From the veranda
The Letters After Your Name
In the spring of 2025 I caught myself planning to pursue a doctorate. My platform was live. My method was working. Here's what that was really about.
Here is a sentence I wrote once.
"I'm not credentialed in the way the world expects me to be."
I don't have a PhD in psychology. I don't have a degree in marriage and family therapy. And for a long time, that lack kept me quiet. I would build the thing, look at it, and hear a voice: who are you to put this out?
Maybe your version is different. Who are you to teach budgeting, you're not an accountant. Who are you to record a podcast, you're not an expert. Who are you to write a devotional, you're not a pastor. The voice always sounds the same. It points at what you don't have and tells you that means you don't have permission.
Let me tell you what finally changed for me. One thought, and I stand by it:
If the thing I want to share was already being shared by someone with all the right letters after their name, I wouldn't need to be here.
Sometimes the thing you could not find is precisely what pushed you to build. Whatever already existed had not reached me in a form I could use. That gap was part of what pushed me to build. Maybe that is your story too: you built it because what you needed did not exist in a form you could use. That need gives you something real to say.
I know how deep this one runs, because the letters chased me even after I built everything. In the spring of 2025, with my platform live and my method working, I caught myself planning a whole doctorate. I wanted to have papers. I wanted to stand in the space as an authority. Somebody at an event finally said the thing I needed to hear: you don't need another certification. The work was already helping people. The doctorate was to give me the confidence I needed and quiet the voice telling me that I can't. None of that was necessary.
Your turn. Write down the credential you keep telling yourself you need. Under it, write what you lived that taught you the same lessons. That second line is why you get to speak.
With appreciation, Deb.