Unlocking my PhD dream with a silver key

Twenty years since my exodus from the academic world, I’m back. Earning a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) was an elusive dream of mine since my twenties. Years ago, I could not name what was holding me back from securing the “Dr” in front of my name. Although I confess, the gravitas the title lends to its bearer is attractive.

These past few weeks, I’ve been working on my blog. I uploaded every single essay I’ve written since pursuing my writing passion in midlife. In the process, like a time machine, I was transported back to the period between the ages of 37 and 45. I got to observe my writing style and appreciate the woman, writer, and mom I’ve become over those eight years. (And yeah, it was a hoot observing how I wrote before the advent of AI tools!)

There was a blog before melanyheger.com, it was called melanyhegerblog, hosted on a free WordPress site. Looking back, I realize it’s another thing I once thought I didn’t deserve: a self-hosted (meaning, paid annually) website.

The decision to pursue the doctorate and to pay for the website both require conviction and dedication. Underpinning both is self-belief—conviction that says, “I am good. Good enough to take up space and share with the world.”

Now that I’ve taken these two major steps, no wonder I’ve been dreaming of a silver key. I knew from the moment I woke up that night that it was a Jungian dream, all right. Something surfaced from my unconscious, and that’s something I want to share with you today.

A Jungian dream is one that carries a hidden message from deep within your psyche. Often, the thoughts and impulses we reject or overlook get pushed into the unconscious because they scare us or somehow threaten our everyday existence. To make these dangerous elements easier to face, the unconscious turns them into symbols, which later surface in dreams.

You know you’ve had a Jungian dream when it haunts you. The dream is embedded with powerful symbols like from your childhood or something significant in your culture. In my case, it was a silver key. Silver is often seen as a protective, feminine metal—linked to the moon, intuition, and alchemy. Meanwhile, the key almost universally represents the power to unlock something important.

I didn’t fully understand the dream at first, but I knew my inner Sage was dead serious. So, indulging it, I took a break from my clients and explored the school I had just enrolled in for my PhD—Centro Escolar University in Mendiola. For months after I quit my corporate job, I had been longing to travel. But recovering from yesterday’s school visit and other mommy-related errands, I realized that this was the trip I’d been yearning for all along. It wasn’t far, not really, Mendiola is just a seventy-pesos trip by MoveIt from my house, but what changed was my attitude toward always pushing myself too hard.

This time, I did not use the unrelenting sword of my fortitude to cut myself into pieces. This time, it wasn’t cutthroat. Instead of inanely testing my mettle, I was tempering it. “Hold back, Melany,” something deep within me said. “You’ve been here before. If you push too hard, you’ll end up shattered.”

For the longest time, I can’t recall looking out for myself. But this time, I did. And it feels wholesomely good—like choosing veggies over junk food, or jogging instead of doomscrolling. This time around, something inside me wants me for real. I want me for real.

And I’m not just talking about this short school trip, but for the whole PhD journey, wherever it takes me.

I want to come home in one piece from this journey—home to myself—where I will use the silver key to open the door to the goddess who resides within: my Divine Self. When I return from CEU again and again, as the semesters roll on, I want to come back whole. And by whole, I mean the integrating-lost-pieces kind of whole.

A Melany who once denied herself is becoming a woman who is reckoning with both her true power and her limitations. She was locked away for years, afraid to be who she is, But now, she’s bolder. Now she wants to conquer not just the wild world of the academe, but her own treacherous fears.

A line written by Aravind Adiga comes to mind right now: “I have been looking for the key for years, but the door was always open.”

I recognize that I am now greeting the world with the eyes of a warrior—one who knows that to conquer the enemy, she must first know, acknowledge, accept, and forgive herself.