Reclaiming My Name, Remembering Myself

For many years, I answered to a name that was never legally mine.

Deanna Mantle—that’s what it said on my report cards, my high school diploma, even my bank account. It’s how people from my childhood still recognize me when they call across grocery aisles or comment on old yearbook photos. But that name doesn’t belong to me. It never did.

My legal name is Deanna Dunham. Dunham, like my mother’s maiden name—the one I was born with. And yet, for reasons that made sense to the adults around me at the time, I was enrolled in school under my stepfather’s last name. No formal adoption, no legal change—just a decision that I would carry the same name as my younger siblings. On paper, it was about unity. In practice, it felt like erasure.

I didn’t meet my biological father until I was sixteen. It was brief. We drifted apart, and for many years, his absence echoed quietly through the corners of my life. Then, six years ago—after the birth of my son Matteo, whom I lovingly call my healing baby—we reconnected. And this time, it was different. He showed up. He has remained steady, loving, and supportive to not just me, but my entire family.

So when someone calls me “Deanna Mantle,” I feel a familiar knot form in my stomach. It’s not about hatred or bitterness. It’s not even about the people who made those choices. It’s about the quiet ache of never having been fully allowed to just be me.

Being called by the wrong name isn’t just inconvenient—it feels like being cast in a story that wasn’t mine to live. Like I had to earn love through performance, perfection, or silence. Like my true self had to stay small to keep the peace. It’s a strange, disorienting feeling to walk through the world with a name that doesn’t belong to you—and to only reclaim it after decades of untangling who you are from who you were told to be.

I stopped answering to "Mantle" when I graduated in 2003. Since then, I’ve carried my real name—Dunham—with quiet pride. I never hesitate when someone calls me Deanna Dunham. It feels like light—like truth. But when someone calls me by a name that was never mine, it’s like being momentarily misplaced. Not out of anger or resentment, but because for so long, I couldn’t simply exist as myself. That name—Dunham—feels like a return. Like finally being called home.

And now, that name—Dunham—is also the name of my business. Deanna Dunham Designs. I’ve been in business under that name since 2016. Nearly a decade of building something deeply personal. It’s printed on the contracts I send, the galleries I deliver, the cards I tuck into packages. It’s stitched into the brand I’ve built from memory, art, resilience, and care. To have my real name represent not just who I am but what I create—that is deeply meaningful. Every time a client speaks my business name, they are speaking something true. Something rooted. Something whole.

As I approach the ten-year mark, I’m also embracing a quiet transition. A shift into something even more intentional. I’ll be moving my photography brand under the name Little Joys—a name that reflects the soul of my work and the small, meaningful moments I treasure most. But it will always remain rooted in who I am. In the name I chose to keep. In the name that held me through the healing.

Because something beautiful has started to happen.

Lately, I find myself stopping to admire daisies. Not just glancing, but pausing. Like I’m five years old again and the world is made of simple wonders. I never used to do that. Somewhere along the way, I became too busy, too self-conscious, too burdened by the need to be useful, needed, accepted. Now, I’m allowing myself to slow down. To see beauty in quiet places. To be moved by things that aren’t for anyone else—just me.

That shift is showing up in my work, too. In how I approach storytelling through my lens. In how I hold space for children to be wild and messy, for mothers to be soft and strong, for families to exist without needing to prove anything. I photograph the moments I wish someone had preserved for me—the ones that say, "You are exactly enough, just as you are."

It’s taken nearly forty years to arrive here, and I still have growing to do. But I can tell you this:

I never feel misplaced when someone calls me Deanna Dunham. It feels like light—like truth. It carries both my story and my strength. And I hope, in some way, my art helps others come home to themselves, too.

Because that’s where the little joys live.

with love,

Deanna Dunham

This piece is a personal reflection. It’s offered as a window into my journey and the reclamation of my name and voice. I believe in honouring truth gently and holding space for the complexities we all carry.