My mother begged me not to.

“Think of your book,” she said. “You’ve dreamed of seeing your name in print, not his.”

He was sitting next to me. We were in a coffee shop in Indiana, about to get married. A waitress in a little brown half apron refilled our coffees.

For each of her three marriages, my mother changed her name. Each time, going back to her maiden name only to begin again. My stepfather, the third husband, agreed.

“Think of your book,” he echoed. My future husband stared down into his coffee.

Not changing my name would safeguard me from the inevitable divorce. I was livid, and I insisted that I would change my name. I wanted to publish a book, true, but the name could have read Grunkelfink S. Pooter for all I cared. I wanted to write and publish a book, not see my name in big letters. I had a printer. I could do that myself.

I announced to my in-laws and everyone relevant that I would most certainly be changing my name, gaining an extra syllable, becoming a family unit with my husband-to-be. That was until I panicked, not about love but identity.

Change my checkbook, credit cards, social security card, library card, Safeway card, passport? Where would my maiden me go? Absorbed in Mrs. Levine. My identity, changed. I loved him, but I just couldn’t. Two weeks before our marriage, I changed my mind about changing my name, and six years later my in-laws still don’t know. They send us mail addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Levine. First Secret, Revealed.

In this publication, that’s who I will be. Mrs. Levine. If you would like some privacy, too, feel free to do the same—married or maiden, daughter or wife. This is a place for women to be who they are, like superheroes cloaked in “ordinary” names to conceal the bold beneath. Give yourself the cover that feels safe because in these pages we will divulge what we previously only whispered. Ladies, be brave! I will, too. Together we will figure out how we want marriage to work, not the way we are told it should be. We may find happily ever after at the bottom of two martini glasses or taking out the trash, but we will find it. Whisper. Scream. Sing. These pages are as much yours as they are mine.