My autoethnography examines intimate encounters of co-writing with four former doctoral students and how I juggled the ethical dilemma of performative ways of being in the neoliberal university juxtaposed with doing care for students and myself as women scholars. I do this from a feminist care perspective, barely considered in doctoral supervision. I critique the neoliberal university, concepts of care and doctoral supervision, coalescing on intimate encounters in co-writing. I draw on email conversations, supervisory notes and personal reflections to explore care in our co-writing relationships. I propose a pragmatic care agenda, identifying four practical CARE components, as a contribution to help us ‘do’ feminist care within doctoral supervisory co-writing, not to reinforce a normative version of individual responsibility for care and healing but to acknowledge and find ways of managing the competing and competitive demands of the neoliberal university and tensions between students and supervisors who experience this differently.