When I was young, my grandmother told me what my name meant.

“Felicia,” she said, “means happiness.”

At the time, I didn’t understand how a single word could hold so much

but something in me awakened.

It was the beginning of my love affair with true language. The expressions used to connect.  Not just the way we speak, but the way meaning moves through us. The way one word can shift the energy in a room. The way we can feel seen

or erased... 

depending on how we’re spoken to… or not spoken to at all.

As I grew, I learned that expression wasn’t just about talking. It was about survival. About shaping reality. About finding new ways to feel whole in a world that felt broken.

Happiness, for me, isn’t surface-level. It’s sacred. It’s choice. It’s learning to see value in places where no one was looking. It’s believing we can be more than the stories we’ve inherited.

The systems taught me that only certain people, certain names, certain lives were worthy of celebration. But I’ve made it my mission to rewrite that story 

for myself, and for others.

Because we each carry meaning. We each carry light. And maybe, just maybe, remembering who we truly are… begins with remembering what our name was always trying to tell us.