About My Name
The Journey to Reclaiming My Identity
My name is Gabriela. I was named after my father, Gabriel, an honor in my native Peruvian culture normally reserved for firstborn boys, which my parents thought I would be. It means “Hero of God; God gives me strength”. Most people knew my father as a pilot, a hard worker, a church deacon, and a community leader. I’d learn otherwise.
My earliest memory of my father is when I was three. After swimming in the Ucayali River with my parents and my older sister, the Amazonian sun began to set into the jungle. My mother wrapped my sister and me in towels over our wet bathing suits and tucked us between her and my father on his motorcycle. Surrounded by the orange sunset that seemed to touch all the heavens and the river, he made his way through the red dirt roads of Pucallpa. I felt the wind in my hair and between my toes and squealed with glee each time we lifted off the ground when he took the curves a little too fast. My sister hugged my waist while I gripped my father’s leather jacket, and he roared with laughter while my mother hit his shoulders to try and make him slow down. Into the wind, he yelled back, “Gabrielita, te gusta?” (Do you like it?)
“Siiiii!”
Shortly after, he took my pregnant mother, my siblings, and me from the terror of guerrilla and cartel warfare that drove our family from Peru and brought us to the United States, where my father had a job secured. He revealed his violence to me here.
While climbing trees, or playing manhunt in the rougher parts of Paterson, NJ, I’d hear him roar our names, “Gabriela!” We knew what was coming: he’d be waiting for us, sitting in the living room with the yardstick he used to hit us, for our weekly account of our wrongdoings that he kept track of in pages of his bible. Silence became my remedy from his brutality.
Sometimes, after I cleaned and dusted all the rooms as part of my daily chores, he would seek out areas I had missed and make me kneel on grains of uncooked rice while my family ate dinner. He’d grip his belt as a warning if I began to slouch from the hurt. I’d catch the glimmer in his eyes as he’d say, “Esto me va a doler mas a mi que te va doler a ti, Gabriela.” (This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.)
At night, after everyone was asleep, my bedroom door would creak open, and he’d step inside. His voice was soft, almost tender. “¿Gabrielita, estás despierta?” (Are you awake?) My stomach twisted into knots. This is where I learned to shut my senses off, to slip away into my mind, sinking deep into a fog. Where I forced my body into nothingness, to not feel what came next. Then, like in church, he would make me kneel and pray to a wrathful god for forgiveness, and command, “Gabriela, arrepiéntete.” (Repent.)
I’d whisper the words through choked tears, careful not to wake my sleeping siblings, but no god was listening. Just him.
I grew to hate my name. It was too feminine, too fancy, for the tomboy I was, and it was too close to my father. It never felt like it fit me properly. When people called me Gabriela, it felt uncomfortable, like an itchy sweater on my skin.
Throughout grade school, which had become my safe place, I asked my friends to call me Gabs or Gaby. Those brick buildings, filled with teachers and classmates, became my refuge. Learning was my escape from what was happening at home. But as life began to unravel, so did my ability to stay unnoticed. Rebelling against my father’s grip only made his threats more dangerous. No longer just against me, but against those I cared about. When he turned his attention toward a boy I had grown to love, I knew I had to act.
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My ability to compartmentalize my life and disappear into my mind, once sharp, began to slip away. A friend noticed and invited me to join a middle school girls’ counseling group. It was there that I finally spoke the truth — not just for me but for the boy. I told them what my father had been doing to me at night. The counselor contacted law enforcement, and my father was charged with sex offenses and endangering the welfare of children. He was sentenced to probation, but when he violated it, he was arrested and deported.
Nearly twenty years passed, and the pandemic was finally over. I was on the dance floor at my friend’s bachelorette party when my phone buzzed — a message from my cousin in Peru. “Ñañita Gaby, tu papa murio.” My father was dead. Apparently, he tripped, hit his head on a prison sink, and cracked it open. That once formidable force in my life died in a whimper. At that point, he was serving the end of a sixteen-year prison sentence somewhere in South America. The only time he properly paid for his crimes.
And just like that, the old familiar fog returned — that nightmare state. This time, I embraced it and let it wrap around me, shielding me in that numbness I knew well. My monster, my namesake, was dead.
Under the red strobe lights, I danced in that protective haze until my feet were numb and my hair a knotted mess. A man grabbed me by the waist and tried to pull me in to dance with him. I met his gaze, cupped his cheek like a child’s, shook it, and smacked him away. My body buzzed with adrenaline. No sadness. No tears. Just the beat of the music pulsed through me.
By then, I had learned that he had been a narco-trafficante — a pilot for a cartel — who had evaded justice in our home country. Once back, the pull of his old life proved too strong. He returned to his cartel ways and was eventually caught and imprisoned for drug trafficking. My siblings and I had a little ceremony to try to release my father in good faith.
We searched for understanding, piecing together fragments of his life from different sources — psychiatric reports diagnosing him as a psychopath, stories from people who knew him, and his devotion to my mother. At her urging, he had left that world, uprooting us in search of safety.
But the weight of it all lingered. Life felt heavy, and I often found myself back in that disconnected haze I had been in since his death.
“Gabs, you need to get away somewhere fun,” a friend encouraged me. The thought of adventure latched onto me. It felt so distant from my detachment, where my fulfilling career, my devoted family, my amazing friends — my entire routine — held my life together, kept it from crumbling. Then work sent me traveling, and suddenly, the chance to escape was right in front of me. I needed to shake myself awake. So, we booked a trip to Cancun. While on one of the group tours, we visited a beautiful cenote. The tour guide said to the group, “Jump only if you are brave enough.” Then he turned to look at me and said, “Gabriela (as was written on my passport), are you gonna do it?” I stepped to the edge of the platform, the crystal water looked inviting, but I couldn’t see the bottom.
I plunged in.
Electricity jolted through my body as I hit the water’s surface and felt life surge back into me. As I lay back to float, I soaked up the sunlight shining through the cave. That light, that view, me immersed in that water, filled my spirit with something holy. Hero of god, god, gives me strength. A baptism. I released a heaviness as I looked at the sun rays through the rock and vine. I could taste my tears, mixed with the agua dulce (sweet water), while swimming in those healing waters, a thousand miles from home.
Later that night, during dinner at the hotel, I made friends with fellow travelers and introduced myself. “Gabriela,” I said in Spanish, rolling my r. I said it with ease, a secret released.
When I returned home from the trip, I signed up for motorcycle classes, and for the first time, I wrote my name with no hesitation: Gabriela Pirro.
