©2025 Samantha Syrnich — All Rights Reserved
There was a time
when my name was shaped
by other people’s stories—
their hands,
their shadows,
their versions of who I was
or who I should have been.
But names are not prisons.
They are promises.
And one day,
I rose from every lie ever laid on me
and whispered my own truth
into the quiet.
It was small at first—
a spark,
a seed,
a fragile syllable of becoming.
But it grew.
It glowed.
It began to gather all the pieces of me
that were waiting to be claimed.
My name became a place
I could finally live inside
without shrinking,
without apologizing,
without folding myself
into shapes that hurt to hold.
Now, when I speak it,
it carries my scars,
my victories,
my softness,
my rise.
It carries the woman I fought to become.
And for the first time in my life,
my name means something—
because I am the one
who defined it.
— Samantha Syrnich
The Phoenix Quill: Words Born of Fire, Inked in Truth 