In the recurring theme of Big Changes to my life, exorcising the little “i” from my first name didn’t seem like a particularly dramatic one. Born “Katherine Ann Gordon Wheeler,” I had always gone by a nickname anyway. But strangely, it proved to be more difficult than I thought. Whenever I asked someone to call me by the shortened name, I was always holding back, “But no problem if you don’t want to!” I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but … wasn’t it a big deal? I was asking for what I needed, and for me that was a little revolutionary.
