Purpose: This paper aims to present journey mapping as a creative practice that can be used to "do doctoral education differently", specifically, in a way that supports the wellbeing of doctoral students and centres students often excluded in post-secondary planning and program development. It understands journey mapping through the lens of feminist care ethics, critical and decolonizing disability studies, theories of Indigenous relationality, systems thinking, and action-oriented approaches. Design/methodology/approach: Using collaborative autoethnography, it critically analyses authors' experiences of a journey mapping process initiated by students in a new interdisciplinary doctoral program in Ontario, Canada. For this study, the authors invited all students currently enrolled in the program and the Program Director to share their reflections on their experiences with journey mapping as a creative practice. They then conducted collaborative data analysis, working together to identify common themes, experiences and tensions which arose throughout the journey mapping process. Findings: The study analysis positions journey mapping as a creative practice of collective memory, which can facilitate connection, healing and change. It suggests that this practice can be used to resist problematic ideals of individualism, and competition within academia, by offering a process through which graduate students can build community, advocate for programmatic changes, and move towards individual and collective wellbeing. Originality/value: Drawing on the lived experiences in an interdisciplinary doctoral program, this paper brings together work that explores student experience and creative practice in graduate education with the practice of journey mapping, to highlight the possibilities and tensions of using this approach. In the changing landscape of doctoral education, practices that centre students' voices and support student wellbeing must be developed, and the resources needed to support such practices better understood.