Faith and Values: Call me Lulu: Why choosing a name different from ‘mom’ is right for our family

For nine months, while my wife, Traci, and I waited for our son, I kept returning to one question like a meditation: What will he call me?

Not “Mom.” That word has never settled right in my spirit, like a jacket that’s technically my size but restricts when I try to move. Maybe it’s too steeped in femininity for someone like me. Maybe it carries the karma of my own history – I was an oopsie baby, raised by a single mother who resented the role and eventually walked away from it entirely. The word holds suffering I don’t want to pass down to the next generation.

So I’m choosing LuLu.

It’s a nickname from childhood – family lore says a babysitter gave it to me, though I have no memory of her. What I do remember is how my family ran with it: LuLu, Tracy Lu, the occasional LuLu Bell. It was reserved for people who knew me best, who loved me most. There’s something sacred in bringing back my childhood nickname to raise a child. I’m reclaiming something tender from my past to build something new, completing a circle I didn’t know was incomplete.

There’s practical wisdom too: Traci and I share the same first name. She’s Mom. I’m LuLu. Stanley will know who’s who, but my hope is that this nickname will help his teachers, his friends’ parents, and anyone else navigating our household keep us straight. But practicality is just the surface teaching.

This is about choosing my own dharma as a parent – literally naming it into being. In queer families, we practice this all the time. We create the structures that honor our truth rather than conforming to structures designed for someone else’s family. Some kids have a mama and a mommy, a mum and a ma, or invent entirely new names that belong only to their family. We build our own language because the default language wasn’t built for us.

It’s a small act of resistance, maybe, but also an act of self-preservation and authenticity. I want to show up for Stanley as my whole self, not as a role I’m performing. LuLu creates space for that wholeness.

My straight friends tend to look surprised when I explain the choice. My LGBTQ friends just nod with understanding. They recognize that rejecting “Mom” isn’t rejecting motherhood – it’s claiming something more aligned with who I truly am.

The harder part will be training the rest of the world. I’ve already been called “Mamma” by well-meaning friends. Society sees two women raising a child and assumes it knows what we are, what we should be called. There’s an expectation woven into every interaction, every form, every casual question at the pediatrician’s office. But expectations, I’m learning, are just another form of attachment.

Here’s what I hope Stanley will understand someday: I chose him. I’m adopting him with intention and joy. And just as I chose him, I’m choosing this name, this identity, this version of parenthood that makes room for all of who I am. These choices are connected, branches from the same root.

Maybe LuLu will awaken my childish side again – in the sacred way. The playful way. The way that remembers what wonder feels like, what it means to be fully yourself without apology or pretense. Stanley is already teaching me this. At just weeks old, he’s a living reminder that we get to define our own paths, write our own stories, call ourselves whatever helps us show up as our most loving, most authentic selves.

So yes, call me LuLu. It’s a name rooted in love, chosen with mindfulness and offered freely to the child who’s teaching me what kind of parent I want to be – on my own terms, in my own way.

Tracy Simmons, a longtime religion reporter, is a Washington State University scholarly assistant professor and the editor of FāVS News, a website dedicated to covering faith, ethics and values in the Spokane region.