From Aliases to Authenticity: How Burnout Led Me Back to My Real Name at Fifty
SoulTech with Cynthia: New Episode with Aussie Spiritual Teacher Allura Halliwell
Cynthia L Elliott
3x Best-Selling Author, Inspirational Speaker, & Cultural Futurist
Five years ago, I hit a wall so profound it felt like the ground beneath my feet cracked open. Decades of masking - who I was, where I’d come from, the parts of me I kept hidden for survival - finally caught up. The burnout was epic, all-consuming, and, in hindsight, the greatest gift of my life.
It forced me into a deep healing and spiritual journey that stripped away everything that wasn’t mine. Along the way, I stepped into a new identity that would become a bridge to my truest self: Shaman Isis.
The Avatar That Saved Me
Shaman Isis wasn’t just a pen name or a spiritual brand. She was an avatar I desperately needed. After a lifetime on the run from human traffickers who had taken my sister and threatened my own life, I had never truly lived under my given name. Cynthia L. Elliott was the name on my birth certificate, but it hadn’t been mine in any real sense for over thirty years.
In college, I went on the run and started using aliases. Later I married and took my husband’s name. Even after our divorce fifteen years ago, I kept that married name—hiding in plain sight, always performing safety, always protecting the fragile peace I’d built. By the time burnout arrived, I was fifty years old and had never publicly lived as Cynthia L. Elliott.
Shaman Isis gave me permission to emerge. Through her, I could share the wisdom I was gathering—ancient teachings, energy work, shadow integration, sacred geometry, the blending of science and soul—without the terror that had kept the real me locked away. She allowed me to write, teach, and connect with thousands of you while I did the deepest work of my life: unlearning what didn’t belong to me, reclaiming what did, and healing the mind-body-soul wounds that trauma had carved so deeply.
Many of you noticed the shift in 2024. The name change wasn’t impulsive. It was the culmination of years of shadow work, energy healing, and finally feeling safe enough in my own skin—and in this world—to step forward as myself.
A new episode of SoulTech with Cynthia just dropped! My special guest is consciousness advocate Allura Halliwell. We talk consciousness, healing, awakenings, and so much more. Listen on Apple, Spotify & YouTube.
Memory Mansion: The Rooms That Held Me
I wrote about this wild journey in my memoir, Memory Mansion. As a child in the orphanage and foster care system, I built an internal palace in my mind—room after room where I stored memories too heavy, too dangerous, or too beautiful to carry in the open. That mansion kept me alive. Writing the book was like walking through those rooms with a lantern, deciding what to keep, what to release, and what to finally claim as mine.
Coming home to my real name felt like walking out of that mansion into daylight. It was terrifying. It was liberating. It was the moment I stopped running and started becoming.
You Don’t Need Permission to Become
Here’s what I want you to hear, especially if you’re carrying your own masks, old names, old selves, or versions of you that no longer fit:
You don’t need anyone’s permission to become the self you never got the chance to be.
An avatar, a pen name, a spiritual alias, even a legal name change—these are not acts of deception. They are acts of courageous becoming. They can be incredibly adventurous and profoundly safe containers for growth. They give you space to experiment, to speak truths you couldn’t voice otherwise, to heal without the weight of your past staring back at you from every document or social profile.
I see so many women (and men) trapped in identities that were assigned to them by trauma, family expectations, marriages, careers, or survival strategies. If that’s you, know this:
Burnout can be the beginning, not the end.
The avatar you create might be the bridge to your most authentic self.
When you’re ready, you can lay the avatar down and step fully into who you are now.
And you never, ever need permission to do it.
The journey from hiding to wholeness is rarely linear. It’s messy, sacred, and worth every tear, every identity shift, every brave post under a new name. My path led me from aliases forged in fear, through Shaman Isis forged in healing, to Cynthia L. Elliott—finally spoken aloud, finally lived in public.
Where I Am Now
Today I carry all of it. The survival aliases taught me resilience. Shaman Isis taught me how to channel wisdom and hold space for transformation. And Cynthia L. Elliott? She’s the one speaking to you, building the SoulTech movement, producing events like the Her Health Summit, and continuing to blend ancient wisdom with modern tools so that others can awaken faster and safer than I did.
If you’ve been thinking about your own name change, brand refresh, pen name, or simply shedding an old identity, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What are you becoming? What avatar or name has helped you heal or grow?
We’re all in this together - room by room, name by name, becoming by becoming.
With love and sovereignty,
Regards,
Cynthia
3x Best-Selling author, Cynthia L. Elliott, is the founder of the SoulTech AI Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supporting underserved communities in the age of artificial intelligence, and the author of SoulTech: 12 Codes for Awakening Your Higher Self.
