It’s just a name change, so why does it feel like stepping off a cliff blindfolded?
I can already feel the shellshock coming when I become Mrs. Lee in November.
I can still remember my first day as a hostess at Perkins, that chain diner with the pies.
Fourteen years old. Buzzing with excitement. My new manager handed me a nametag.
One word. All caps:
MANDY.
No one had ever called me that before. Not my friends. Definitely not my parents.
In fact, my parents made it crystal fucking clear that Mandy was, in fact, NOT my name. I was Amanda, period. Full name. Formal. Proper. Anything else was sloppy, lazy, disrespectful.
But that nametag?
Deep down that day, I liked it.
And it stuck.
It was also around that time that the other Mandy Moore went mainstream. People cracked jokes about us sharing a name, but I didn’t mind.
I just liked the way it sounded—punchy, with that double-M rhythm:
Mandy Moore.
It sounded like someone who had her shit together. Someone polished. Someone memorable.
Someone who could walk into a room and make people stop mid-conversation.
Not me.
Not then.
But maybe someday.
People didn’t just call me Mandy—they glommed onto the whole shebang. And now? I’m so used to being Mandy Moore, I don’t even know why I still bother to put a space in it.
It’s second nature at this point. Very automatic.
I sign emails with it. Answer the phone with it. I’ve introduced myself that way so many times that my own reflection would probably roll her eyes if I said Amanda to it out loud.
And yet here I am.
Standing at the edge of another name change.
And this time, not the accidental kind you slip into on a diner shift.
The kind you choose.
The kind that says: This is who I am now. This is what I survived. This is mine.
And honestly? That kind of power?
It’s terrifying.
Because choosing it—really choosing it—means I can’t pretend it just happened to me.
Can’t blame a boss with a Sharpie or a pop star coincidence.
This time, it’s all me.
The grown-ass woman version.
The one who’s clawed her way through addiction, heartbreak, generational bullshit, and grief that sits in the body like cement.
The one who finally sees the difference between performance and truth.
And still, I hesitate.
Because if I change it, then it’s real.
And real has a way of changing everything else.
Amanda was who they named.
Mandy Moore was who I performed.
But Mandy Lee?
She’s who I am.
Not because it’s cute or catchy.
Not because of some diner nametag or pop culture fluke.
Because it’s mine.
It’s the name I’m taking into this next chapter—into this marriage, this healing, this life I’ve fucking earned.
Mandy Lee doesn’t shrink to fit.
She’s not a lowercase version of someone else’s expectations.
She’s stitched together from scars and softness, built from everything I’ve survived—and everything I’m still becoming.
Even though I know it’s going to shellshock the shit out of me…
I’m ready.
Not because I’m certain.
But because, for the first time—
I get to be the one who chooses who I am.