I'm gonna say it's a bit different when it's choosing to lose a job and lose a career path.

It's also different when it's in Australia. Plenty of benefits while unemployed. Not so much in recourses after the fact considering how abysmal the legal system is for victims of just about anything unless it's class action level. It's less about being timid and simply knowing that the laws here simply don't exist like they do in America. And don't forget about how our police were treating us at the time. It was easy to allow fear to take hold a little.

And frankly, you're speaking in hindsight. At the time, shit was up in the air. I don't care about how I now know without a doubt that I made the right decision and have pursued what I can and looked into more that went nowhere. At the time, there was some really dangerous levels of rhetoric coming from the state about complying. Like I said, it's bravado aside. I can sit here and bullshit about how easy it is to throw away what was up until that point your life, but I'd be saying that in hindsight of doing it after the fact and having pieced the parts that fell apart back together. At the time, it wasn't all roses and sunshine. It was frustrating. It was challenging. It wasn't fun. But it was worth it. Because you're right, it was to defend/ensure/exercise my rights. That's always worth it. But I'm not going to sit here and devolve into machismo to say that it was a piece of cake. I wish I didn't have to go through that, even if it's made me better and I made the right choices.