Most of you know the story of our amazing daughter and how bravely she walks through the world being true to herself. You know how she uses her voice (and taught us about using ours) to make it safer for everyone to be their authentic selves. She has taught us about what is real and what actually matters.

She’s been telling us for about 9 months now that she wished she had a prettier name, and that grew into some anxiety this month with having a boy in her class named Lincoln.

This weekend she asked us to remind her about the other names we had chosen for her when she was in my belly. We had chosen Savannah as a girl name six years ago, but after that first ultrasound, we thought we wouldn’t need it. This is the kid that keeps us on our toes, though.

She spent the rest of this past weekend asking us to call her Savannah, making a tally sheet to give us gold checks for using the name and blue X’s for forgetting. She practiced writing her new name over and over and asked us to explain it to her teachers and friends. She told me when she went to bed that she couldn’t wait to see her “real name,” on her locker and mailbox at school.

There will probably be haters who think Savannah is too young to make choice about who she is. They’ll say she may change her mind (she might, but I don’t see that as a big deal. I think we all change our minds in learning who we are.) The truth is anyone who chooses to get hateful or indignant about honoring trans kids have clearly never done any real research on the staggeringly high self-harm and suicide rates in transgender children. If they had, they would understand that making sure our child is supported is not just kind and respectful, it’s a matter of life and death.

I hope you’ll all help us welcome our little girl with her new name of Savannah Madison. She will light up like a Christmas tree if you use her name. And as always, thanks for honoring our child by respecting who she is and how she likes to be referred to.