Pearl– What’s in a Name?

I started using “Pearl” for my musician last name long before I realized how serendipitous that choice would be.

My brother suggested the short, simple word, the birthstone for my birth month (June), over a decade ago as I was seeking a brief stage name easier to spell and pronounce than our given last name. I wasn’t initially enamored by it— it reminded me of the Grand Ole Opry’s Minnie Pearl with the silly price tag hanging off of her hat, not evoking the sophisticated jazzy vibe I was hoping for. I couldn’t think of anything better, so I decided to go with it until I found something more fitting–or until it grew on me–which it eventually did.

Looking back, it couldn’t have been a more perfect choice as it foreshadowed two themes that would emerge later in my life’s path: Heart-based healing and water. Thanks bro!

Heart-based healing

A pearl is created when an oyster slowly transforms an uninvited grain of sand—a wound—into something luminous. It is a great metaphor for healing.

I had long used my songwriting process to transform wounds. Deeper connections emerged as I learned about the importance of heart coherence through the work of HeartMath, Joe Dispenza, and others, and discovered that the pearl is itself a symbol for the heart in many spiritual traditions.

My focus on improvising from flow states, achieved through deep heart coherence, deepens this connection. The pearl, symbol for the heart, points to the source of all healing. 

Water

I was already a water resources professional when I chose the name Pearl, yet the deeper significance of water in healing work only became clear later.

I learned that water is a metaphor for emotions, that emotions live in the body, and that embodiment practice plays a critical role in healing trauma— insights drawn from the work of Candace Pert, Bessel van der Kolke and others.

The tie between improvising from maximally embodied or “flow states” and water is clear. Furthermore, water (as well as the pearl itself) is associated with the qualities of the sacred feminine which includes embodiment as one of its most powerful expressions.