Jessica Woodville | Memoir & Musings

“I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Names. They shape us, define us, and sometimes, they break us. I’ve carried three last names over the course of my life, each one representing a different chapter of who I was—or perhaps who I thought I was. With every new name, I’ve had to ask myself: Who am I now?

My first last name was given to me by my father. It carried with it the weight of expectations, generational wounds, and a complicated kind of loyalty. It was the name I had as a child—a name tethered to roots I couldn’t quite reach, and one that still echoes when someone from the past calls me by it. It represents the beginning, even if that beginning was fractured.

My second name came with marriage. I thought it would be a fresh start, but it turned out to be the name I carried through the loss of a family, the unraveling of my faith, and a heartbreak I still don’t fully have words for. That name came with its own grief—not just the grief of divorce, but the kind that settles in your bones when your world changes and you’re left to figure out who you are without it.

The third name—the one I wear now—represents a chapter that is still closing. Another failed marriage but also a name I carried through motherhood, through survival, through the grit of holding myself and my daughters together when everything else was falling apart. I haven’t fully shed it yet, and maybe that’s part of the struggle. I’m suspended in a strange kind of limbo, one foot in the past, one foot stepping toward something new.

Rebuilding From the Fragments

Today, as I continue to rebuild my life after trauma, this question of identity has become harder to answer. A second divorce looming, a pen name chosen to protect my children’s privacy, and the scars of a painful past have left me grappling with a self that feels fragmented. It’s as though each name I’ve carried is a different version of me—a ghost from a different era, none of them fully whole.

The truth is, no matter how many times I changed my name, my past followed. With every name change, I tried to leave something behind. But the pieces always came with me—the good, the bad, the parts I wanted to forget and the ones I couldn’t afford to lose.

Now, writing under a pen name—Woodville—I feel like I’m stepping into a new identity once more. This name doesn’t just protect my children; it protects me. It offers a sense of safety, of reclaiming something for myself. But more than that, it’s not a random alias. Woodville is a family name, passed down through generations. In choosing it, I feel like I’m honoring my lineage while also creating something new.

Woodville is the name I gave myself—not out of marriage, not from my father, but from a choice to continue. It feels like both an anchor and a launch point.

Who Am I Now?

That’s the question that echoes in my mind as I navigate this liminal space between my past and my future. I’m not just the woman who’s been through two marriages, multiple traumas, and countless reinventions. I’m not just a sum of the names I’ve carried or the scars that still linger. I’m someone clawing my way out of the muck of my history, struggling to feel like more than the aftermath.

It’s like I’m standing on the edge of a vast unknown, unsure of what lies ahead but still pushing forward. There’s a part of me that wants to keep the past buried, but another part that knows the only way through is to carry it with me—not as baggage, but as truth. I don’t have to discard my past to grow; I just have to find a way to weave it into the person I’m becoming.

A Mirror in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild

This internal struggle of self-reinvention brings me back to Cheryl Strayed and her memoir, Wild. Strayed’s journey along the Pacific Crest Trail wasn’t just a hike—it was a reckoning. A way to claw her way back to herself through solitude, reflection, and grit.

Much like Strayed, I find myself on my own metaphorical trail, navigating grief, survival, and identity. My journey might not involve hiking thousands of miles (yet), but it involves rebuilding myself piece by piece, day by day. It’s a painful, beautiful process of shedding old skins, confronting trauma, and trying to believe that something softer might grow in its place.

What Woodville Means Now

So, what does all of this mean for my future? As I write under the name Woodville, I wonder if maybe this is where I’m meant to land. The name feels like a new chapter—still being written, but steady. It carries the weight of what I’ve survived and the hope of what I might still become.

“Woodville” may be a pen name, but it holds more truth than any of the others. It represents choice. Continuance. Legacy and liberation. It symbolizes the person I am still becoming—someone learning to embrace the messy, beautiful, nonlinear path of healing.

Becoming, Bit by Bit

The truth is, I don’t know exactly who I will be tomorrow, or next year, or even five years from now. But for the first time in a long time, I’m okay with that uncertainty. I’m learning to embrace the space between who I was and who I’m becoming.

Maybe Woodville is my future. Maybe it’s the name that will one day sit on more book covers, memoirs, and stories about survival and healing. Maybe it’s the name I will carry with pride—a reminder not just of who I was, but of how far I’ve come.

For now, I’m still piecing myself together.

And that’s enough.