The Balancing Act: A Duoethnographic Study of How Two Strangers Helped Each Other Hold It Together through the Doctoral Process

The doctoral journey is not for the faint of heart. When you are in the middle of the journey and recognize that you are “the faint of heart,” do you push forward, or do you withdraw for some needed self-care? Yielding to these feelings could mean giving up our educational progress as well as personal academic dreams and career milestones. Similarly, blindly plowing forward could potentially result in physical, mental, and emotional health issues. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 9:11 that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” You quickly realize the doctoral journey is a slow race riddled with challenges and victories. Maintaining our emotional, mental, and spiritual health was critical to thriving in the process. This duoethnographic inquiry recounts the personal narrative of two Black female doctoral students as we initially navigated the doctoral journey independently and later developed a flourishing friendship/support system seemingly by chance. The emotional, mental, and spiritual support that we found in each other seemed to be by divine appointment.