Most people never stop to wonder if their name carries a secret. Yet names are more than labels; they can be keys. Hidden within them are guideposts to who we are becoming, clues to the deeper life mission our soul has been carrying all along.

The search for that life mission isn’t simple. It isn’t one lightning-bolt calling. It is often a slow unraveling, made up of small, medium, and large purposes: roles, seasons, and choices that each carry us one step closer to what we came here to live. Along the way, there are also hidden clues, markers we are born with that whisper of the essence we are here to embody. Our names, our birth dates (through numerology, astrology, and human design), the place and culture we are born into… even our greatest struggles. The messes we live through, become portals, each one carrying hints of the greater mission waiting to unfold.

For me, the unraveling began with my last name. When I married, I felt an unmistakable pull to keep “Bridges.” At the time, I justified it in a very practical way: I was a branding specialist, and it seemed smart to keep the professional brand I had built. What I didn’t realize then was that something deeper was nudging me.

It was only later, as I stepped into my own business, that the meaning of ‘Bridges’ began to reveal itself.

I saw how naturally I created structure and frameworks, guiding people, companies, and leaders through times of transformation. The name itself was describing what I did: helping people cross from one chapter into another.

But the story didn’t end there. It has only been in the last decade that I’ve begun to understand how my first name also carries a piece of my mission. In French, lien means “link,” connection; with the added e, liane becomes a vine, alive, flexible, and reaching upward; and in Chinese, lián evokes the lotus, rising from the mud into light, a symbol of awakening. This is the softer, more soulful side of my calling, the midwife energy that holds space for what is tender, sacred, and waiting to be born.

Now I see how both names belong together. The bridge provides structure, steadiness, and passage. The vine and lotus invite growth, resilience, and remembrance. Together, they embody not only the core of my work – guiding people through thresholds where endings become beginnings – but also the essence of how I do it, by balancing structure with soulful holding.

What strikes me most is how these guideposts have been there my entire life, encoded in my very name, but it has taken decades of living, unraveling, and remembering to truly see them. Even early on, I felt a strong pull to honor this truth. The universe was asking me to hold onto a soul-branding that ran far beyond logos or business cards, the brand of essence itself.

Our true brand is not what we market to the world, but what our soul has carried all along.

And I see this same truth in my work with clients. The paths they walk — their names, their origins and stories, their choices — often carry clues they may not recognize until years later. And like me, they come to realize that what once seemed practical or circumstantial was actually part of a larger design: stepping stones in the greater arc of their mission.

Your name, your story, your struggles have been carrying clues about your mission all along. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to unravel them. Sometimes the purposes we live each day seem small compared to the arc of a whole life, yet each one is essential. Together they weave the greater pattern of your life mission.

I’d love to hear what you know about yours. Share it in the comments if you feel called.

If this reflection resonated, you may also love the practices and spaces I share in my newsletter and gatherings. Consider joining the Radiant Sisterhood for a season, or come to a Soul Excursion — two ways to explore the guideposts of your own mission, in community.