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To Glorify Your Name

To Glorify Your Name

Last updated on: September 18, 2026 at 5:04 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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To Glorify Your Name 2026-09-18T17:04:55-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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a chalkboard with many different names written on it in different colors of chalk

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What’s your name?

No, really. Not the thing on the birth certificate, but the thing that you are. What is your name?

Personally, I’ve had a whole lot of names.

When I was very young, my aunts called me “the Little Princess.” This is one of those things they think I don’t remember because I was so small when it happened. My mother was a new mom, desperately trying to make up for her own abusive childhood by being extra attentive to her first baby, me. My aunts thought this was ridiculous. What I needed was toughening up.

I was an extremely high-strung and anxious child with level 1 autism, in the 1980s when level 1 autism wasn’t a diagnosis yet; I wouldn’t get diagnosed with what was then called “Asperger’s Syndrome” until my teens. All that my aunts could see was an overindulged brat, which is where the nickname came from. My mother wanted me to have regular quiet time, a strict bedtime, and careful meals so I wasn’t constantly dysregulated and upset. My aunts decided they were entitled to try their own method of parenting on me whenever they could. They would think up ways to get me away from my mother and throw me into the general population of their aggressive Irish Catholic children with no supervision or discipline, and then sternly ignore me if I had a fit. Sometimes they’d announce “time for a nap!” and shove me into a room by myself and not let me out when I screamed. They thought this would toughen me up, but it certainly didn’t. It had the opposite effect, which made my aunts hate me more.

When I got a little older, the family started to call me “Mare.” I explained that I didn’t like the name “Mare.” A mare is a female horse. A horse is a large animal. All my relatives were extremely weight conscious and treated large people with great contempt. I didn’t want to be called a horse any more than I wanted to be called a cow. I explained that my name was “Mary, with two syllables,” and they kept on calling me “Mare.” Even my mother called me “Mare.”

When I went to a Catholic elementary school, my nickname was “T-bone.” And then it was “Pig.”

“T-bone” was a riff on my surname, my maiden name, which began with a T. It was the kind of cheap joke I would have heard once and then never again if I’d not responded by crying when they did it. That made the name stick. Impish little boys called me “T-bone” again and again to see me blush and burst into tears. As I approached puberty, with that undiagnosed case of PMOS, I plumped up, and the name calling got worse. I was no longer just “T-bone.” I was also “Fat Lady,” and “Pig.” Everyone called me a pig. I was so humiliated I wished I could go back to being “Mare.” Finally, the bullies caught me pretending to be a dryad on the playground, talking to the plane trees by the baseball field. They added the name “Tree Girl” to their repertoire. I was Pig, Fat Lady, T-Bone, and Tree Girl, right up until I had my nervous breakdown in the 5th grade. After that we homeschooled, and I did not miss the Catholic school a bit.

As a teenager, I didn’t get called a lot of nicknames by the other children in the Catholic homeschooling co-op. That was a relief. But my mother, who had never been able to properly recover from her own trauma, was at the end of her rope. She started calling me names. I was “spoiled brat,” “narcissist,” “Beelzebub,” “psycho lady.” That detested nickname “Mare” came back. My siblings imitated Mom and started name-calling as well: “Fat Lady,” “Fatty Fatterson,” “Clumsy Oaf,” “Corndog.” Everyone in the house called me names. When we went to a reunion with the extended family, my unruly Irish Catholic cousins called me names as well. I spent more and more time by myself, avoiding family.

I cut off contact with my family entirely, shortly after moving to Steubenville.

When I got married, in Steubenville, at the old Trad church with none of my family in attendance, I actually didn’t want to change my surname to Pezzulo. I wanted to be an old-fashioned tradwife with seven homeschooled children, but I didn’t want to do the tradwife thing with my name; I wanted it to be a hyphenated combination of my old name and Pezzulo. The word “Pezzulo” didn’t have any meaning to me. I’m not Italian, I’m Irish. I planned to take a hyphenated name all the way into the Social Security office when I applied for my new card. I was waiting for the clerk to ask what my new name would be so I could tell him, when he printed off and handed me a new card that said “Mary Elizabeth Pezzulo” on it.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Pezzulo,” said the clerk.

And that’s how “Mrs. Pezzulo” became my name, but I didn’t like it.

I thought the Pezzulos would be a supportive new family-in-law to me and, well, they weren’t. I was stuck with the clodhopper of a name, but I wasn’t a Pezzulo.

“Mrs. Pezzulo” was my name until everything fell apart in the early 2020s, my only child went to middle school, and I had my midlife crisis.

I felt that I had lost my whole identity, and didn’t deserve a name at all.

I started volunteering as a teacher at the little non-denominational church outreach near my house. This is a place that teaches after school lessons to underprivileged children, using the skills of any adults who can volunteer their time. There’s a cooking class and a car maintenance class, a martial arts class, a Bible study. I started out leading a geography club where I take the children on a virtual tour of a different foreign country each week. The pastor at the church outreach recognized my excitement for education and let me teach an American history class as well. Later I taught art, current events, and even STEM. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. The children enjoy it too, which is flattering. I’m always excited to see them, and they’re excited to see me.

The people who volunteer at the church outreach are from many different cultures and walks of life. There are young adults from the university who volunteer there. There are middle-aged mothers like me. There’s a fun and funny art teacher with ADHD and big glasses. There are ministers who pray in syncopated Protestant staccato and sometimes a Catholic sister or friar in a floor-length habit. There are White and Asian and Black people, including fashionable young gentlemen in jeans and long dreds who are cooler than I could ever be. I like how different everybody is. It looks like a microcosm of the Communion of Saints, and I get to be one of them. The children are the same: all different races, ages and abilities, with different styles of dressing and acting, from all different backgrounds. I like to listen to their names: names I’ve heard many times, gorgeous abstract nouns I’ve not heard used as a proper name before, names from languages I don’t know that roll off the tongue like music. They are all beautiful.

I think I’m the one who started calling myself “Miss Mary.” I didn’t do it on purpose. I just said that instead of “Mrs. Pezzulo,”probably on the first day, and it stuck. The pastor tells the children “it’s time to go to art with Miss Mary!” I see the children out around town sometimes, and they say “Hi, Miss Mary!”

“I’m Miss Mary,” I said to the children at the beginning of the church’s summer camp this year. “I’ll be teaching you science!”

One of the cool-looking gentlemen with dreds whooped “MISS MARY!” and led the children in a cheer and a round of applause.

It felt like belonging.

At the end of the camp, another volunteer called to me “Mrs. Pezzulo” and then stopped and said “I mean Miss Mary!” and the children applauded again. Again, my heart swelled with pride. I would rather be “Miss Mary,” loved by children and making them happy, than any other name in the world. That’s who I am. I am Miss Mary.

What’s your name?

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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