The Human Impacts of Whistleblowing
Our human layers are powered by stories. Narratives crafted as we careen through reality navigating the precarious act of living in late stage capitalism. And right now, in late 2026, those narratives are twisting into something we’re all realizing, in real time and without a shared foundation, is as fascinating as it is undeniably grotesque.
We are living through a period where the violence of white supremacy and wealth extraction are the dominating forces in all of the systems we must navigate to survive. The thin veil of consumption and acceptance politicians and corporations once hid behind is now laid bare for all to witness.
We do not have common language for such systemic devastation and the billionaire class behind this chaos weaponize our lack of shared understanding against us. It's easier to demonize those who work to create a common bond through struggle than change the systems of oppression that keep white supremacy in place.
What happens when we say NO? When some stand up and give language to that violence waged upon us by the elite? When we embrace our integrity and take a stand to say “No, this is wrong, I will not look away and cosplay normalcy”? Sadly, our resistance is often weaponized against us, by design, because the system itself was built to protect wealth, whiteness and gender.
Enter the Whistleblower
My recent life's narrative rests in that last paragraph. My calling in life is to bear witness and build community. I spent most of my career as a photojournalist, producer and comms specialist working as a freelancer or small business owner. I stepped into emergent technology over a decade ago as a community builder and comms nerd. All of my work can be traced back to these two elements.
Bearing witness. Building Community.
For decades, my work was meaningful and my business was too. At the ripe young age of 47, I became a W2 employee for the first time in my career (beyond restaurant work) and within 11 months, I’d witnessed enough low-level crime that when one of my junior colleagues came to me with something they’d witnessed that gave additional and irrefutable evidence to my assumptions, I knew I had to speak up.
So, I bundled up the evidence, talked with my company assigned external executive coach about my strategy and told my mentor what I'd witnessed during our monthly 1-1 call (he’d been mentoring me for 6 months and was at the top of the leadership ladder). He listened and I trusted him.
I said if I was an editor, I had enough evidence to put an investigative reporter on it and find the truth. He then asked me how I would investigate my claims. I broke it down, step by step. As I'd been trained by the infosec professionals who brought me into the world of crypto in 2017. We tracked money launderers and cybercriminals for sport, so I knew my shit.
My entire premise was this information was above my pay grade, I was trying to protect the company and I wanted to hand it off and get back to doing my job. That was it. No agenda, just handing the information over to someone who could take action upon it. I liked my job and my programs had purpose.
A job that the CMO had told me less than a month prior was secure, the company was pleased with my initiatives and me and my team would be funded for the next year or more. A job that the CHRO had asked me to be patient as they dealt with my PIP dancing boss who was spreading trauma to my colleagues that I had to then serve as their therapist. I was literally forced on an HR call once to be told I was not allowed to council the people in my division who were navigating corporate trauma caused by my boss and coming to me for help. Those same people I counseled told the CHRO a month later that I was the main reason they still worked at this company.
A job that my peers had nominated me for internal "community building awards" along with being nominated to serve on the internal DEI council. A job that also had me serving as a women's mentor and had requests from HR to mentor more women, because those women wanted to work with me. Requests made days before I was "removed" along with that same PIP surfing boss as they dissolved our division.
A job that my peers, the CHRO and the CMO all told me was secure and that I was valued, just weeks before the whistleblowing meeting. I went into that meeting with my mentor secure in the fact that I was simply doing my due diligence as a leader and pointing out criminal activity I had witnessed and handing the information off to someone who could do something about it.
And he did. He removed me. Less than two weeks later along with one of the people I was blowing a whistle against and all of the leaders in my division. Except one. Guess which one survived?
Not only did they keep the main bad actor, they handed my initiatives over to this mediocre white man, a common ass lazy crimin' fool who didn't even bother hiding his actions. The corporation protected its own to the core and gave my programs to the white man I was accusing of (and had plenty of evidence for) committing crimes.
I didn't realize at the time that my mentor was the fixer and was placed there by a much larger force. I found that out 2 years later when more evidence was sent my way by people being violently abused by these mediocre white men. Had I known the scope of it all, I would have taken a different path.
The corporation later went on to give that mediocre white man millions of dollars, twice, for his “startup” which he then used to continue his propensity for crime. His employees then sent me more documentation of his crimes two years AFTER I’d been removed for blowing whistles. I kept blowing them. Because I simply couldn’t sit there and watch these shitty excuses for “leaders and humans” commit crimes in the open.
The Unraveling
And here’s where my story becomes one of devastation and despair at the hands of unchecked capitalists, who may or may not continue my destruction after I publish this article. During the window of time right before I started whistleblowing, while I was beginning to clearly see the full scope of everything, my body tapped out.
I endured an acute neck injury while I was traveling home from a large and stressful conference in Istanbul with a layover visiting my family. Our division's events had hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and my boss just decided to quiet quit earlier that month and didn't bother to show up. They were gone from Slack, didn't go to the conference and didn’t even check in on the events. Guess those PIPs worked pretty well.
My nervous system knew I was beyond my capacity and took the initiative to put a stop to it all. I landed in the ER during Thanksgiving and thousands of miles from home. I sucked it up, popped a few Oxys, which did nothing for the pain and managed to fly home and crawl into bed. An MRI revealed a cervical spine that was wrecked from years of athletics and photojournalism and was now rebelling openly against spending 6-8 hours a day in back to back meetings to support the bottom line of the worst humanity had to offer.
A tiny little piece of cartilage broke free and was pressing on a nerve and wreaking havoc. Six damaged discs, my entire cervical spine, were tapped out and making the damage known, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. I kept working. I held a virtual closing ceremony for the first cohort of my ambassador program from my bed, on pain killers. My boss ignored my requested PTO until I went to HR and asked about sick leave. I documented the collapse onchain so my boss couldn't accuse me of their malfeasance while I was trying to recover.
I had an epidural steroid spinal injection days before I had the meeting with that mentor. An hour before the injection, I was smacking down rogue devrels doing dumb shit on Twitter. An hour after the injection, after my nervous system crashed outside the operating room, I took an Uber home from the hospital. Alone.
I was “let go” the day before my first round of PT started. I had to pay out of pocket for that visit. Cobra required a PHD to setup, so I just paid out of pocket for private insurance. Over $550 a month, with no job and a miserable severance. The lawyers I spoke with never followed up and my nervous system was too broken to take the initiative myself.
No one told me my employee rights had been violated. No one told me I could sue this company because the CMO and CHRO told me one thing and the company did another. No one told me I had rights as a whistleblower. No one told me anything that would help.
Basically, no one helped me. Almost no one believed me. Even with the evidence laid out, I was simply a disgruntled, angry woman with a broken neck. My found family stepped in and gave me a place to feel accepted and I'm forever grateful for them. They believed me and still do. I can't imagine where I'd be without them.
My system was too broken to help myself. So, I got another job in this shitty ass industry because it fell into my lap, paid more than the last one and they claimed they weren’t openly committing crimes. I asked. As soon as I started, I realized this was another shitshow in a different costume. But I did my work like the good little capitalist I was pretending to be so I could pay for the healthcare I needed for my complex condition, which also costs about $1.5k a month to manage out of pocket.
That lasted 6 months. And then I entered the realm of unemployment in an age where my country was transitioning into straight up oligarchy because apparently the previous stint 4 years ago didn’t do enough damage. Gotta maintain that white supremacy thing on steroids this time. And well, we all know how this part of the story goes.
We’re living it as I write this, 4 days before an election that may or may not rescue Lady Liberty from strangulation by white supremacists and the tech billionaires keeping them in power.
In the two years, almost to the day, since I left that Lord of the Flies startup adventure, I’ve been struggling to survive. Sounds dramatic, even to me, but its true. I quickly blew through my savings in a year of juggling out of pocket health care with private insurance (up to $650 a month at that point) and living in one of the most expensive counties in the country. I’ve applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs and was invited to interview for three of them. Two used me for leverage to hire their ideal candidate (they didn’t hide it well) and the third one is still live.
For the last two years, I’ve cycled through startups and nonprofits run by mediocre white men and nice white ladies as a contractor. All to pay the fucking bills I can’t afford because I broke my body working for a billionaire tech bro and was tossed aside when I started whistleblowing against some sloppy, common ass criminals that were enabling a very large, global crime conspiracy.
Yes, I’m filled with rage. I commune with Kali on an almost daily basis. Ferocity is on order now as I sit in the midst of the cremation ground and sift through the ashes of my life. I was trained for this, but it still hurts like hell.
I’m beyond my capacity for working in racist, patriarchal capitalistic systems. I have zero capacity for the tolerance of misogyny necessary to make mediocre white men feel comfortable in my client work. I have lost the ability to simply nod and be a “yes sir” service provider for clients. I have no tolerance left to navigate all the bullshit that goes along with service work to run a proper communications studio in a collapsing economy. Ghosted email proposals, the minimizing of my expertise by men who feel emasculated by my knowledge, people taking free meetings with me and then putting my knowledge behind their own paywalls for influencer products and courses.
I'm done, done. Stick a fork in this bitch.
And the ironic thing is, the past year of physical therapy (going on 9 months) unleashed a neurological demon that was hiding in my damaged cervical discs and now I can barely function most days. I had to build an entire communications system using AI to log my symptoms and direct my care because the health care system in my country is designed to extract my "wealth" and colonize my body.
And that demon is one I can't really contain because I don't have enough money for proper and necessary health care. Money solves this neuro demon problem pretty damn fast, which speaks volumes for this broken health care system and the collateral damage it causes.
I am so done its not even funny at this point. And here I am, broke and broken, wondering how I’m going to survive because my body is shattered and my mind is trying to navigate the minefield of self-employment in an age where violence IS the game. And I burned off the remaining mask necessary to play that violent game of compliance and submission at the hands of my oppressors.
The question I can not seem to answer is “how do I make a very basic income to cover my health care while I try to restore my nervous system to a functioning status in the least violent way possible?” And sadly, I don’t have an answer.
The violence of retaliation for whistleblowing is my daily reality and that violence is by design so people don’t actually blow any whistles. I get that now and can clearly see the arc of impact from engaging in the act of whistleblowing.
If you're still reading this, thank you. Please share it with someone who is navigating the nasty wastewaters of corporate life in 2026.
If you're curious about the somatic data and essay I've generated during this latest quest chapter of my narrative, visit SomaticUnraveling.org and see 8 months of data from a body unraveled.
If you want to help support the work and my health costs, I launched a medical gofundme here. The most 2026 thing I could possibly think of, launched on Election Day.
If you're implicated in these words, don't bother coming after me. I have absolutely nothing left to lose. You'll have to go on the record to deal with the violence you waged against me and my colleagues. I have the receipts and they live in the whisper networks ready and waiting for a reason to publish. Those receipts also rest with organizations bearing acronyms we all loathe and fear at the same time.
If you used to work with me and have been wondering where the hell I've been, now you know. If you are in the whisper networks that power our industry, pass this one along and see where it travels.
And if you're on my short list of loved humans, know that this is the reason I haven't been able to show up fully the past few years. There's a happier, more whole version of me that you know (and hopefully love); that person still exists, she's just sitting in the middle of the mud waiting for the lotus to bloom.
Also, come see me. I'll leave the porch light on. There's espresso and stories to be shared.
