About Me — Oakland Lightborn

My name is Oakland Lightborn, but that wasn’t always my name. For the first 35 years of my life I was a different person.

My mom and dad met through a mutual friend back in the late 80s. They don’t talk about that time much, but from what I can gather, they hit it off quick. It only took some basic math skills to figure out that I was born 5 months after the wedding. I wouldn’t say that finding out this information made me feel like a mistake, but I would say it made it clear that I was a surprise.

I was born in January of 1989 and brought into this world with my given name of “John Smith”. My parents told me I was named after my grandpa, my dad’s dad. Although my memories of him are few, I do remember his strength, his big hands and his big hugs. I was told that he was given the name “John Smith” when he came over on a boat from Lithuania or Poland, I’m not certain which one. It would be fun to find out with an Ancestry test one day…

Anyways, I share this part of my story because I think it really shaped who I was. As a first born, I was always a high achiever. I wanted to see my parents happy. That was difficult during my younger years as I watched their relationship struggle due to my dad’s alcoholism. I remember waking up to the yelling and watching out the window as he stormed off in his truck to who knows where. I remember wondering if he would even come back.

I don’t have many memories of my dad playing with me when I was young. The ones I have seem very spread out. Maybe we played catch once or shot a few hoops after the basketball hoop went up. I know from photos that he did play with me from time to time, but I can’t say any core memories were formed around these interactions.

The first time I can remember feeling the need to prove myself to him was when my parents signed me up for basketball. My dad and his brothers were tall, my dad being 6’ 3” and his 2 brothers being 6’4” and 6’7”. I was told that, because of this, I would also be tall and that would make me good at basketball. I don’t remember how it started for me, but I did grow an interest in the sport. I gave it a “shot” but I was not very good. I felt that I was not blessed with any fitness genes whatsoever. Even though my mom ran track in high school (she ran hurdles and even won a state championship), I lacked quite a bit in cardiovascular fitness compared to my counterparts and really struggled to get up and down the court. Because of this, I did not stay in basketball for long, maybe 2 or 3 seasons.

As I approached my 12th birthday, a new interest had formed. The city was building a skatepark up the road and I decided I wanted to learn how to ride a BMX bike. One thing that I really did enjoy at the time was riding my bike up and down the neighborhood streets. On my birthday, I received some money that I put towards a new BMX bike. It was a fresh start for me. I thought to myself “maybe this’ll be my thing. The thing I can be good at.” and ultimately, it did. I spent all my time and energy on BMX for the next 4–5 years. I wasn’t always the best, but I like to say that I could “hold my own”. It was at the skatepark that I started to learn how to be proud of myself.

I always enjoyed pushing myself to the limit. I can recall enjoying the challenge of a 40-yard dash “race you to that tree” with friends. My senior year of high school I decided to run on the track team. Although I was not very fast, I really enjoyed knowing I gave it my all in a race. There was something deeply satisfying in that. Track was another area of my life that I had learned to be proud of myself.

Running track put me on a tangential path toward fitness and health. I started to care about what I ate and started to pay attention to how I felt. In college, I joined the triathlon club and, for the first time in my life, started to get in shape. While at college, I lived across from the gym, so if I wasn’t swimming, cycling or running, I was in the gym. This was an enjoyable season for me because I was doing exactly what I wanted to do with my time, without anyone else’s opinion being a factor.

Fast forward a few short months after graduating from college and I meet the girl that would be my wife at a home group bible study full of ambitious 20 somethings.

Fast forward a year later and we would be preparing to have our first kid. I always wanted to be a dad, so I was the less scared of the two of us.

Fast forward 10 years later and we have 3 kids. A girl, another girl, and a boy. Things had gone well up to this point. We had started them out doing a hybrid-homeschooling but transitioned them to the local schools. We then entered; what I would consider our first season of turmoil. Covid happened, among quite a few other things, and my spouse and I decide to split.

Since then, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I started to see the truth of my own hang ups. My people pleasing. My tendency to cling to people, things, and circumstances that made me feel safe and brought a sense of security in my life. I learned about the type of situations I’m willing to stay in and the ones that I am not willing to. I came out of all this on the other side, feeling like a whole different person.

Jumping back a little bit in my story, it was during my teenage years that I had the biggest issue with my given name. I grew up dealing with the jokes and the references and as I was coming into my own personhood, I just didn’t like that I was given a name that could so easily be made into a joke. Also, as a white male, blonde hair, blue eyes, it just left me feeling I didn’t have a whole lot that was unique about myself. I went through a short season where I embraced it, in my own sort of way. I leaned fully into it and made it ironic. I put my name on my T-shirt at a BMX contest and even on the windshield of my car. At the time, this made it fun for me.

Behind all of that, I’ve always thought I would like to have a different name. One that felt more “me”. With the divorce and my personal transformation, it finally felt like the right time. I felt as if I was a caterpillar that had been wrapped up in a cocoon just long enough to make the transformation happen.

A few short weeks ago, I became Oakland Lightborn. It’s all still very new, but every time someone calls me Oakland, my soul smiles. Everything I have been through in my life up to this point has led me to this person you see before you today. And, needless to say, I’m proud of him.