Naming Our Daughter
Shortly after Kara and I first met, we had a conversation with our friend Christine and she had mentioned to us that she didn’t feel like she named her children—but her children chose their names before they were even born. I know how this might sound to some, but as I was hearing Christine talk about this experience, something deep in me jumped and I really resonated with every word.
When we left Christine’s house, Kara had expressed to me that she felt the same way and I couldn’t help but to smile. (Kara didn’t know it at the time, but I already fully knew I planned on making babies with her 🥰 )
Fast forward a couple of years and when Kara and I found out that we were expecting, we both remembered our conversation with Christine and we agreed that we didn’t just want to name our child—we wanted to create the space for our child to pick his or her name.
If I’m being honest, we didn’t have any idea what this looked like or how to create the space for it—but we were open to the idea.
Later on in the pregnancy and after we found out that we were having a girl, Kara and I were throwing names like a dart and trying to feel if any of them would stick—but none of them did. As much as we wanted certain names to work, they just didn’t feel right and we knew that. We soon found ourselves getting slightly discouraged and frustrated and we both knew that this wasn’t the energy that we wanted to bring into this conversation so we decided to press pause and stop talking about for the time being and revisit it when it felt right.
As we were getting ready to go on with our day, Kara abruptly paused, looked back at me and with a smile on her face—said one more name. As soon as she said it, goosebumps covered my body and I immediately knew that our daughter had just chosen her name. We both looked at each other, now with tears, and yelled an emphatic, YES!
And that was the moment we knew that our daughter chose the name Sophie London Campbell.
I have no idea why my daughter chose this name, but as Kara and I talked more about it, it became clear just how spiritual, sacred and special this name meant to us.
The name Sophie runs in my family (my great grandmother on my mom’s side) but I also have always LOVED the name Sophie—mainly because it means Wisdom. (More on this later, but my astrologist friend, Melissa Perez, looked up Sophie’s chart and based on her chart’s configuration—it makes complete sense.)
And Sophie’s middle name, London, couldn’t be more perfect—and here’s why.
On our first date, Kara and I talked about the different seasons of life that lead each of us to Los Angeles and as Kara was telling me more of her story, she had mentioned that she had actually broken up with Los Angeles and moved to London for a season. Kara recently wrote about this in an Instagram Post, but essentially Kara broke up with Los Angeles but in reality—she was trying to break up with her life. And it was in London that she had met the deeply buried disappointments around the unmet expectations of her life head on.
Kara would tell you that it was in London that the parts of her life that she needed to let go of but was still holding onto were finally grieved and released.
Kara goes on to say:
It didn’t make sense at the time — but looking back it’s clear that it was in London that I created the space to invite in what the deepest part of my soul longed for. Now we’re here—and I’m holding Sophie London—who is a representation of what’s available when we lean in. Now, I’m married to a life that is beyond and bigger than anything I could have ever imagined.
In so many ways, Kara couldn’t help but to feel like she had missed ‘it’. The life she so deeply wanted and the love she wanted to experience had passed her by—and she was doing the hard work of accepting this reality.
For anyone who has done grief work around your life, then you know it’s a challenging season of life but it’s in the grief—the letting go and the surrendering—that we create the space for what is trying to come into our life.
I didn’t know Kara at this time of her life, but hearing her share this part of her story with me made me fall even deeper in love with her. Ever since I met her, I knew she’s not only faced the deeper pain in her life, but she made a home in it for as long as she needed to and I’m so thankful that she said yes to her own journey and continues to say yes.
So to me—to us—Sophie London isn’t just a name.
Sophie London is the representation of what’s possible when we follow our heart’s wisdom that is leading us into our own surrender so that we can experience the new expansive life on the other side.
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If you’ve heard me talk about meeting Kara and falling in love with her then you probably have heard me mention that in my head, I messed up any chances of me every finding my soul partner in life. I messed it up 100x over. But when I met Kara and when my heart came alive the way that it did, it completely revolutionized the way that I see the goodness of God.
It was the first time that I really experienced the beautiful truth that we can’t run away from Love.
And now, every time I see my daughter, or hear her name, I’ll be reminded of the beauty of new life that comes on the other side of sacred wisdom of deep trust and surrender.