Cat’s outta the bag. I named my daughter CBD. Okay, so maybe not literally, but her initials are CBD on purpose. Let me explain.
Almost a decade ago I found myself working my dream job on the editorial team at CULTURE Magazine. My boyfriend at the time, a heavy metal drummer, was traveling across the country on a U.S. tour, so I was holding down the fort at home with our two dogs.
I was never the best about tracking my time of the month, so to speak, and during one of our “I miss you dearly” phone calls, my boyfriend (who is now my husband) once again brought up the fact that it seemed like my period might be late. Likely in denial, I brushed it off, went home and smoked a joint, with his suggestion burning in my brain.
The next day at work, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I decided to buy a pregnancy test, but in all honesty, it just felt wrong to take it at work. So, instead, during a trip to buy supplies at a local Staples store, I took the test in the bathroom there. It was probably still a weird choice, but I couldn’t wait until I got home. Low and behold — I was pregnant.
It’s a Girl
Months flew by, and I found myself 20 weeks pregnant with my first child. As any formerly or currently pregnant person knows, you have a ton of doctor appointments. I was so excited that my next appointment would be the one where we could finally determine the sex of the baby. I came to find out that we were expecting a daughter. I wasn’t disappointed at all. I was excited.
It was a decade ago, and gender reveals weren’t really a big thing yet, thank god, because really… it can be a little problematic in two senses: Sex doesn’t determine gender in the long run, and also, have you seen the wildfires that have been started from shotty gender reveal antics? Anyway, we were elated to be having a girl.
Besides buying pink baby stuff and imagining what she’d look like, one of the more exciting aspects of being pregnant was coming up with a name.
CBD as a Perfectly Suitable Name
My husband and I had a hard time coming up with a name for our daughter. I didn’t want to name her something with unique spelling due to some random article I had read about how names are perceived on job applications as an adult… And we also had a hard time associating some really beautiful names with people in our past that we didn’t particularly like or didn’t want to be reminded about.
So one night we were watching a movie about a protagonist named Charlie. She was a gorgeous, badass zombie-fighting young woman who just had all the energy of a strong female. Charlie was her nickname, and her name was Charlotte. We both looked at each other watching it one night, and we knew — Charlotte would be a great name. It was classic, beautiful, and damn, we could even call her Charlie as a nickname. How cute is that?
The next morning we were walking our dogs in the local downtown area, and I shit you not — there was a sign on a building announcing that a new restaurant was coming to town. Its name, you ask? Charli’s! It seriously felt like a sign.
The Middle Name
So, fate was telling us to name her Charlotte. And her last name starts with a D. So, middle-name-time-decision came along. Although we considered meaningful family names as a middle name, ultimately we decided to go with another meaningful name that started with a “B” — fully aware that it would cause her initials to be CBD.
Final Thoughts
As I’ve mentioned in one of my
, at this time, CBD was just starting to gain attention in the mainstream media. It still kind of felt like a secret, something behind the scenes. But I believed in its power. Cannabis magazines like the one I worked for were interviewing families of children whose lives were being completely changed by CBD. It was mind blowing, and it was some of the most encouraging content I’ve created.At the time, did I know that CBD would gain the notoriety that it has today? Hell no. Do I regret lining up my daughter’s initials with one of the most notorious healing cannabinoids of weed? Definitely not. After all, which other kids get the pleasure of seeing their initials promoted on every street corner? She loves it.