Letter Thirty-Eight: Dear Academics in Suspended Adolescence

The life of an academic, whether you are in a liberal arts subject, medicine, or beyond, is rife with rejections, being underpaid, cruel comments disguised as feedback, a manufactured sense of urgency, and an instability for funding, for courses, for tenure, for location.

I can’t say those conditions bring out the best in anyone.

In fact, one could say, those are conditions that activate people’s fight/flight/freeze systems and color the world as less safe and the people around them as more dangerous. And what happens when people don’t feel safe and the world feels dangerous? The answer is certainly not know how to navigate relationships, power, and repair with a sense of maturity, kindness, and accountabilit

Letter Thirty-Two: Dear To Share or Not to Share a Mental Breakdown

Thank you for taking care of yourself and getting the support you need; it matters that you’re alive and here to write this down.

I think what’s most important about the decision to share or not to share is about what would be helpful to you and what your boundaries are.

Because it isn’t the case of you ‘have’ to tell everyone everything or you tell them nothing at all.

There’s lots of choices in between those two things.

Letter Thirteen: Dear On the Topic of Romance

The story we often tell ourselves about staying is that staying is the ingredient to finding a partner. It is the key to the fantasy of the picket fence house and a long term relationship and all that, and I relate to how deeply that can bury under our skin. But what really ‘counts’ as giving a place a good enough go when it comes to dating? What is the cut off point for risking that fantasy? What is ‘stable’ enough to sustain a partnership?

Letter Three: Dear A Stressed Out Partner of a Stressed Out Academic

Watching someone we love struggled and be stressed and feel helpless to change anything about that experience for them is one of the most human experiences. I want to start by making it so clear that your emotional reactions and responses to this season of your relation is so natural and human.