The Name That Wasn't Mine

There’s a question that lingers quietly beneath the surface of so many of our lives: Who am I, really? Not the name on our birth certificate, not the roles we’ve been handed—but the raw, unfiltered truth of who we are beneath it all.

Chapter One of my memoir, The Name That Wasn’t Mine, opens with this exact question. Not because I have a clear answer—but because I’ve come to understand that the asking is part of the becoming.

This chapter isn’t about easy answers or packaged inspiration. It’s not about triumph over trauma or forgiveness wrapped in a bow. It’s a beginning—a slow excavation of memory, identity, and the legacy of pain passed from one generation to the next.

In Who Am I, I share what it was like to grow up in a house where silence was survival and names felt more like labels than identities. I reflect on my parents—Sarah and Charles—not just as the people who brought me into the world, but as products of their own wounded histories. Their violence, their absence, their silence—those were some of my first teachers.

I talk about the names I’ve carried: Daniel Charles Tate, the one I was given. Daniel Mateo Reyes, the one I would one day claim. Both names tell part of the story, but neither fully defines me. What defines me is the choice to question. To confront. To write.

There’s pain in this chapter, but also a strange kind of power—because naming the pain is the first act of reclaiming your story.

If you’ve ever questioned where you come from, or whether you’re allowed to grow beyond the place you started, this chapter is for you.

I invite you to read with an open heart—and maybe even ask the same question for yourself: Who are you, really?

— Daniel

🔗 Follow along as I share each chapter, reflection, and piece of this journey. Your story matters, too—and maybe together, we’ll begin to see the threads that connect us all.

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