of a Shopaholic, (which I consider her best, but I digress) and an Instant Pot cookbook. It had been years since I read Shopaholic and two years since I put my Instant Pot on the top shelf of my pantry that I couldn’t reach without a ladder, so don’t judge me that I didn’t have my Bible from 1969 close at hand. 

But I do now. Two years ago, I kept the name most people know me by, Deborah Fisher, during the dissolution of my marriage of over forty years, but when I saw that Bible I knew I wanted to see the Book and Deborah Turner, my name—my given name—every day. 

Something in me was awakened when I thought about being Deborah Turner again. I felt two things. One, I found again a part of who I had been from 1951 to 1972, and two, I could be that girl again. I celebrated my seventieth birthday less than two months ago, so it seems a bit foolish to type the word ‘girl’, but that’s what I was the last time I signed my name with Turner at the end. Perhaps, I can pick up where I left off. 

Two months ago, during an interview by the editor of my 55+ ‘active adult’ community magazine about reinventing my life during retirement, I picked up the Bible that was now sitting on a table in my great room. As I showed it to her, I said, “I feel young when I see my name printed here, so I chose to use the name of the younger me on my books.” 

Now, when I see Deborah Turner on the cover of two books and I look at my senior picture, I believe that slight smile of the eighteen-year-old me is a nod of encouragement for making her proud.