When Celebration and Grief Sit in the Same Room

I reshared a LinkedIn post about a program I care deeply about.

Afterwards, I felt physically unwell.

Seeing public celebration while my own situation remains legally unresolved stirred something tender and confronting inside me.

I have been professionally invested in this institution since August 2001.

For more than two decades, I have contributed leadership, care, intellectual labour, and steady commitment to staff and students. I have supported programs, built relationships, mentored colleagues, and carried responsibility seriously.

That contribution does not disappear.

I am still part of that work.

The relationships.

The students.

The staff I support.

The long hours of care, strategy and responsibility.

There is a legally binding injury management framework connected to my employment.

There are statutory obligations that continue to exist.

I never resigned from my professional identity.

I never withdrew my commitment to a safe and lawful return.

Yet while celebration moves forward publicly, I remain in a process seeking basic compliance with obligations that were meant to protect me.

That reality has been deeply harmful.

It is difficult to describe what it feels like to devote decades of professional service, to uphold values of dignity and fairness, and then to find yourself navigating procedural failures that destabilise your health, income and sense of safety.

The grief is not abstract.

It sits in the body.

It tightens the chest.

It brings a wave of nausea that feels disproportionate to a simple LinkedIn post — until you remember what it represents.

It is the grief of knowing your contribution was real — and feeling the weight of how governance decisions have affected you.

When I reshared that post, it wasn’t endorsement.

It was presence.

A quiet way of saying:

I am still here.

I contribute.

My work matters.

I am not seeking applause.

I am not seeking public vindication.

I am seeking statutory compliance.

Structured restoration.

A return-to-work pathway that is safe, medically informed, and consistent with the law.

Nothing more.

Nothing extraordinary.

Just what already exists in legislation and agreement.

Celebration may be public.

Compliance is not optional.

Contribution does not vanish because it is inconvenient.

I remain present.

I remain professional.

And I will continue to pursue resolution through lawful, measured, and transparent means — until compliance is not aspirational, but actual.

Grief casts long shadows.

So does commitment.

See also http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/in-memory-of-great-teacher-legacy.html