Congratulations! You have done so well for yourself! Many kudos!
And may I just say that as someone who just achieved full professor - the highest bar in academia - and no one seems to care, that we always need to congratulate the fuck out of ourselves!
Congratulations on making full professor! As my dad, a full professor, used to say, "I'd have to commit a felony for them to fire me." For better or for worse, that's job security!
Guy who used to be my favorite professor in seminary (you read that right) was a tenured full professor who got his ass fired, and I promise you I shudder to think what he did and I know exactly what he did. But Congratulations to Michelle from an old faculty brat who used to want to be in academia but who's getting her teaching rocks off in progressive Christian Sunday School and who taught Opera appreciation in a college for lifelong learning. Oops, this is all about m e, and I genuinely want to congratulate Michelle, because academia is truly hard, and becoming a full professor is scathingly hard. Good job Michelle!
YAAAAAY! Here's to the end of wild uncertainty (just the domesticated kind remains) and getting to be that prof celebrating the fuck out of all the students whose lives you'll be enriching with wild and near-felonious revelry!
This is great. I just started going out with a guy who is similarly kind and communicative about his feelings. After a lifetime of chasing emotionally constipated guys, it's weird! But I feel like I'm ready for it, and this letter is helping me prepare for the inevitable wobbles. So thank you, BWBB, and congratulations!
There's not enough writing about cold feet and doubts because we'd rather live inside the fantasy that these things only exist when your relationship is fucked. I've had a complete lack of doubts with people I was chasing (who were wrong for me!) and a lot of doubts plaguing me with great people who stood still and loved me like crazy. The truth is, it's hard for some of us to accept and embrace love, to show up for it and stand still for it and tolerate it. It's hard when someone is looking straight at you, because it means you have to look at yourself, too. Far easier to chase and be partially ignored than to show up for intimacy and *bring yourself along* with all of your flaws and fears. Congratulations on looking with clear eyes at where you are, and trying to welcome love even when it feels unfamiliar! xoxox
I NEEDED this...saved it for the new year. I have a wonderful husband now (Polly, I wrote to you about thinking my boyfriend was in love with his co-worker...this is that same man) and I still have doubts. Like, I love to write and read and think about the details ALL THE TIME and he's not like that at all. He's practical, an engineer, and knows how to emotionally remove himself from a situation when he needs to. The complete opposite. So I thought he was wrong for me for a long time and tried to run. But he's oh so good for me and we have fun together and we argue but we love and support each other and it's never easy no matter what. Thank you.
Me too! I’m almost three months in with someone who seems…actually into me and nice and trustworthy and kind and sexy and I squirm with doubt all the time because these things don’t happen to me. Yet it seems to be? Congratulations to us, too!💝
BWBB wooooh, congratulations!!!! This was a beautiful letter, and I don’t know you but I’m so happy for you!!! Your letter made me smile and it also gives me hope. I’m nursing a broken heart right now and the guy I was seeing checked so many boxes but just didn’t love me like that and I’ve been distraught but your letter gives me hope that there are lovely men out there for me, that we can all learn from our past to our benefit and that we are all imperfect and beautiful. Congratulations!!!!!
I could have written your comment as part of my own. Thank you for voicing that part of what I’ve been feeling and felt by reading his letter to Polly.
OMG, I am crying, BWBB!!! Congratulations is not strong enough a word to express how your letter and Polly's answer have cracked my heart open W-I-I-I-I-I-D-E and brought me to my knees. You are a top-notch inspiration and I am grateful to know your story, especially going into the New Year during this crazy time. Thank you!
talk about a champ! congratulations BWBB!!! i admire how generously you accept and embrace parts of yourself that we are conditioned to be ashamed of — and how you’ve made your own unique winding twisting path to happiness in the most unexpected ways. it inspires me to know that it’s possible for sensitive, intense weirdos like us. it looks like every time the universe pulled the rug out from under your feet, you just rolled with it. you are amazing for doing your very best — each effort a huge victory whether you fell short or exceeded your own expectations with flying colors ❤️ (and thank you heather for this beautiful beautiful piece, for always making us readers feel so seen and accepted and worthy in all our inadequacies and ambivalences, every single time)
Congratulations! I appreciate the fuck out of you for what you wrote and what you did. I feel inspired and validated. I have come to realize that I probably couldn't have lasted in a relationship where my husband was creative and expressive the same way I was. That would have evoked my competitive nature (which is not my friend when it comes to relationships). Instead we get to experience a mutual respect, appreciation and supportiveness that might not have been there otherwise.
Yes! Understanding what makes sense for you -- and how much you've benefitted from your choice -- is so important. It's easy to think a spouse should be allllll of the things. But no one person can be everything. Recognizing that also enforces how important it is to fill out your life with close friendships with creative weirdos. You can feel secure, and not competitive, and also have fun with people who match you closely. Anyway, congratulations on all of this!
"Eventually I finally realized—and forgave—that I was a deeply distorted, self-absorbed person and that I was projecting my own insecurities on him."
BWBB—this is HUGE. Congratulations! I very much relate to this and have realized the extent to which I do the same, spiraling down thought patterns of whether my partner is "enough" for me when I can be enough for myself. Absolutely loved reading about your flourishing journey, thank you for sharing with us!
Thank you for writing this letter, BWBB!! I am so heartened at the end of such a hard year to hear the story of someone with the wisdom to find and embrace happiness despite their fraught upbringing and their “absurd choices” and delusions (who hasn’t made such choices or nursed such delusions?). Ten thousand congratulations to you and your beloved!!
A thousand congratulations for building such a warm and wonderful relationship, and many many congratulations for breaking up with academia too. I am an academic and I know so many colleagues who have supposedly “beaten” the job market but are still unhappy, insecure, working all the time, and deeply disillusioned with what their “golden ticket” turned out to be. It’s a hard job to be happy in. I cheer when I see people turning their backs to do other, important, life-affirming things. Here’s to you, your present and your future!
CONGRATS BWBB!! As a fellow former grad student, I am so amazed at how you are still managing to publish while making a living in a way that sounds really fun and meaningful. You deserve all the kudos.
THANK YOU FOR THIS - and congratulations!!! Thank you for sharing your amazing life, and the hall of mirrors it can be to get there, and that things can be imperfect but still lead to good things! The “twisting, ambivalent paths” can really be confusing. But you know what? It sounds like you’ve found your way, and if you can, maybe I can. 💪 Congratulations!!
Congratulations BWBB! You sound like a wonderful, thoughtful, kind person. I hope you and your husband have a great New Year and many many many wonderful years to come.
Congratulations! You have done so well for yourself! Many kudos!
And may I just say that as someone who just achieved full professor - the highest bar in academia - and no one seems to care, that we always need to congratulate the fuck out of ourselves!
Congratulations on making full professor! As my dad, a full professor, used to say, "I'd have to commit a felony for them to fire me." For better or for worse, that's job security!
Guy who used to be my favorite professor in seminary (you read that right) was a tenured full professor who got his ass fired, and I promise you I shudder to think what he did and I know exactly what he did. But Congratulations to Michelle from an old faculty brat who used to want to be in academia but who's getting her teaching rocks off in progressive Christian Sunday School and who taught Opera appreciation in a college for lifelong learning. Oops, this is all about m e, and I genuinely want to congratulate Michelle, because academia is truly hard, and becoming a full professor is scathingly hard. Good job Michelle!
Congratulations, Michelle! That's an awesome achievement. Academia is hard - well done for making it!
Many congratulations to you, too!
YAAAAAY! Here's to the end of wild uncertainty (just the domesticated kind remains) and getting to be that prof celebrating the fuck out of all the students whose lives you'll be enriching with wild and near-felonious revelry!
CONGRATULATIONS Michelle!!!
Hey, congrats on that huge achievement! I hope you have many many years of cool students and lively discussions :)
This is great. I just started going out with a guy who is similarly kind and communicative about his feelings. After a lifetime of chasing emotionally constipated guys, it's weird! But I feel like I'm ready for it, and this letter is helping me prepare for the inevitable wobbles. So thank you, BWBB, and congratulations!
There's not enough writing about cold feet and doubts because we'd rather live inside the fantasy that these things only exist when your relationship is fucked. I've had a complete lack of doubts with people I was chasing (who were wrong for me!) and a lot of doubts plaguing me with great people who stood still and loved me like crazy. The truth is, it's hard for some of us to accept and embrace love, to show up for it and stand still for it and tolerate it. It's hard when someone is looking straight at you, because it means you have to look at yourself, too. Far easier to chase and be partially ignored than to show up for intimacy and *bring yourself along* with all of your flaws and fears. Congratulations on looking with clear eyes at where you are, and trying to welcome love even when it feels unfamiliar! xoxox
I NEEDED this...saved it for the new year. I have a wonderful husband now (Polly, I wrote to you about thinking my boyfriend was in love with his co-worker...this is that same man) and I still have doubts. Like, I love to write and read and think about the details ALL THE TIME and he's not like that at all. He's practical, an engineer, and knows how to emotionally remove himself from a situation when he needs to. The complete opposite. So I thought he was wrong for me for a long time and tried to run. But he's oh so good for me and we have fun together and we argue but we love and support each other and it's never easy no matter what. Thank you.
Me too! I’m almost three months in with someone who seems…actually into me and nice and trustworthy and kind and sexy and I squirm with doubt all the time because these things don’t happen to me. Yet it seems to be? Congratulations to us, too!💝
That letter is amazing and inspiring and he deserves a Marcia Brady-worthy amount of plaques, trophies and ribbons.
BWBB wooooh, congratulations!!!! This was a beautiful letter, and I don’t know you but I’m so happy for you!!! Your letter made me smile and it also gives me hope. I’m nursing a broken heart right now and the guy I was seeing checked so many boxes but just didn’t love me like that and I’ve been distraught but your letter gives me hope that there are lovely men out there for me, that we can all learn from our past to our benefit and that we are all imperfect and beautiful. Congratulations!!!!!
I could have written your comment as part of my own. Thank you for voicing that part of what I’ve been feeling and felt by reading his letter to Polly.
OMG, I am crying, BWBB!!! Congratulations is not strong enough a word to express how your letter and Polly's answer have cracked my heart open W-I-I-I-I-I-D-E and brought me to my knees. You are a top-notch inspiration and I am grateful to know your story, especially going into the New Year during this crazy time. Thank you!
talk about a champ! congratulations BWBB!!! i admire how generously you accept and embrace parts of yourself that we are conditioned to be ashamed of — and how you’ve made your own unique winding twisting path to happiness in the most unexpected ways. it inspires me to know that it’s possible for sensitive, intense weirdos like us. it looks like every time the universe pulled the rug out from under your feet, you just rolled with it. you are amazing for doing your very best — each effort a huge victory whether you fell short or exceeded your own expectations with flying colors ❤️ (and thank you heather for this beautiful beautiful piece, for always making us readers feel so seen and accepted and worthy in all our inadequacies and ambivalences, every single time)
Congratulations! I appreciate the fuck out of you for what you wrote and what you did. I feel inspired and validated. I have come to realize that I probably couldn't have lasted in a relationship where my husband was creative and expressive the same way I was. That would have evoked my competitive nature (which is not my friend when it comes to relationships). Instead we get to experience a mutual respect, appreciation and supportiveness that might not have been there otherwise.
Yes! Understanding what makes sense for you -- and how much you've benefitted from your choice -- is so important. It's easy to think a spouse should be allllll of the things. But no one person can be everything. Recognizing that also enforces how important it is to fill out your life with close friendships with creative weirdos. You can feel secure, and not competitive, and also have fun with people who match you closely. Anyway, congratulations on all of this!
"Eventually I finally realized—and forgave—that I was a deeply distorted, self-absorbed person and that I was projecting my own insecurities on him."
BWBB—this is HUGE. Congratulations! I very much relate to this and have realized the extent to which I do the same, spiraling down thought patterns of whether my partner is "enough" for me when I can be enough for myself. Absolutely loved reading about your flourishing journey, thank you for sharing with us!
Thank you for writing this letter, BWBB!! I am so heartened at the end of such a hard year to hear the story of someone with the wisdom to find and embrace happiness despite their fraught upbringing and their “absurd choices” and delusions (who hasn’t made such choices or nursed such delusions?). Ten thousand congratulations to you and your beloved!!
A thousand congratulations for building such a warm and wonderful relationship, and many many congratulations for breaking up with academia too. I am an academic and I know so many colleagues who have supposedly “beaten” the job market but are still unhappy, insecure, working all the time, and deeply disillusioned with what their “golden ticket” turned out to be. It’s a hard job to be happy in. I cheer when I see people turning their backs to do other, important, life-affirming things. Here’s to you, your present and your future!
CONGRATS BWBB!! As a fellow former grad student, I am so amazed at how you are still managing to publish while making a living in a way that sounds really fun and meaningful. You deserve all the kudos.
THANK YOU FOR THIS - and congratulations!!! Thank you for sharing your amazing life, and the hall of mirrors it can be to get there, and that things can be imperfect but still lead to good things! The “twisting, ambivalent paths” can really be confusing. But you know what? It sounds like you’ve found your way, and if you can, maybe I can. 💪 Congratulations!!
Congratulations and thank you for your inspiring story! "You opened your eyes wide, and sat quietly with a big question mark in your lap, and waited."
Congratulations!! You sound perfect for each other. Best wishes for a long, happy life together
CONGRATULATIONS BWBB!!! What an inspiring story and one in which I know many others saw themselves mirrored (same here!) <3
Congratulations BWBB! You sound like a wonderful, thoughtful, kind person. I hope you and your husband have a great New Year and many many many wonderful years to come.
You are an inspiration to me.