This chapter is a collective autoethnography that reveals the messiness and fractured identities of (non)mothers and (non)researchers in and out of academic contexts. Luce Irigaray’s writing on breath, interiority and autonomy brings together the reflections. In Between East and West, Irigaray (2002) has learnt “the importance of breathing in order to survive, to cure certain ills, and to attain detachment and autonomy” (p. 10). She explores “a sexuation of breathing” as a woman “by practicing, by listening (to myself), by reading, by awakening myself” (2002, p. 10). Collectively, the stories in this chapter reveal living with and letting go of the demands of academia and the complexities of caring for selves and others.