You learn a lot about law when you get a divorce. One of the lessons I learned was that you could not just go back to your maiden name unless it was part of the divorce.

If I hadn’t mentioned in passing to my attorney that I was going to use my maiden name I would still be stuck with his.  Being stuck with his name would have been a constant reminder of the life I had lived, a life I wanted to put behind me.

Becoming Nancy Salamone again allowed me to emotionally break my ties to him and begin the new life I wanted to create for myself, a life without violence and the freedom to make my own choices. The last sentence of my divorce “Ordered, Adjudged, and Decreed, that the plaintiff (that was me) may resume her maiden name, to wit Salamone” was for me an important part of the divorce.

In fact, I felt like I was being born again. Salamone was my old name but Nancy Salamone with the divorce decree I was born again and went from victim to survivor, to thriver.

Old name-new life and new person…..