The space between me and my name.

Why I stopped using my full name on social media, and the quiet freedom I found in stepping out of view.

Let’s be real: everyone knows it’s me. I hold no illusion that my name online, avecsenas, is within two or three clicks from my real name. And for all intents and purposes, that’s fine.

(Before we go on: Avecsenas is a play on words — avec means “with” in French, and senas is a blend of the starts and ends of my first and last name. I played around with a few iterations, and this one stuck.)

Taking my full name off of social media was on my mind for a long time. When I finally made the choice to change my username, it came down to a few key factors:

1. Maintaining a level of distance between the entity that is me, a private citizen, and the broader Internet;

2. A realization that all of who I am: a woman, a visible minority, and a hijabi by choice, can often lead my actions, ideas, or posts to be imputed to others in my communities, even when unintentional;

3. The need for boundaries — some that I find more important than ever when it comes to my personal life, my family and friends, and the workplace.

   

   The post-influencer era.

Let’s get into it.

Some years ago, I had an ‘influencer’ era. This might be an overstatement — I didn’t have a huge following, wasn’t too comfortable live on camera, and certainly didn’t derive much tangible benefit from it. Across platforms, I had a community of people who I shared my thoughts, outfits, routines, and even some deeply-held personal beliefs and moments with — all under my full, legal, government name.

And despite the inherent risks of what that can lead to, I loved it. At the time, there weren’t a lot of women that I followed who wore hijab and shared their journeys in corporate America and travelled around the world for work and play, and I enjoyed documenting my path. That level of exposure and “bringing people along” was empowering — especially in spaces that didn’t seem to quite fit for people like me. I loved the idea of being a part of a cultured community of women focused on their growth.

But over time, things shifted.