23 April 2022
By 23 April 2022, I was exhausted.
I wasn’t simply tired from stress, but exhausted from carrying a crisis almost entirely alone while continuing to send notice after notice to people who had the power to intervene.
This email was sent to Chris Minns and Cheryl Han at the Kogarah electorate office during one of the most difficult periods of my life. It was Greek Easter. I was isolated, overwhelmed, financially terrified, and desperately trying to hold together both my health and my family relationships while trapped in a workers compensation system that had already failed me repeatedly.
And still, I kept writing.
Still, I kept asking for help.
I apologised for the length of my emails because by that stage I had become painfully aware that distress itself can make people uncomfortable. But what choice did I have? I was alone navigating an escalating situation involving workplace harm, regulator failures, financial collapse, and the ongoing refusal to properly implement an Injury Management Plan that already existed.
I wrote honestly about the reality of what was happening around me.
I explained that I was alone that Easter because of family strain and the broader damage this workplace matter had caused. I explained that the hostility, mobbing, and fear of further incivility had reached a point where I could no longer cope with it psychologically.
What stands out to me now is how little I was asking for.
I was asking elected representatives to continue supporting the implementation of an existing Injury Management Plan — a legal obligation within a statutory system that was supposed to exist to protect injured workers.
That was all.
I even explained that a friend had encouraged me to see an accountant and mortgage broker because of fears there would be further delays in my university employer and insurer implementing the plan. Imagine the position that places someone in: trying to negotiate survival strategies while waiting for basic statutory obligations to be honoured.
And still, I remained grateful.
Grateful to a friend who had her own serious health conditions but still found the strength to guide and support me when institutions would not.
Grateful to members of a Catholic parish who I hoped might help me through what had become psychologically unbearable.
Grateful for any human support at all.
Reading this email now, what strikes me most is the contrast between the vulnerability in these messages and the silence that followed so many of them.
These were not vague complaints.
These were direct notices.
Clear warnings.
Repeated requests for intervention.
Repeated explanations that the situation was deteriorating and becoming dangerous to my health, financial security, and family stability.
This series is called Notice After Notice for a reason.
Not because nobody knew.
But because they did know.
And the notices kept coming anyway…
…but they allowed the non-compliance of statutory obligations to continue… they allowed the wage theft to continue too…
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 309.
——
I’m Dying
Not in the way people imagine when they hear those words.
Not from a terminal illness.
Not from a single catastrophic event.
But from something much slower.
Something that is happening in plain sight.
Loneliness.
Social isolation.
The gradual erosion of human connection.
Over the years I have written extensively about the workplace injury, the employer and insurer misconduct, the regulatory failures, the financial devastation, and the endless notices that were ignored. But there is another consequence that is harder to quantify and far less visible.
The isolation.
The silence.
The disappearance of people.
When I first raised concerns about psychosocial safety at work, I had colleagues, professional networks, friends, community connections, and the ordinary social interactions that come with twenty years in a workplace.
As the time passed, those connections disappeared.
Some people became frightened.
Some withdrew.
Some simply stopped responding.
Others may have been told things I will never know.
I do not know what conversations occurred behind closed doors. I do not know what narratives were created. I do not know what warnings were given.
What I do know is that the result was isolation.
The same isolation that appears repeatedly throughout these blog posts.
The unanswered messages.
The empty weekends.
The birthdays spent alone.
The holidays spent alone.
The fear of picking up the phone because there is nobody left to call.
The exhaustion of carrying trauma without the protective buffer of community.
Before continuing, I encourage readers to watch the presentation below by psychologist and loneliness researcher Julianne Holt-Lunstad. Her work helped me understand what I was experiencing. Prolonged social isolation has measurable consequences for physical health, psychological wellbeing, and even mortality.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad explains that loneliness is not merely an emotional experience. It is a health issue. A public health issue. One that increases the risk of premature death and affects physical as well as psychological wellbeing. Human beings are wired for connection. When those connections disappear, the consequences are measurable.
Holt-Lunstad found that loneliness is associated with a significantly increased risk of mortality, while strong social connections increase the likelihood of survival by approximately fifty percent. The health effects are so substantial that they have been compared to other major public health risk factors.
When I read that research, I cried.
For years I have been trying to explain that what has happened to me was never a workplace dispute. I reported psychosocial hazards, a serious WHS issue.
The VC and senior executives of my university community, a university with a commitment to the dignity of the human person in its Identity and Mission, and a focus on community engagement, chose to retaliate with the most reprehensible WHS violations, by engaging in greater psychosocial hazards: deliberate social isolation and mobbing.
But SafeWork NSW allowed this to continue from when I first reported it to the WHS regulator in August 2020. To this day, I’m dying slowly and painfully, a little bit more each day, alone, frightened, vulnerable, waiting for SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW to intervene and save me from this serious misconduct of employer and insurer. I have no choice but to wait for someone to save me.
I have no choice but to hope and pray that there’s some humanity left in our society to save me from this deliberate torture of social isolation being executed by those currently in governance at ACU along with Catholic Church Insurance. But it I has become urgent.
It is not simply a workers compensation claim.
It is the destruction of social connection.
The removal of community.
The removal of belonging.
The experience of being left alone while fighting battles that no individual should ever have to fight alone.
What frightens me most is that this isolation emerged while I was desperately trying to seek help.
While I was writing notices.
While I was asking regulators to enforce laws.
While I was asking an employer and insurer to comply with statutory obligations.
While I was asking elected representatives to intervene.
While I was asking people to simply acknowledge what was happening.
And the silence grew.
The irony is that the same research offers a simple antidote.
Kindness.
Human connection.
Small acts that remind people they matter.
A phone call.
A message.
An invitation.
A conversation.
A willingness to stand beside someone who is suffering.
Research shows that even small acts of kindness can reduce loneliness and social isolation for both the person receiving support and the person offering it.
A handful of people understood that.
Their kindness has carried me further than they will ever know.
But kindness should never have been required to compensate for systemic failure.
No regulator should leave a person isolated.
No employer should leave a worker isolated.
No insurer should leave an injured worker isolated.
No elected representative should leave a constituent isolated.
And yet here I am.
Years later.
Still writing.
Still documenting.
Still hoping that somewhere within these institutions there are people willing to recognise that behind every file, every complaint number, every claim, every investigation, and every notice after notice, there is a human being.
A human being whose survival depends on something as simple, and as essential, as being seen.
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