What’s in a Maaxa?

Macha’s name is pronounced, “Mahka,” with an aspirated “ch” like the German "Bach" or the Scottish "loch." I represent it with an “x”. https://historycooperative.org/macha/

In the wake of tragedy, I dug down to my foundations. I am a person who has always felt lost, as an adoptee, as someone has lived in-between who I am and who I am supposed to be. After finding my birth mother, I’ve opened up a life I can’t fully envision yet. I’ve given myself a new last name to mark the change.

Macha is a goddess of war, of the fields, of earth and land, crowned by long auburn hair that whips wild in the winds of the Irish countryside. Her loveless husband, a settler landlord, has betrayed her, offered her up to his master, the settler king. Together, they have forced her to run a marathon against a herd of horses. Macha wins the race but collapses at the finish line: there, in great pain, she gives birth to a pair of enchanted twins.

Macha will never again submit to humiliation, to allow them to put her babies at risk. She curses nine generations of men, so that when they are experiencing their greatest personal hardship, they will suffer the weakness of a woman in childbirth. Macha, friend of the crows, guardian of the fertile plains of her homeland, is a protector and provider. Alongside her two sisters, the Morrigan goddesses at the heart of the Irish way of being, she will never stand down again. I chose her name as my own in 2022.

I was told that my first mother relinquished me at birth, that she did not want to hold or bond with me, that at her call, the nurses in the unwed mother’s ward in Newark passed me to the nuns, who passed me to a childless couple from Iowa. I have been adrift from infancy, searching for my name, my identity. I know that my adopted younger brother, brought into the family through the nuns a few years later, also felt hopelessly lost. At Christmastime 2022, he died a death of despair. Adoptees experience suicide at four times the rate of the general population. I am telling you, it is the lost-ness that settles deep in our bones, a topic I am currently writing a book about. In recent years, the trauma surrounding adoption has come to light through the work of researchers and activists who put names to it: relinquishment trauma, genetic bewilderment, identity disturbance.

In my bereavement, I chose to change my adopted last name from Neff to something independent: something that sounded right to me. Although my adoptive family was half Irish, I knew that my birth parents were of nearly all Irish heritage. In my two weeks as an infant at the orphanage in Newark, the nuns called me Colleen for my red hair and green eyes. I worked with my longtime therapist, my tween son, and some friends who know Irish folklore intimately to choose a name that would inspire me to strength, independence, rebirth. After all, I had studied folklore as a graduate student and went on to get my doctorate in Anthropology. I know how important songs and stories are in guiding us through personal and social transformation.

A year ago, after taking a deep dive into Irish cosmology and choosing my new last name, Maaxa, I took a genetic test, which led me to finding my birth mother, who had been waiting for me with open arms my whole life. She is a longtime professor of Irish folklore: in fact, we were both brought into the field by my academic mentor, Bill Ferris, who had discovered her work as a professional singer of Irish folk sings shortly after my birth. She told me that she held me for three full days in the hospital ward in Newark until she was forced, for lack of finances and support, to relinquish me in hopes I would come back to her as soon as I could. It took me 47 years.

Days after my brother’s death, while on bereavement leave, I received a call from the manager at my tech job informing me I had been chosen for layoff in our company’s acquisition. In my grieving, I was also faced with a serious personal crisis. I had already left the scorched fields of music journalism and academia for a lack of work; eight years later, the same was happening to my role in tech. Where do I belong?

Macha is the goddess of new life, of motherhood and of green fields waiting for cultivation. In 2023, I founded my own research consultancy, MaaxaLabs, which has been a welcome challenge. I love working for myself and being able to choose projects that are meaningful to me. Recently, I have also pivoted back to nonprofit work, this time leading a large public grant to empower underrepresented entrepreneurs in the Portland Metro region. This work aligns with my values. For the first time, I feel like myself all day long: when I awake from dreams, at work and at home with my amazing kid and poodle.

I am working on a book about lost-ness, about adoptees and their in-betweenness, and about the guiding global figure of the mermaid and other halfway people, who teach us to live beautifully when our identities are in flux. Read more on this work here.

I love the feel of my new last name, of the way it sounds right when I use it as a DJ, as a writer, a mom, neighbor, a worker. This integration is essential to my healing. That healing is what it’s all about.