Hi, allow me to introduce myself, my name is Marie Stephanie. For the past 7 years I’ve been using the last four letters of my name (Anie) as a sort of pseudonym. It’s all me, but I felt that “Stephanie” never quite fit, so I went with Anie. But for the past couple of years it hasn’t been sitting well with me and I’ve been struggling to keep myself from being flattened by the singular function that social media demands that we diminish ourselves into. 

I started doing poetry on aniehart, and when I tried to expand it to include photography (since I also have a degree in photography) I felt it didn’t fit and so I created AnieHartPhotography. When I started reading more I felt it would take over Aniehart so I created litt.bok to only post book content there. And before I knew it I was 5 accounts deep. One for my friends, one for my dog, and about to start another. I felt so fragmented and I got lost in adding accounts to fill the voids of my spirit. So this is it. A reboot. Kind of. 

I found my dad’s old family tree leading all the way back to the 1600’s! And I found my ancestors often reused names, and right there it was – Marie. My great grandmother. She survived three husbands and handled the farm all by herself as a single mother. I feel a kinship with her and a connection to where I come from and decided to stop hiding behind Anie. When I was born, my mother said she gave me her name – Marie and had it removed from her own name – hers was Lourdes Marie. So I am the third Marie on both sides of the family and every other child born female into our family has gotten the name Marie since. Including my daughter. So I have to ask – why is it only men that get the roman numerals? I am claiming mine as Marie III – Marie the third, and the heiress of the farm.

I am not going to flatten myself anymore and I refuse to try and fit into any social media bubble or any other one dimensional space. And after 7 years, what a perfect way to start anew – since rumor has it in 7 years, every single cell in our body will have been replaced by a different cell and essentially make us completely new people!

I will have opinions. I will care about many things. I will be excited by a variety of curiosities. I will take pictures of anything I find interesting. I will read books and share my views on them. I will write poetry. I’ll gush about my daughter. And my dog. And I will share it all. I will reclaim the space that has been forcing us to shed pieces of ourselves to better sell ourselves as products. I am not a product and refuse to treat myself as one. I hope you’ll follow along. I hope you’ll reclaim your space too. I can’t wait to get to know you better!