That my namesake is among the foremost Gestalt therapists in this country

I just received an email from someone who knows Joen Fagan and apparently found my blog posting from yesterday.

She said that in addition to being "among the foremost Gestalt therapists in this country", Dr. Fagan is "among the most intelligent people you would have ever met." She has had a following in Atlanta for years, was a professor at Georgia State, and has trained scores of psychotherapists.

Lastly she advised that I might want to be a little less flip about carrying her name. (And I so did not mean any disrespect).

Now that I know so much more about her, I'm blown away. It makes me wonder if my father knew more about her, maybe he had met her, or if he had just been so moved by the information he was reading - that he decided to give me her name.

Regardless, I hope anyone who reads this understands the pain and difficulty of being given a name by a man, my own father, who dies less than three weeks later. I was raised in Oklahoma with this unusual name, and although I knew I was named after someone, I have yet to meet anyone else who has ever heard of or has known someone with our name: Joen.

My father was 33 when he died from skin cancer. My mother was 28. They had been married only 6 years, had two children ages 5 and 3 and was pregnant with me when they found out that he had terminal cancer. That's why my mom told him he could name the baby whatever he wanted. His legacy was to name me Joen, as I now know, after an author of a textbook on Gestalt therapy that he was reading.

And now I know that my namesake is brilliant, highly respected, and is living in Atlanta, GA!