2025 has been one of the hardest years of my life to accept. Not because I failed — but because the systems around me did.

I injured my arm and hand and was funnelled into ACC, a process that too often treats injured and disabled people as problems to be managed rather than citizens to be supported. I was forced to fight for disability support funding that exists in policy but evaporates in practice. At the same time, I lost a significant portion of my income — not due to lack of demand, capability, or relevance, but because this government chose to disinvest in workforce, leadership, and development across community organisations.

This was not accidental. It was ideological.

It reflects a political decision to hollow out the social infrastructure that keeps communities functioning, while expecting individuals to quietly absorb the fallout.

Throughout the year, I navigated bureaucracy that confused control with accountability, communication so poor it bordered on negligence, and persistent misinformation about my right to employ and direct my own support crew — despite this being long-established practice and principle.

The cost was not just financial. It was cumulative, emotional, and embodied.

And still — I adapted. I advocated. I persisted. Not because the system worked, but because I refused to disappear inside it.

If 2025 proves anything, it is this: resilience is being used as a substitute for responsibility.

Disabled people are being asked to be endlessly patient, endlessly flexible, endlessly grateful — while services are cut, decisions delayed, and accountability diffused.

This is not personal misfortune. It is the predictable outcome of political choices.

So here are the calls to action.

To policymakers:

Stop treating disability, injury, and community leadership as discretionary costs. Fund systems to function before people are harmed by delay, confusion, and attrition. Replace churn, silence, and gatekeeping with clear communication, timely decisions, and accountability. Invest in workforce, leadership, and development not as “nice to haves”, but as essential public infrastructure. And listen — genuinely — to those living the consequences of your decisions.

To allies:

Do not mistake individual resilience for system success. When disabled people are coping, adapting, or “managing”, it is often because they have no other choice. Use your voice, your platforms, and your influence to name what is happening.

Challenge misinformation. Back disabled people’s right to employ, lead, and direct their own support. Stay alongside us — especially when the process becomes slow, uncomfortable, or politically inconvenient.

This moment demands more than sympathy. It demands empathy, responsibility, courage, and sustained action on all our parts. Because lives are not line items. And resilience should never be the price of policy failure.

This is not personal misfortune. It is the predictable outcome of political choices.

I need to remember this with clarity and self-respect:

This was a brutal year — not a personal failure. One hard year in fifty-eight, shaped less by my limits than by a system that forgot its obligations.