Key Takeaways
- The Catalyst: Tina Brown launched The Post during the dark days of COVID-19 following a disruption to her previous business.
- Auntie Valerie's Battle: The paper's core empathetic mission was forged through watching her independent aunt experience a rapid, brutal six-month battle with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
- A Poignant Intersection: The final printed issue coincides exactly with Auntie Valerie's birthday month and Global MND Awareness Day on June 21.
As you hold this June edition of The Post, you are holding our very last print issue. It is a bittersweet milestone, and it feels only fitting to close this chapter by sharing the deeply personal story of how this paper came to be, and honouring the remarkable woman who inspired its journey through the darkest of times.
Many of our long-time readers know that before the pandemic, I ran a thriving education services business. Almost overnight, COVID-19 changed everything. International students could no longer travel to Australia, and I found myself facing a career change.
Needing a purpose and a way to keep busy during the lockdowns, I started The Post. But as the world was shutting down, my family was stepping into a private heartbreak.
It was during this exact time that we realised my favourite aunt, Valerie, was seriously ill. Valerie was a brilliant, highly successful woman – a Director within a government organisation who had guided and supported me from the time I was young. She fueled my lifelong love of the arts, often whisking me away to a surprise matinee or the Art Gallery of NSW, and I treasured our deep conversations about modern history and culture.
I dedicated my debut column in September 2020 to my Aunty Valerie and posted the issue to her in Canberra. I wasn’t there to see her face as she opened it, but I later learned that as she read the dedication, her eyes brimmed with tears.
Our last enjoyable memory together was singing Christmas carols at Asquith Park in December 2019.
By March 2020, the cruel progression of what we would later learn was Motor Neurone Disease (MND) had taken hold.
I will never forget the day she flew from Canberra to Sydney, then caught the train from Central to Mt Colah, where I was living. She was so unwell that she couldn’t physically stand up to get off at my station as her leg had fallen asleep, and the train carried her all the way to Gosford.
By the time I finally collected her, her words had begun to lose their sharp edges. The slur was faint – a slow, creeping change that had stolen in unnoticed.
At the time, I reached for the easiest explanation, pinning her heaviness of speech on simple exhaustion rather than something more permanent.
From the moment of her formal diagnosis to her passing, it was a brutal, rapid nine months.
The heavy duty of care during those final months fell upon her eldest daughter in Canberra and my own mother, who gave everything they had to comfort her.
When we spoke about Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD), she admitted she had looked into it, but the path was blocked. The requirements for Switzerland were insurmountable; she was simply too frail to endure the long journey from Australia.
Watching a fiercely intelligent, independent woman be robbed of her body by MND changes you. It was this exact heartbreak that drove me to take a stand.
Some of you might remember seeing me protesting outside MP Alister Henskens’ office in support of Voluntary VAD legislation in late 2021. I protested alongside Dying with Dignity NSW because I saw firsthand the agony of a terminal diagnosis, and I believed then – as I do now – that everyone deserves dignity and choice at the end of their life. NSW was the last state to legislate voluntary assisted dying for terminally ill people.
This month holds a profound, deeply personal weight for me. June is my Aunty Valerie’s birthday month, and June 21 also marks Global MND Awareness Day – coinciding with this final print edition of The Post.
While this is the end of the road for our printed paper, the love and lessons shared in these pages will endure.
This June, I choose to celebrate and honour my beautiful Auntie Valerie. To anyone in our community who has been, is currently, or will be impacted by the tragic reality of Motor Neurone Disease, please know that my thoughts, prayers, and deepest solidarity are always with you.
Thank you for reading, supporting, sharing and being a part of our story in print. We can’t wait to share even more with you on the digital side!
