About Anna Bach Liechty

For nearly thirty-five years, I was matriarch to a family of many names – a phenomenon sometimes confusing to others. My daughter Audrey used to joke, “This is my brother Bryan and this is my other brother Brian” (indicating first her genetic brother and then her step-brother). When we opened our home to foster daughter Debbie, we added yet another surname to the alphabet soup of our family circle. Through the years, adding spouses and birthing new life, we were proud of our ability to grow and expand, taking in new identities and forging a collective one. Like woven individual strands, our many lives formed a single bond called “family,” and I relished my personal identity as mother, grandmother, and auntie to the lot, affectionally known by so many monikers: Ann, Anna, Annie, Annalu, Mom, Momma, Mother, Grandma Ann, Grandma, Grams. I happily answered to all of those – and more.

When I began publishing my writing and also took on consultant roles as an educator, I felt I should use my legal, more formal, name, so I added the ending “a” back to Ann and inserted a middle initial for title pages and business cards. I felt, finally, a fully formed adult with a professional persona, as well as public, private, and personal ones. I thought I had “arrived” at my sense of self and never imagined further changes. However, after more than three decades of marriage, my beloved husband The Reverend Dr. Ronald W. Liechty had a severe stroke, lingered for over a year, then died. Grief ended my writing for a time, and I had already retired from teaching. The house was too big; the grandchildren were becoming adults and beginning families of their own. Suddenly, I needed to reimagine my life and my identity.

As I processed those lessons born of loss, I emerged wanting to embrace the years that remained. Letting go of the past, I auctioned much of my accumulated possessions, sold my home of thirty years, and remarried, moving 1600 miles to begin a new chapter. But in my late sixties, taking yet another man’s name as my own seemed inappropriate. So I returned to the name on my birth certificate, a symbolic recognition that who I am remained intact throughout life’s vicissitudes. Fortunately, The Reverend Dr. Julian Luther Page Foster, Jr. (my husband who simply goes by “Page”) recognizes that names are what we decide to use among the many options life provides.

So as I pick up writing again, the name of my blog changes slightly. Much of the writing I have published in the past is under the name “Liechty,” so I’ve kept that surname for continuity. Since I presently use the name my parents chose for me, I included Bach in my pen name as a flag, signifying the hard-won wisdom of a woman who has journeyed through a life of more than seven decades now. Daily, I realize that Life calls forth more of my “self” than I knew existed. For, in case you haven’t recognized it yet, life demands that we be transformers, finding in every ending a new beginning.