Recently, I made an emotional post on LinkedIn. It was triggered by a post from the co-founders of a former employer — people whose actions, in my view, contributed to a chain of events that ended with the death of one of my closest friends and ex-colleague (after he begged me to join him to work together). He took his own life, and I’m still processing the grief. This is the second close friend I’ve lost to suicide in the past four years.

My post was raw. Frustrated. Not polished or packaged. But it was honest. What most people didn’t know is what had just happened: On 28 July 2025 I was in yet another car accident.

• I suffered a fractured metacarpal bone in my hand.

• I was knocked unconscious for an unknown amount of time sustaining a concussion and a black eye.

• My phone was destroyed, so I couldn’t contact anyone or receive calls.

• I was in severe pain and disoriented, both physically and mentally.

On top of that, I had just completed tapering off long-term prescription opioids after over 10 years of daily use for chronic pain (~100mg morphine equivalently). Withdrawal from that level of medication is no small thing — it includes symptoms like extreme anxiety, agitation, insomnia, emotional instability, and cognitive fog.

I later understood that the post may have upset some people, and I removed it. But the experience forced me to step back and reflect on how we treat honest expression in so-called “professional” spaces.

Platforms like LinkedIn encourage us to “show up as our authentic selves,” but only if that self is calm, curated, and free of discomfort. Vulnerability is welcomed — until it becomes too real, too angry, or too close to grief or trauma.

We need to talk — honestly — about how workplaces and professional platforms respond when someone is in crisis. Not everything people say in pain needs to be a policy breach. Sometimes, it just needs to be understood.