Last night, I went to an awards ceremony as a finalist.

And whilst people saw a more polished version of myself joining in and celebrating the wonderful achievements of young people across WA (and I say that in full honesty, I am in awe of the wonderful people that exist in our state), what they didn’t see was the dread, moral conflict and hesitance.

I almost didn’t go.

Not because I don’t care… I do, more than you know. That was never the question. The question was whether a room like that reflects what the work actually looks like.

I didn’t want to go because of the people not invited, and because of the mismatch between the nature of celebration and what the work looks like 99% of the time.

Most days look like a laptop screen and reports that break my heart. Most days look like sending too many emails trying to solve problems that are bigger than any email can hold. That is the real rough, raw, unpleasant, painful reality of this work. A stage and an award are not.

But I did go.

I went because the recognition was never really about me. It belonged to my community. To people who have been made to feel broken, reduced to a diagnosis, and who refused to let that become the narrative that was told about them. Walking up to collect a framed piece of paper with my name printed on it, dressed up and masking my absolute overwhelm to the best of my ability (though admittedly probably not very well), I was holding space for them.

Being invited in the first place required something I did not always have: approval. Accepting an award means accepting a form of approval from other people, and for a long time I did not know how to take that in. Society decides what counts as honourable and worthy, and that judgement rarely lines up with what actually deserves recognition. The people whose work made mine possible never got that approval.

And to be honest, even at award ceremonies and galas, through all the wins, I still don’t feel it. Instead I feel the silence of the rooms that never were, the rooms that should have celebrated survival and the silent advocates who will never stand on a stage for it.

The people more deserving than I am, who did the work without an audience, without applause, without anyone confirming that it mattered.

And that includes the past version of myself. Because in truth, the hardest part of this work has never been the late nights or the rejections or the slow grind toward traction. It has never been building an organisation from nothing, teaching myself grant writing, or sitting across from politicians and CEOs. The hardest part was surviving a system that made survival difficult in the first place, and doing it quietly, without recognition, while being told that my pain was something for other people to tolerate rather than something that deserved care.

I carried that for years… and I know I am not alone in that experience.

Advocacy is not a path chosen for the recognition. It is slow, exhausting, and mostly thankless. Most people doing this work will never be thanked publicly for it, and they keep doing it anyway. Those are the people worth celebrating, not the ones who happen to end up on a stage.

I have spent my life chasing awards, convincing myself that I’d catch my breath when I got there, slow down and enjoy my surroundings when the work was done. But once again, I have learned that an award, or the lack thereof, is not a signal to slow down.

None of this means the recognition is meaningless. Being seen, and having a community seen through you, carries real weight. But it sits alongside a harder truth: the systems that make this work necessary in the first place are still not accountable to the people they affect. The work continues until that changes.

That is the reality of awards and nominations in this line of work.

They are not proof that the mission is complete. They are a marker on a much longer road, and a reminder of everyone still walking it without a stage under their feet.

Congratulations!