They Addressed the Risk, Not the Rupture

January 21, 2026

There are moments when progress is announced and, instead of relief, what rises is disorientation.

Action has been taken. Resources added. Numbers shared. Momentum named. On paper, movement is clear. And still — something in me pauses, unsettled, sensing that what is being celebrated does not quite match what was lived.

This season has taught me how important it is to tell the difference.

They addressed the risk, not the rupture.

Risk is what systems are trained to see. Risk can be mitigated with staffing, timelines, output, and communication. Risk responds well to urgency and numbers. When risk is reduced, systems can move forward and declare progress.

Rupture is something else entirely.

Rupture is human. It shows up when trust erodes, when safety disappears, when leadership collapses under weight it was never meant to carry alone. It shows up when people leave roles they loved — through resignation, demotion, premature retirement, or quiet exits without another place to land. Rupture does not appear neatly in reports. It lives in bodies, relationships, and memory.

Progress and repair are not the same thing.

I know this not as an observer, but as someone who once held responsibility inside the system. I understand how concerns move upward and then return downward to be addressed — often quietly, rarely publicly. I did not expect public reckoning. What surprised me was how quickly resolution could be declared without touching the rupture itself.

An email went out announcing progress — milestones reached, numbers meant to reassure an entire division. As I read it, I didn’t feel angry. I felt unmoored. Not because work wasn’t happening, but because I knew what had happened around it. An entire supervisory layer gone in a matter of months. Leadership emptied out. People leaving under conditions that were never named publicly.

Behind that email, on my screen, was an image of stone and sky — something enduring, something older than any policy cycle. It steadied me. Not because it explained anything, but because it reminded me where my ground actually is. Systems speak in metrics. Faith speaks in presence. One narrates progress; the other holds truth when progress is incomplete.

Before I left, I was clear about one thing: my hope for this team was — and still is — their success. I said it openly in my final weeks. I offered a wellness series not as a farewell performance, but as a way of naming what I wanted them to carry forward regardless of my presence.

That remains true.

My unease is not rooted in wanting failure where success is being named. It comes from knowing that success built only on output, without tending to what broke beneath it, asks people to carry more than numbers will ever show. Wanting a team to thrive does not require pretending that all wounds have healed. In fact, the two hopes are inseparable.

I think of myself now as standing on a dock, looking out over the water. The fog hasn’t lifted completely — and I’ve stopped demanding that it do so. I can see enough to know where I’m standing, even if I can’t yet see where the shoreline bends next.

The water still moves. Ripples still spread. The mountains remain steady in the background, whether or not they are fully visible.

I didn’t leave the water because the work stopped mattering. I stepped onto the dock because something had ruptured — and standing in that rupture was no longer safe.

Some things can be resourced around.

Others must be repaired.

For now, I stand here — held by what steadies me, honest about what I can see, trusting that clarity comes the way fog lifts: slowly, quietly, and without spectacle.