I’m traveling with a friend who has considerably more money than I do, and I had been worrying about the comparison. She shops retail; I thrift. She reads wealthy and polished, while I am the woman who gets an unreasonable amount of pleasure from digging through a thrift store and finding something fabulous for six bucks.

At least that was the story I had constructed in my head.

Then I started packing my conference clothes and cutting off the tags.

And another tag.

And another.

Apparently, not one of the outfits I had packed for the conference was thrifted.

Huh.

Evidence is such a pain in the ass

This is particularly funny because I have a Part who is absolutely fanatical about factual accuracy when I’m speaking out loud. If I say something that isn’t quite true, get a date wrong, or exaggerate for effect, she will interrupt me in the middle of my own sentence to issue a correction.

“I’ve been doing this for twenty years—no, wait, that’s not right. It’s probably closer to seventeen.”

She cannot let it go. Apparently, we will not be spreading misinformation on her watch.

It’s a shame she doesn’t work inside my head.

Because internally I can apparently announce, “She shops retail and I thrift,” and nobody from Quality Control bothers to mention that I am standing in front of a suitcase filled with brand-new clothes.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’ve been excavating my own life, and one of the things I’m discovering is how quickly humans create coherent stories from incomplete information.

We do it about other people, and we certainly do it about ourselves. Something happens, we interpret it, collect a little supporting evidence, and eventually the interpretation begins to feel like an established fact.

I’m lazy. She’s selfish. He doesn’t care enough. I’m bad with money. I always screw this up. Nobody notices me. I’m the responsible one. They’re the successful one. I’m the one who doesn’t belong.

The problem is that these stories are rarely complete bullshit. If they were, they would probably be much easier to recognize.

Usually, there is evidence supporting them.

My friend really does have considerably more money than I do, and she really does shop differently than I normally do. I really am a dedicated thrifter. The story didn’t materialize out of thin air.

It just wasn’t the whole story.

That’s the part I’m finding increasingly uncomfortable as I examine some of the stories I’ve carried about myself and the people in my life.

New evidence rarely arrives with a flashing sign announcing, “EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVED WAS WRONG.” More often, it wanders in quietly and says, “Well, actually...” before dropping one irritating piece of information on the table that doesn’t fit the existing narrative.

Someone you think isn’t particularly emotionally attuned notices something important about you.

Someone you’ve decided is confident admits she’s anxious too.

You spend several days worrying that you’re becoming lazy because you haven’t exercised, only to notice that you’ve spent those same days making art, working, planning, connecting with people, preparing for a trip, and trying to take better care of yourself.

Or you construct a comparison between yourself and your wealthy, retail-shopping friend and then discover that apparently Conference You has been doing a little retail shopping of her own.

None of that means the original perception was completely wrong. That would actually be easier.

Instead, the evidence complicates the story.

I think one of our temptations when this happens is to replace one certainty with another. I thought she was selfish, but now I realize she’s wonderful. I thought I was lazy, but actually I’m incredibly productive. I thought my childhood was one thing, but now I understand it was something completely different.

What I’m trying to learn instead is how to let new evidence make the story larger, richer.

Someone can be generous and sometimes self-absorbed. Someone can love me deeply and still miss things I desperately wish they would notice. My parents could have loved me and still have hurt me. I can be extraordinarily capable and exhausted. I can be a committed thrifter and apparently buy an entire conference wardrobe retail.

Both things can be true, which is considerably less satisfying than certainty.

Certainty lets us close the file. Complexity keeps wandering into the room with additional documentation.

And perhaps I need to see whether I can persuade my extremely vigilant external fact-checking Part to pick up a few shifts in the Internal Narrative Department.

When my brain announces, “We’re becoming lazy,” perhaps she could interrupt with, “Hang on. That’s not entirely accurate.”

When it says, “If we stop pushing ourselves, we’ll stop doing everything,” she might clear her throat and ask, “Do we actually have evidence for that?”

And when I confidently announce to myself, “She shops retail and I thrift,” she could point toward the pile of discarded tags on the bed and suggest that perhaps the statement requires a qualifier.

Not because every painful story I tell myself is false. Many of them contain a great deal of truth.

But containing truth and being the truth are not necessarily the same thing.

Maybe growth isn’t finally discovering the correct story about ourselves and everyone around us. Maybe it’s becoming willing to keep editing the story as new evidence comes in, even when we really liked the old version and had already built an excellent argument around it.

So I’m curious: What story do you tell about yourself, or someone else, that might need another look? Has evidence ever shown up that didn’t necessarily prove your story wrong, but made it larger, richer, or more complicated?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Maybe we can help each other notice the evidence our internal fact-checkers keep conveniently overlooking.

Because evidence is such a pain in the ass.

NOTE: edited with and photo by AI

Becky, author of Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love with You, spends an extraordinary amount of time baiting romance scammers, exposing how they operate, and educating the rest of us along the way.

In this exchange, Becky apparently frustrated her scammer so thoroughly that he broke character and gave her some professional advice:

“Don’t use this approach with other clients, because it could drive them away.”

Clients.

You have to admire the audacity.

But underneath the absurdity is something that has become one of my favorite refrains about scams:

Of course the fraudsters went straight to the humans.

Let me tell you why.

I began my career working at banks. We dealt with application fraud for credit cards, car loans, real estate loans, and checking accounts. Check fraud. Investment fraud. And more.

Banks developed technology and worked with partners across the industry to make it harder to commit that fraud.

Then I migrated to e-commerce.

Now you didn’t have to stand in front of someone to commit fraud. You could do it from behind the safety of a screen with the click of a mouse.

So the industry rallied again.

Merchants shared information with one another. Partners across the payments ecosystem collaborated. Technology companies stepped up with, well, solutions.

Velocity checks. Device identification. Machine learning. Two-factor authentication. Passkeys. And on and on.

Did we eliminate fraud?

Of course not.

If you think the bad guys are simply going to throw up their hands and go straight, well, I have a bridge to sell you and some oceanfront property in Arizona.

They adapt.

While I haven’t worked in telecom or insurance, I suspect people in those industries could tell similar stories: fraud emerges, the industry responds, solution providers innovate, and an ecosystem forms to fight it.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by where scammers have gone next.

They’ve gone somewhere there is no comparable ecosystem.

There is no industry association of individual humans meeting several times a year to compare notes about the attacks they’re seeing. There are relatively few solution providers standing between us and the criminals. There aren’t layers of sophisticated fraud technology protecting every decision we make.

There is just a person.

One human being, sitting alone with a phone or computer.

And instead of cracking the technology, scammers have become extraordinarily good at cracking something else:

Human psychology.

Trust. Fear. Love. Loneliness. Urgency. Hope.

Whatever works.

As Becky says, “There is a scam for everyone.”

And her tireless work exposing these criminals helps the rest of us understand just how sophisticated, and sometimes bizarre, their playbook can be.

The fraud industry spent decades building better walls.

So the criminals went looking for the place where there weren’t any.

They found us.

In the first week of September, I’ll be attending the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) North American Summit, and one of the things I’m most looking forward to is learning more about the ecosystem that’s growing up around scams.

Who is coming together? What is being built? And how can we get better at protecting that poor single human sitting on the other side of the screen?

Because maybe the next chapter is about building an ecosystem around them, too.

Note: Edited by and Image by AI

My maternal grandmother lived through the Great Depression. Poverty, scarcity, fear, and shame were part of what she carried forward and what my mom took with her into our home.

My maternal family’s message around money was essentially:

Don’t waste money.
You don’t need that.
Make do with what you have.
Don’t spend money unnecessarily.
Who do you think you are?

My father’s family also grew up during the Depression, equally poor if not poorer, but their approach to money was very different. Even today, when I become furious about money my dad has wasted, he responds:

“It’s only money.”

The emphasis here needs to be on the word war. These weren’t simply two different philosophies I observed. There were many verbal fights about money throughout my childhood.

And not surprisingly, I internalized the war.

The $45,000 Lawn Ornament

I can see it clearly in my reaction to my dad’s recent vehicle-buying saga.

He bought a new truck, couldn’t get into it, traded it for a RAV4, then decided he wanted a truck again and traded the RAV4 for another new truck—which, once again, he couldn’t get into. He fell trying.

Then he went back and bought another new RAV4.

Is your head spinning trying to keep track? Because mine was—à la Linda Blair. If you’re one of my contemporaries, you know what I mean.

By this point, I was losing my mind over how much money was being burned through these transactions.

My tirade included:

“We are not the Kardashians. We are not the Trumps. We are NOT Saddam Hussein whose sons lit their @#$%^! cigars with $100 bills. We are poor people. I'm selling my damn clothes to a resale shop, for God's sake!”

(My husband would like me to point out that I was decluttering my closet and we are not on the verge of panhandling.)

Dad’s response?

“It’s only money.”

My Parts emphatically disagree.

It is never only money.

Money is security.

Money represents work.

Money represents responsibility.

And wasting it feels almost morally wrong.

That’s particularly interesting because I grew up watching Dad perform brutal physical labor for money. I remember the concrete-covered work boots coming off when he got home. I remember chemical burns from concrete poisoning after long pours. I remember him exhausted from work.

We were working-class people.

You didn’t just throw money away.

The Updating of the Betsey Johnson Glasses

Then something happened that turned the mirror back on me.

I need glasses, and I have a complicated and expensive prescription. With my insurance discount this year, I bought a fun new pair of purple glasses for $484.

(Girls: if you or nature decide to let your hair go naturally grey and you wear glasses, you need a cool pop of color on your face. Go big!)

But I also have a pair of iridescent turquoise-pink Betsey Johnson glasses that I bought last year.

I love those glasses. And I get a ton of compliments on them because they are awesome.

When I originally picked them out, one of my Artistic Parts, Color Splash, was ecstatic.

Then I went to pick them up.

A Critic took one look at me wearing them and started:

“Who do you think you are?”
“How dare you?”
“You’re getting too big for your britches!”
“What were you thinking?”

This year, in addition to the fun new purple pair, I decided to update the Betsey Johnson frames with my new prescription so I could continue wearing them. Essentially, I’d now have two pairs of glasses. Something I’ve never before had in my life.

Cost: approximately $600 out-of-pocket.

My Critics went berserk once again. Bless them.

“You’ll never wear two pairs of glasses.”
“This is nothing but vanity.”
“This is nothing but wasted money.”

The voice sounds like some combination of Mother and her mom.

I told my sister about the argument happening in my head.

She said:

“I have three pairs of glasses.”

Excellent. Evidence for the defense.

I presented this information to my Critics.

Their response:

“Then she’s an idiot too!”

Apparently, the Critic would rather indict both sisters than reconsider the money rule.

And that’s when I began to see that this wasn’t really a rational discussion about whether $600 was a reasonable amount to spend.

The criticism was moral:

Wasteful. Vain. Idiotic. Who do you think you are?

One pair of glasses is a necessity.

The second pair is partly about pleasure, beauty and self-expression.

And apparently, need is much easier for my system to justify than want.

The Same Courtroom

The amounts couldn’t be more different.

Dad spends tens of thousands of dollars on vehicles.

I spend $600 putting new lenses into glasses I love.

But the internal courtroom sounds remarkably similar:

Waste. Irresponsibility. Unnecessary.

The same Parts who become furious when he spends $45,000 will also prosecute me for spending $600 on myself.

Different scale.

Same courtroom.

And that’s important because it means my reaction to Dad isn’t entirely about Dad.

He’s violating a rule I also enforce against myself.

Thrifting Complicates the Story

A Part of me loves thrifting.

I love the thrill of the hunt. I love finding something wonderful without paying full price. I love getting a good deal.

I love taking something someone else no longer wants and imagining what it could become. I love repurposing things and keeping perfectly usable stuff out of the landfill.

And I love that my husband and I thrift together. It is glorious fun.

So I don’t want to look at everything I’ve inherited around frugality and decide it’s pathological scarcity thinking that needs to be discarded.

Some of it is me. Some of it reflects values I genuinely want to keep: creativity, stewardship, resourcefulness and financial responsibility.

And some of it simply brings me joy.

The difference may be in how it feels.

Thrifting:

Holy Hannah, look what I found for $8!

That felt like: Joy, curiosity, creativity, connection, and play.

How I reacted to the Betsey Johnson glasses:

Who do you think you are? You’re vain. You’re wasting money.

That felt like blame, shame, judgment, and moral indictment.

Hello Dad, Hello Mom.

I Get to Make My Own Rules

My therapist said something important when we talked about all of this:

I get to decide how I view money now. I get to make my own rules.

That feels almost ridiculously obvious.

And yet it isn’t. Nor is it easy.

I grew up in the middle of the Mom–Dad Money War.

One side says: Don’t waste it.

The other says: It’s only money.

For most of my life, I thought those were simply my parents’ very different attitudes toward money. What I didn’t realize was that I’d internalized both sides of the argument.

A Question for You

It took me many, many years to realize I was carrying this money war around inside me.

I thought these were my beliefs about money. I didn’t realize how many had been handed down to me long before I was old enough to decide whether I agreed with them.

So now I’m curious about yours.

What did you learn about money growing up?

Was money something to save? Spend? Hide? Fear? Fight about?

Was wanting something considered selfish? Was spending on yourself indulgent? Did having money mean you’d made it? Did not having it mean you’d failed?

And perhaps the most interesting question:

Which of your money rules did you actually choose—and which ones did you simply inherit?

Maybe part of being an adult is realizing we don’t have to keep following rules we never agreed to in the first place.

Note: edited by and photo by AI

In 1988, she allowed her 18- and 22-year-old daughters to travel overseas alone.

No cell phones. No texting. No GPS. No way to instantly know whether we had arrived safely, missed a train, gotten lost, or made it back to where we were staying at night.

If something went wrong, communication meant a pay phone, an expensive long-distance call, or a letter that would arrive long after the crisis had passed.

As I walked those same streets decades later, with maps in my pocket and instant access to almost anything, I kept wondering:

How did she override the fear I know she had?

I have no answers, as she has left this realm. But that decision broadened my worldview and, thereby, changed my world.

Travel has enriched my life in ways I can barely explain. It has challenged assumptions I did not even realize I carried until I came face-to-face with them in places like Bali, where the poverty I encountered reshaped my understanding of how much of the world lives.

At the same time, travel has made the world feel more human and less abstract. Standing in grocery stores in Granada, Spain, alongside locals shopping for dinner or tomorrow morning’s bread, I was reminded again and again that most people, in most places, are simply trying to live, love, work, laugh, protect their families, and make sense of their lives.

My mother’s ability to overcome her fear for her young daughters gifted me with a life I would not have had otherwise.

I’d love to tell you that that one event changed my life so completely that I’ve never felt fear again.

But that would be a very big lie, as years of therapy unpacking why I become so fearful and reactive when triggered can attest.

But the courage my mother showed in letting us go helped me see the world, and the humans in it, differently.

As I reflect on all of this in 2026, I cannot ignore what is happening in the United States. While my mother thankfully did not live to see authoritarianism thriving here, I find that her gift of letting us travel inoculated me against much of it. Travel made me more resistant to authoritarian tactics that exploit humanity’s fear.

Fear teaches us to distrust strangers, see difference as a threat, and avoid the unfamiliar until the world shrinks into “us” and “them.” But travel interrupts that script.

It is harder to reduce entire populations to stereotypes once you have shared meals with strangers, gotten lost in another country, relied on someone’s kindness, or laughed with people whose language you barely speak.

One thing travel teaches quickly is that the people you meet elsewhere are not abstractions. They are human beings living full and complicated lives.

And maybe, more importantly, you become more human too.

Travel humbles you. You become the outsider. The confused one. The person trying to read signs, navigate train stations, understand customs, and make yourself understood. It softens certainty. It stretches empathy.

Travel alone does not automatically make someone wise or kind.

But it does offer a chance to become larger than fear.

And I feel sad for those who do not know what they are missing.

They do not know:

• the freedom that can come from stepping beyond the familiar

• how quickly strangers can become kind when asked for help

• how many fears dissolve when met with real people in real places

• the quiet thrill of realizing the world is far larger, and often kinder, than they were told

Fear may protect comfort.

But it can also imprison wonder.

And I am so grateful that my mother overcame her own fear and, in doing so, gave me the gift of travel and wonder.

Two weeks ago, I was at a conference in London and attended an outstanding session on scams. One idea from that session has stayed with me. Throughout my career in fraud prevention, banks and online merchants have often focused on what suspicious transactions look like without always asking a more important question: why is this transaction happening?

That question matters to every one of us.

In the past, people imagined fraud as a criminal stealing a card number or hacking into an account. The story felt simple: a bad actor takes money. Today, many scams look different. In countless cases, the person making the payment is the account holder themselves. They log in. They approve the transfer. They send the money.

Because now the question is not only who made the transaction, but why they made it in the first place. Were they manipulated? Pressured? Told their account was compromised? Convinced they were helping a loved one? Promised a once-in-a-lifetime investment return? Drawn into a fake relationship?

Scams often arrive through technology. They come through text messages, private messages on social media sites, emails, dating apps, and phone calls. But they succeed by exploiting normal human emotions like trust, fear, hope, urgency, and confusion.

That is why scam prevention education must include education on human psychology.

Why So Many People Misunderstand Scams

A recent article from FightCybercrime.org highlighted several truths that deserve more attention.

• We underestimate how sophisticated scams have become.

• We cling to the myth that “smart people don’t get scammed.”

• We default to believing people get what they deserve.

• Media narratives often focus on the victim’s actions instead of the criminal’s tactics.

That mindset creates risk. If we believe scams only happen to careless or foolish people, we stop seeing ourselves as potential targets. We assume intelligence alone will protect us. It will not.

Scammers rely on human psychology, timing, and pressure. They do not need you to be foolish. They only need you to be human on the wrong day.

What Can You Do to Protect Yourself?

You do not need to become a fraud expert. You need to understand how scammers think and how pressure works.

Start with these habits:

• Slow everything down. Urgency is one of the scammer’s favorite tools. If someone says you must act immediately, pause.

• Verify through official channels. If your bank, utility company, or family member contacts you with an urgent request, stop and contact them yourself using a trusted phone number or website.

• Be cautious with secrecy. If someone tells you not to tell your spouse, family, bank, or friends, that is a major warning sign.

• Question emotional spikes. Fear, excitement, panic, greed, and romance can all be used against you.

• Never trust caller ID alone. Phone numbers can be spoofed.

• Do not move money to “safe accounts.” Legitimate institutions do not ask you to protect funds by wiring money elsewhere.

• Talk to another person first. Scams thrive in isolation. A five-minute conversation with someone you trust can break the spell.

• Use account safeguards. Strong passwords, two-factor authentication, and account alerts still matter.

Understand the Pattern

Many scams follow the same structure:

• The Hook – something grabs your attention

• The Story – a believable explanation

• Urgency – pressure to act now

• Payment or Access – the ask

If you recognize the pattern, you have a better chance of stepping out of it.

Intelligence Is Not Immunity

Smart people get scammed. Careful people get scammed. Successful people get scammed. This happens because scams often bypass logic and target emotion.

They catch people when they are tired, distracted, grieving, hopeful, lonely, rushed, or afraid. In other words, they target people in everyday moments.

Do not assume, “I’m too smart for that.” A better mindset is, “I am human, so I need safeguards.”

If Something Already Happened

Act quickly and without shame.

• Contact your bank or card issuer immediately

• Change passwords

• Report the incident to the relevant platforms or institutions

• Tell a trusted person

• Save messages and evidence

• File reports with appropriate authorities

The faster you act, the better your chances of limiting damage.

The Bigger Truth

These scams are not just financial losses on a spreadsheet. They involve real people making real decisions while under pressure from skilled manipulators.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

Treat scam awareness the same way you treat locking your doors at night. Build simple habits that reduce risk. Slow down when money is involved. Verify requests through trusted channels. Be suspicious of urgency. Talk to another person before acting on high-pressure requests. Protect your accounts with strong passwords and alerts. Most importantly, do not assume intelligence alone keeps you safe.

Scammers are counting on normal human reactions. Your best defense is learning the playbook, recognizing the pressure, and refusing to be rushed.

Thanks to an LLM for the image and editing of this blog.

The words we use after a scam matter more than we think.

Because the first words someone hears after they share what happened determine what happens next.

After my last post, I had multiple people reach out and ask a simple question:

“Okay… so what should I say instead?”

I love that people want to get it right.

This is a language problem.

We say things like:

• “They were duped.”

• “They fell for it.”

• “They missed the red flags.”

We hear these everywhere, at conferences, in headlines, and in conversations with friends. They sound neutral. But they really aren’t.

Those words quietly shift the blame onto the person rather than onto the criminal. They suggest something was missed. Something should have been caught. Something could have been avoided. And even if that’s not what we mean, it’s what people hear.

What We Don’t See

When those words land, something internal happens. Because when someone hears:

“How could you miss the red flags?” It doesn’t just register as a question.

It activates Parts.

A part that says:
You should have known.

A part that feels the heat of shame.

And a protective part that steps in quickly and says:
Stop talking. This isn’t safe.

The system shifts from openness to protection.

What the Research Shows

The work by AARP and the FINRA Foundation clearly backs this up.

When language subtly blames the person, it increases shame and pulls attention away from the criminal. That has real consequences. People stay quiet. They don’t ask for help. Not because they don’t need support. Because something inside has already decided it’s not safe.

A Small Shift That Changes Everything

When people asked me what to say instead, this is where I landed:

And if you’re not sure what to say in the moment:

“I’m so sorry.”

That’s enough. Because what matters most isn’t having the perfect words. It’s what those words do.

If what someone hears sounds like judgment, their system protects by shutting things down.

But when what they hear is: “I’m so sorry, something shifts.

From:

• shame

• defensiveness

• shutdown

To:

• a sense of safety with you

• a feeling of being understood

• the ability to stay in the conversation

Something to Keep in Mind

We spend a lot of time asking how to stop fraud.

Another question we should keep in mind is: Are we talking about it in a way that helps or harms people experiencing it?

Because the difference between:

“They fell for it,” and “a criminal targeted them” are not just semantics.

It determines whether someone keeps talking or shuts down.

So the next time someone tells you what happened:

Pause.

And choose your words carefully. Because you are either helping them stay in the conversation or reinforcing the silence that scammers depend on.

A Note: If This Happened to You

If you’re reading this because this happened to you:

This is not your fault.

These situations are designed to work on people. They use urgency, trust, and emotion to override normal decision-making.

What you’re feeling right now: shock, embarrassment, anger, disbelief, even despair, is a deeply human response to being targeted.

If different parts of you are reacting in different ways right now, that’s normal.

You don’t have to carry it alone.

Even if you’re not sure what happened yet, you can still reach out.

Here are a few places you can start:

• AARP Fraud Watch Network
  877-908-3360

• Federal Trade Commission
  reportfraud.ftc.gov

• Identity Theft Resource Center
  888-400-5530

• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
  ic3.gov

If you can, tell someone you trust.

You are not the only one this has happened to.

If this hasn’t happened to you, there’s still a role you play.

The way you respond might determine whether someone ever asks for help.

P.S. Thanks to AI for the image and editing help.

I’ve been a banker.
A payment card issuer: debit and credit.
A merchant.

And now, I educate payments and fraud professionals.

I’ve spent years tallying fraud losses.
Fighting disputes and chargebacks.

Implementing tool after tool designed to stop fraud earlier in the transaction.

Velocity checks.
Rules engines.
Machine learning models.
Step-up authentication.
Device ID.
Two-factor authentication.
Passkeys.

The list goes on and on.

At times, it’s been dizzying.

And for most of my career, the goal has been clear: detect fraud as early as possible and prevent losses.

A Different Kind of Fraud

In my years focused on transaction fraud, account takeover, identity theft, lost and stolen cards, non-receipt, and counterfeit payment cards, I’ve seen this industry evolve.

As the technology has grown, so has our ability to detect and stop fraud earlier.

And for years, when fraud occurred, the financial impact was largely absorbed by banks, merchants, or card issuers.

In many cases, the consumer was made whole; the loss was not theirs to carry.

Yes, it was inconvenient—new cards, updated subscriptions, temporary disruption.

Even in more complex cases like account takeover or identity theft, which are deeply stressful and invasive, consumers are often financially restored by their institutions.

But scams change that equation.

Once a person is hooked, criminals use psychological tactics to build trust, create urgency, and hold their attention long enough to guide them into moving their own money.

Out of their bank accounts.
Out of their 401(k)s.
Out of their children’s college funds.

By going directly to the consumer, scammers bypass the years of technology that merchants and banks have built to detect and stop fraud.

With scams, the consumer bears not only the financial loss but may also experience deep shame and, in many cases, life-altering consequences.

But Something Is Changing, and I Don’t Think It’s Just Me

Last week, I stood inside one of the largest gatherings of fraud and payments professionals I’ve ever experienced.

Almost 2,000 people.
From across the ecommerce ecosystem, merchants, card brands, acquirers, PSPs, solution providers, analysts, and consultants.

The people who understand how to prevent, detect, and stop transactional fraud losses better than anyone.

The conference kicked off with a keynote from AARP’s Kathy Stokes on the intersection of transactional fraud and scams, and the call to action was clear: there is overlap, and when it comes to scams, we need to recognize these individuals are victims of a crime, targeted with their own humanness used against them, and the words we use to and about those who were scammed matter.

Sitting There as a Fraud Professional and One Who Had Recently Been Scammed

As I listened, I had a strange experience.

I wasn’t just sitting there as a fraud professional.

I was also sitting there as someone who had recently clicked the link.

Who had entered four credit cards.
Who had overridden her own internal warning signs.

And I realized something uncomfortable:

Stokes was right: we’ve been trained to analyze the crook’s behavior, not to understand what it’s like to be the person on the other side of the fraud.

Because historically, the merchant or the bank was the financial victim. But now, the victim is our aunt. Our dad.

The Questions We Ask

When we did hear about someone who was scammed, we ask questions like this:

“How could you fall for that?”
“You lost how much money?”
“Didn’t you know it was too good to be true?”
“Why didn’t you trust your gut?”

While they might read like questions, they are often delivered with a big ole dollop of incredulity, and they land like judgment.

What Those Questions Actually Do

Those questions don’t create awareness.

They create shame.

And shame does two things extremely well:

It silences people.
And it isolates them.

Which is exactly what scammers rely on.

Because when people feel ashamed, they don’t report.
They don’t share.
They don’t warn others.

They go quiet.

We heard last week that someone who has been scammed once is more likely to be scammed again.

“There Is a Scam for Everyone”

Our other keynote speaker, Becky Holmes, author of Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love with You, said something that landed hard:

“There is a scam for everyone.”

Not just the uninformed.
Not just the elderly.
Not just “other people.”

Everyone.

Your sister.
Your neighbor.
Your parents.
Your uncle.

You.

None of us is impervious to this.

The Words We Use Matter

Across the stage, a consistent message emerged:

The words we use matter.

If we frame victims as careless or stupid,
we reinforce the idea that scams are preventable through willpower alone.

If we frame victims as human,
we start to see the real problem:

Scams are engineered to ensnare you. They are not random or accidental. They are well-rehearsed scripts that trap people every day.

The people who fall for scams are not lacking intelligence.

They are busy.
Distracted.
Exactly like the rest of us.

The same conditions I was in when I clicked.

A Shift That Matters

What I witnessed felt like a turning point.

A move away from:

“What’s wrong with the person?”

Toward:

“What happened to the person?”

That question changes everything.

Why This Matters More Than We Think

This isn’t just about how people feel.

It changes what we can see.

When people don’t report, we lose visibility.
We lose patterns.
We lose early signals.

We lose the ability to intervene before the next person is targeted.

But when people feel understood, they speak.

And when they speak, we get smarter, faster.

Changing the language isn’t soft.

It’s strategic.

The Real Call to Action

If you work in this space as I do, fraud, payments, risk,

Then this part is for you.

Step up.

We have knowledge that most people don’t.

And right now, that knowledge is staying inside conference rooms, Slack channels, and industry conversations.

It needs to get out.

Go into your community.

Your church.
Your Rotary club.
Your local groups.

Offer to do a free talk on scams.

Teach people what to look for, how these scams actually work, and how to protect themselves and the people they love. Explain that if this happens to someone they know, it isn’t due to that person’s gullibility. It’s a tried-and-true psychological playbook being used against them. They are not at fault. The crook is.

Because awareness shouldn’t be a privilege of the industry.

It should be accessible to everyone.

A few weeks ago, I was the story.

Last week, I watched the industry being educated about why we need more consideration for the person who was scammed, the one who emptied their nest egg and took out a second mortgage on their home.

And here’s what I believe now:

We need better language.
Better education.
And more people willing to speak up.

Less judgment.

More understanding.

Because, as Holmes says, “there is a scam for everyone.”

Be part of the solution, not part of the blame.

The text said my AT&T rewards were about to expire.

These days, we get points from everywhere. Airlines. Coffee shops. Hotels. Grocery stores. Credit cards.

“Your points are expiring” is a completely normal sentence in modern life.

And here is what made it plausible.

I am an AT&T customer.

I upgraded my iPhone last year through AT&T. A large purchase. Big enough that earning promotional rewards would make sense.

It had also been long enough that I could reasonably think, “Maybe I forgot about those points.”

So when the text arrived, my brain did what brains do.

It filled in the blanks.

This tracks.
This makes sense.
Click.

Here is what makes this interesting.

I have spent 30 years in fraud.

I started in banking, stopping credit card, debit card, loan, and investment fraud. Then I moved into e-commerce, fighting fraud from the merchant side. For the last 15 years, I have been educating professionals about payments risk and fraud. It is still my day job.

And I still clicked the link.

It Looked Legitimate

The site looked like AT&T.

Branding. Colors. Layout. Everything.

The hook?

Free noise-canceling headsets.
An Apple Watch.
Something else I did not care about.

All I had to do was pay shipping and handling.

THAT is a flag right there.

But here is where it gets interesting.

I fixated on the Apple Watch.

I have never owned one.
I do not wear a watch.

But my husband has a snazzy Fitbit.
My sister has an Apple Watch.

Suddenly, I wanted one.

Not because I needed it.

Because I wanted to feel like my cool sister.

And underneath that was another quiet hook:

Those are my points.
I earned them.

Loss aversion is powerful. We work surprisingly hard not to lose something that feels like ours, even if we did not care about it five minutes earlier.

The Escalation

I entered one credit card.

Declined.

I tried again.

Declined.

Second card.

Declined.

Just a note here. Most of my credit cards are saved in my browser. I did not even have to get up. No friction. Just click. Autofill. Submit.

Autofill is convenient. It is also dangerous.

Third card.

Declined.

A small thought surfaced:

Why are you working so hard to get something you did not even want 15 minutes ago?

That was the moment when my executive function tried to come back online.

But I wanted that watch, dammit. So I overrode it.

My brain rationalized:

They are all from the same issuer.
Maybe the issuer is having a problem.

So I physically got up. Went to my wallet. Grabbed the card that almost never declines anyone. If you are in the industry, you know the one.

Declined.

That is when the sinking feeling hit.

I checked the URL.

It was not AT&T.

It just looked like it.

I had been had.

And I had just handed over four credit cards.

Here’s the Ironic Part

Less than six months ago, I sat in a demo where someone showed a room full of fraud and payments professionals how a legitimate website can be cloned in 20 minutes.

We all sat there with our mouths open in shock.

And when the moment came in real life, none of that knowledge mattered.

Because knowledge lives in the thinking brain.
Scams activate something else.

They do not attack your intelligence.

They hook urgency.
They hook identity.
They hook belonging.
They hook scarcity.
They hook momentum.
They hook loss.

Those are my points. I earned them.

I was also crazy busy that day. Multitasking. Half focused.

Cognitive load weakens friction. When your brain is juggling ten things, it defaults to shortcuts. Pattern recognition over verification. Speed over scrutiny.

That is exactly when scammers strike.

That is not stupidity.

That is wiring.

The Four Steps Most Scams Follow

When you strip it down, most scams follow a predictable structure.

The Hook.
Something that grabs attention. Expiring points. A package delay. A security alert. A prize.

The Story.
A believable narrative that fits your life. I am an AT&T customer. I upgraded my phone last year. Rewards could reasonably exist.

Urgency.
Act now. Points expire. Limited inventory. Last chance.

Urgency compresses thinking.

Payment.
This is always the endgame. Card number. Crypto. Wire. Gift cards. Credentials.

In my case, the hook was expiring rewards.
The story was plausible: loyalty points, they’re everywhere, coffee, airline miles, pennies off at the gas station.
The urgency was loss: If you don’t do it now, you’ll lose your points.
The payment was me giving up credit cards:

Card number.
Expiration date.
Security code.

Check.
Check.
Check.

They were capturing the data like a vault.

They were not even sending it through the payment rails.

What I Did Next

I immediately called both issuers.

I closed all four cards.

I had them reissued.

Once I realized what had happened, there was no hesitation.

Cancel. Reissue. Monitor.

Inconvenient? Yes.

Embarrassing? Heck yes.

I was supposed to be smarter than this. I am a trained fraud fighter!!

And I am sharing this with you because we all say, “I’d never do that. I’d never give away my life savings or hand over four credit cards to a thief.”

Until the moment we do.

Scams work because they are designed for real humans living real, busy lives.

They are engineered for distraction.
Engineered for emotion.
Engineered for momentum.

They do not need you to be uninformed.

They just need you to be human for a few seconds.

I was human for a few seconds.

And that was enough.

I am sharing this so you feel less shame if it ever happens to you.

Silence protects scammers. Awareness protects us.

P.S. Thanks to AI for the nifty graphic.

It’s in headlines, conference agendas, and conversations swinging between excitement and fear.

But here is something you may not realize.

You have likely been interacting with modern AI for more than 15 years.

Not through chatbots.

Through your social media feeds and your streaming queues.

Every time you open Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok, you are engaging with machine learning systems trained to predict what will keep you there.

They track what you pause on.
What you skip.
What you replay.
When you linger.

They do not think.
They do not care.
But they do learn.

And they are optimized for engagement.

Not for your clarity.
Not for your wholeness.
Engagement.

Why engagement matters

Here is the part we rarely say out loud.

Attention is revenue.

The longer you stay:

• The more ads you see

• The more data is gathered

• The more precisely behavior can be predicted

• The more valuable you become to the platform

Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ operate on the same principle. Engagement drives retention. Retention drives revenue.

Let’s say this clearly.

These systems are not accidentally sticky.

The algorithms are intentionally trained to keep you on the platform as long as possible. More time means more data. More data means better prediction. Better prediction means more revenue.

If you find yourself lingering longer than you planned, that is not a moral failure.

It is an engineered outcome.

Your Inner Critic may interpret it as weakness or lack of discipline.

But it’s not.

You are interacting with systems designed to capture and hold attention.

The algorithms are doing what they were built to do: keep you on their platforms.

And your Parts are responding exactly as human Parts tend to respond.

And it is not just scrolling

Streaming works the same way.

“Up next” is not accidental.
“You might also like” is not random.

Autoplay removes the natural pause where a Self-led check-in might occur.

When the next episode begins automatically, the moment that might have allowed you to ask:

Do I want to keep going?
Am I tired?
Is this still nourishing?

… quietly disappears.

Momentum replaces intention.

And some Parts of us are very comfortable with momentum.

Why some Parts struggle to stop

When someone says, “I don’t understand why I can’t stop watching,” I hear internal conflict.

Usually, at least three Parts are involved.

The Scrolling Part
Seeking relief. Comfort. Stimulation. A break from responsibility.

The Avoidant or Overwhelmed Part
Trying not to feel something harder underneath.

The Inner Critic
Arriving afterward. Loud. Certain. Furious about “wasted time.”

Each of these Parts makes sense.

None of them are weak.
None of them are broken.

They are responding to systems designed to hook them.

A quick story

A few weeks ago, I sat down after dinner with my phone to check one email.

Forty-five minutes later, I was watching a video about organizing someone else’s pantry.

Y’all. My own pantry is not even organized, and I do not anticipate ever being motivated to organize it. What in the world was I doing watching someone else organize theirs?

Then I looked at the clock.

The Inner Critic showed up with bells on.

“You wasted your evening.”
“You have work to do.”
“Why do you do this?”

Instead of arguing, I acknowledged it.

“I hear you. You’re not wrong. We did have other things to do than watch someone rehome their pasta into matching containers.”

Then I turned toward the Scrolling Part.

What were you hoping this would give us?

The answer was simple.

I was tired.
I had made many decisions that day.
I wanted something easy.

The Scrolling Part was trying to help.

The Critic was trying to protect.

Once that became clear, the intensity softened.

Why it can feel worse afterward

Often, it is not the scrolling that hurts the most.

It is the internal backlash.

When the Inner Critic attacks, other Parts react. Shame flares. Defensiveness rises. Maybe a Hopeless Part whispers, “See? You never change.”

Now you are not just dealing with lost time. You are managing a pileup of Parts.

When the Inner Critic tells you that you “should have known better,” remember this:

You were not fighting your own laziness.

You were engaging with a system intentionally designed to reduce friction and extend engagement.

That is not a flaw in your character.

It is a feature of the platform.

This is not about discipline.

It is about learning to listen.

It is about recognizing that every Part was trying to help in the only way it knew how.

It is about bringing compassion to the Scrolling Part, the Avoidant Part, the Inner Critic, and the one who feels ashamed.

It is about having compassion for yourself.

And when they soften, you gain more access to Self-Energy.

The deeper question

AI-driven platforms are powerful. They are built to keep engagement high because engagement drives revenue.

But you are not a revenue model.

You are a system of Parts that need care, clarity, and leadership.

When I fall down a doomscrolling rabbit hole and suddenly realize hours have passed, I do my best to bring in Self.

Curiosity instead of condemnation.
Compassion instead of collapse.
Clarity instead of criticism.

Nothing in me is broken. Nothing in you is either.

Instead of asking:

Why can I not stop?

Try asking:

Which Part was in the lead?
What was it trying to protect me from?
What does it need now?

Those questions create space.

And in that space, Self-Energy has room to return.

I would love to know what you notice if you try asking yourself these questions the next time you “waste more time” than your Inner Critic would like.

Drop your reflections in the comments.

That evening routine helped with sleep, and with that change, I had more bandwidth to notice other moments during the day when I was getting stressed. I started paying attention to how often I’d reach for my phone, scroll through the news, and feel my body quietly tense.

Like many of us, I’ve noticed how easily “just checking the news” turns into scrolling past the point of usefulness. Even when my mind wants to stay informed, my body often ends up tight, wired, or strangely numb. What I’ve been looking for isn’t an escape from what’s happening in the world, but a way to stay engaged without overwhelming my nervous system.

That’s where neurographic art has come in.

A Quick Clarifier

When I say neurographic art, I’m not referring to Neurographica®, the trademarked method with a defined algorithm and certification process.

I’m talking about an informal, intuitive drawing practice, flowing lines, gently rounded intersections, repetition, and simple pattern-making. There’s no right way to do it. No system to learn. You don’t need to be artistic. You just need a pen and a few minutes.

Why Doomscrolling Leaves Us Dysregulated

Doomscrolling isn’t a character flaw. It’s a nervous-system response.

Some part of us is trying to stay informed, anticipate danger, or maintain a sense of control. The problem is that most news arrives as an unresolved threat. There’s rarely a clear action to take or a sense of completion, so the body stays on alert.

Over time, that looks like shallow breathing, clenched jaws, restless energy, or emotional numbing. The stress doesn’t resolve; it just accumulates, most often for me in my aching neck.

Why This Works

At first, I didn’t think much about why neurographic art helped. I just noticed that after a few minutes of drawing, my shoulders dropped, my breath slowed, and then I was no longer thinking about scrolling through Instagram.

Eventually, I got curious.

This practice works less by changing our thoughts and more by speaking directly to the nervous system.

Repetition and rhythm signal safety.
Slow, repetitive movement is regulating. Drawing continuous lines creates rhythm and predictability, two things the nervous system associates with safety. It’s the same reason walking, knitting, or rocking can feel calming.

Rounded shapes reduce tension.
Sharp angles tend to register as stress. Curves and rounded edges do the opposite. In neurographic art, gently rounding intersections matters. The nervous system responds to shape long before it responds to meaning.

It interrupts cognitive overload.
When stress is high, thinking harder doesn’t help. Neurographic art occupies just enough attention to interrupt rumination without demanding insight or emotional processing.

It restores agency without pressure.
You choose where the line goes. You decide when to stop. There’s nothing to optimize or share. That low-stakes agency helps the nervous system move out of overwhelm.

It helps close stress loops.
Stress wants a beginning, middle, and end. Most modern stressors don’t offer that. Neurographic art does, and that sense of completion matters.

Why I’m Choosing This Instead of Doomscrolling

Both doomscrolling and neurographic art often come from the same impulse: “I need to do something,” or “I’m looking for a distraction.”

But they land very differently.

Doomscrolling escalates the threat and keeps the body braced. Neurographic art gives that restless energy somewhere to go. One leaves me more activated. The other leaves me steadier.

This isn’t about checking out. It’s about staying regulated enough to stay engaged.

What I’ve Been Using

I’ve left some drawings in black and white. I’ve colored others with alcohol markers. I’ve used an old, inexpensive watercolor set I already had.

Each version has offered the same thing: a way to stay present, soften my body, and calm my nervous system, without worrying whether I’m “doing it right” or making something “pretty.”

What I appreciate most is how little this practice asks of me. Whatever is nearby, a pen, a marker, the back of an envelope, it’s enough.

If You Want to Try It

Next time you feel the urge to scroll:

Take a piece of paper. Draw one continuous line. Let it cross itself. Wherever lines intersect, gently round the edges. Add more lines or shapes if you want. Stop when your body feels ready.

No meaning required. No fixing. No finishing it “right.”

Just a few minutes of giving your nervous system something it understands.

If you’re curious, try this once today—just a few minutes, with whatever pen or paper is nearby. And if you notice anything shift, even slightly, I’d love to hear about it.

P.S. My Inner Critic is having an internal meltdown about me sharing my actual pieces. She is pointing out every bump, every irregularity. I’m letting her know I hear her concern. I know it’s scary to put any artwork out into the world, especially when the technique is new to us. I appreciate her concern, and I love her for trying to help keep me safe.

As January closes, it feels like we’ve already lived 43 months in 2026. I am not okay with what is happening in the country I live in. Each news cycle brings fresh waves of anguish, for people I love and for me. And yet, life doesn’t pause. I still have to get up, feed my cats, do my laundry, show up for my job, hold space for my clients, and care for my aging father.

I’m fortunate to have a strong support network: people I meet with weekly, monthly, even daily, my loving, like-minded husband, who steadies me in ways both ordinary and profound, and my sister, whom I have on speed dial. Still, I find myself caught between being glued to the news and wanting to avoid it altogether. The result is familiar: I feel increasingly dysregulated. My nervous system is on high alert.

I have enough self-awareness to know this isn’t sustainable. I understand the risks to my mental well-being, and I realized I needed ways to down-regulate if I’m going to meet the real, ongoing needs of my life.

Recently, I’ve discovered and begun practicing two simple supports that, alongside curbing my doomscrolling and news consumption, have been genuinely helpful. In this post, I want to share the first one.

It began, of all places, as a meme on social media. The post claimed that children in Scandinavian countries are encouraged to write out their worries and fears at bedtime. It was appealing. It was tidy. And, because I don’t trust everything I read on social media (a good practice, by the way), I went looking for sources. I couldn’t find any evidence that such a cultural practice exists.

What I did find was something adjacent: a practice often called brain dumping. The idea is simple: getting the swirl of thoughts out of your head and onto paper before sleep. Helpful, perhaps. But the term itself didn’t land for me. It felt a little harsh. A little chaotic. Not something my nervous system wanted to engage with at the end of an already long, nerve-jangling day.

So I adapted it. I softened it. And I renamed it.

I call it Night Writing.

What follows isn’t about fixing anything or finding insight. It’s a way of gently noticing what’s still with me at the end of the day, so my system doesn’t have to hold it all through the night.

What Night Writing Is (and Isn’t)

Night Writing is not journaling. It isn’t therapy homework, problem-solving, or a place to figure anything out. It’s a short, contained practice designed to help you release what might still feel unfinished from your day.

I practice it with a timer, 10 minutes at the most. When the timer ends, I stop, even if I feel like I could keep going. That boundary matters. It signals to my system that nothing is being forced and nothing has to be finished tonight. Over time, it also helps my brain and my Parts learn that there will be another opportunity to release what’s worrying them.

I start by writing one simple line at the top of the page:

Night Writing: Noticing only.

Here are a few prompts that have been helpful to me. I’d encourage you to try them or experiment with whatever prompt works best for you.

• Body first
  When I think about today, what sensation is still in my body?
  (I name it briefly—tight chest, heavy jaw, buzzing arms.)

• Parts presence
  Is any part of me still on alert?
  (I name it loosely, without explaining or fixing.)

• Echo
  Is there a moment from today that keeps coming up for me?
  (I name the moment, not the story.)

When the timer ends, I close the practice with a sentence that matters deeply to me. I write a note to my Parts, telling them that I love them and that I am with them.

Then I close the notebook. I don’t reread what I’ve written. I don’t try to make meaning of it. I might place a hand on my chest or take one long exhale, something physical to let my body know we’re done.

Night Writing isn’t about feeling better. It’s about feeling held enough to rest. It’s a way of letting my system, and all of my Parts, know that nothing important is being ignored, and that none of them are alone.

If this resonates, you don’t need to do it perfectly. You don’t need to do it every night. You don’t even need to write much at all.

Sometimes, the most regulating thing we can offer ourselves, and our Parts, is simple acknowledgment, love, and permission to sleep.

If you try it, let me know in the comments below whether you found it helpful.

We sell vintage paper for art: collage, junk journals, altered books, and mixed media. Old ledgers. Torn pages. Forgotten envelopes. Gently used paper-craft supplies. The kinds of materials that tend to draw in a very particular kind of person.

Our first day didn’t go well.
We made one dollar.

On that disappointing day, one woman stopped at our table and asked a question.

“What do you do with them?”

She wasn’t rude.
But there was something in her tone, a quiet measuring that landed in my chest and stayed there.

My immediate, probably slightly defensive, response was,
“That is the question, isn’t it?”

The words came out before I had fully decided on them.

And I’ve been thinking about that question ever since.

Why the question sticks

She looked at one of the journals as if it were just another object, something that would need a place, something that would eventually gather dust.

From that perspective, I could understand the question.
If the value is in the object itself, then usefulness matters.

But after months of reflection, I’ve realized that most of the value I get from creating art with vintage paper isn’t in the finished journal at all.

It’s in the making of it.

What creating gives me

When I sit down with paper, glue, and ink, my mind quiets.

My attention narrows to what’s right in front of me: texture, color, and placement.
My hands are busy.
My phone stays out of reach.

The small, repetitive decisions of cutting, arranging, and layering ease me into a steady flow. Time softens. The background noise fades.

In those moments, I’m present.

And that’s the part that often gets overlooked when we ask, “What do you do with it?”

Because the purpose, the creation itself, has already happened.

And as a bonus, I can return to my old journals later, flipping through their pages and letting them spark ideas for new ones. (She wasn’t wrong — I do now have a bookcase full of them, and I love revisiting them.)

A different way of asking

That day at the flea market wasn’t a failure — even if the register suggested otherwise. I live in a rural area, and I’ve always known that building a small, creative business here would take time.

What stayed with me wasn’t the lack of sales.
It was the question and what it revealed about how many of us have been taught to value our time, our creativity, and ourselves.

So now, when I hear it, I pause.

And I ask something else instead:

Why do the things that quiet us, ground us, and bring us fully into the present need to do anything more than that?

Sometimes, creating is enough.

News arrived from one of my favorite places on earth. Minneapolis is a city I associate with change, with acceptance, with love, with Prince and (of course) snow and dear, dear friends. I had the privilege of living there for over twenty years. Hearing what happened there landed in my body before it made sense in my mind.

I didn’t rush to analyze it.
Instead, I noticed my parts.

One part felt sorrow.
Another felt fear.
Another felt fury at the senselessness of it all.

Each response made sense. Each one was trying, in its own way, to protect something tender.

And beneath them, I noticed a place that could hold all of those responses without asking any of them to quiet down or move on. A place that didn’t need answers right away.

That moment didn’t create clarity about the year ahead. It confirmed what was already quietly forming.

Two words had been surfacing for me long before I tried to name them:

Heartache.
Happiness.

Not just as opposites.
Not as a choice between one or the other.
Just… both.

Because that is what a full life holds.

In Internal Family Systems(IFS), we don’t try to exile pain or cling to joy. We don’t rush to transcend or bypass what hurts. Instead, we slow down. We notice what’s here. We stay in relationship with our parts and allow Self to lead with curiosity and compassion rather than control.

Life offers moments of quiet joy and moments that take our breath away. It offers laughter over something small and ordinary, only to be followed by days that feel heavier than we expected. It offers long stretches of routine, laundry, dishes, emails, errands, interrupted by flashes of beauty, grief, connection, disappointment, relief.

For a long time, a part of me believed that if I did life right, I could tip the balance. That with enough insight, effort, or healing, I could move closer to happiness and keep heartache at a safe distance.

I have a lot of compassion for that part now.
It was trying to keep me safe.

But from a more Self-led place, I can see that life doesn’t work that way.

Heartache doesn’t mean something has gone wrong.
Happiness doesn’t mean we’ve arrived.

They coexist. They inform one another. Often, they deepen one another.

These days, my work is less about managing outcomes and more about staying present in the middle. About noticing what’s here, inside and around me, without blending with fear of what’s coming or getting pulled back into what’s already passed.

I’m practicing noticing.

The warmth of a mug in my hands.
A page of paper waiting to be fashioned into art.
An unexpected cuddle from my dad’s cat, Smokey.
A quiet moment where no part of me needs fixing.

I’m learning, slowly, to let joy be small and real rather than earned or permanent. And to let heartache be something I can stay with, accompanied by Self, instead of something I need to brace against or push away.

So if 2026 holds both heartache and happiness, I suppose that means it holds many parts, and the ongoing invitation to meet them with curiosity, compassion, and care.

And for now, my work feels simple, even when it isn’t easy: to welcome it all, the ache, the joy, and everything that lives between.

If you’re noticing what parts are stirring as you look ahead, you’re welcome to share.

I’d love to hear what you’re holding, and what you’re hoping to meet with a little more Self this year.

Metacognition is the ability to notice your thoughts instead of being swept away by them. It’s the difference between being inside a thought and watching a thought happen.

And that difference? It changes everything.

Metacognition literally means “thinking about thinking.”

It’s the mental skill that lets you say:

• Oh—my mind just jumped to worst-case scenario.

• I’m telling myself a story right now.

• This thought feels urgent, but that doesn’t make it true.

You don’t argue with the thought.
You don’t suppress it.
You simply notice it.

That small pause creates space.
And space creates choice.

The Space Between Stimulus and Response

One of my favorite quotes comes from Viktor Frankl:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

That space Frankl describes?
That is metacognition.

Something happens: a comment, an email, a craving, a memory, and a reaction fires almost instantly.

Metacognition is the moment you realize:
Something in me just reacted.

The Same Space, Through an IFS Lens

In Internal Family Systems (IFS) language, that space is where Self becomes available.

The stimulus happens.
A part responds.

Maybe it’s a protector rushing in with urgency.
Maybe it’s an inner critic with sharp words.
Maybe it’s a firefighter trying to numb, distract, or fix things fast.

Before I had this framework, I thought that reaction was me.

Now I understand:
A part of me is having a reaction.

That distinction matters.

Metacognition Is How We Unblend

Metacognition allows us to notice:

• A part of me feels panicked.

• A part of me is convinced this is an emergency.

• A part of me is trying very hard to protect me right now.

In IFS, this is called unblending.

You’re no longer inside the part.
You’re in relationship with it.

The feeling may still be there.
The impulse may still be strong.

But the leadership shifts.

Self Energy Lives in the Space

When we create even a sliver of distance between stimulus and response, we give Self a chance to step forward.

Self doesn’t shout.
Self doesn’t rush.
Self is calm, curious, compassionate, and connected.

From Self, you might say:

• I see why you’re scared.

• Thank you for trying to protect me.

• I’ve got this.

The part doesn’t disappear.
The emotion doesn’t vanish.

But you are no longer being driven by it.

That’s not self-control.
That’s self-leadership.

Why This Matters in Real Life

So much of our suffering doesn’t come from what happens to us—it comes from being blended with the part that reacts to what happens.

The email isn’t the problem.
The comment isn’t the problem.
The craving isn’t the problem.

The problem is believing:
This reaction is the whole truth of who I am.

Metacognition—especially when paired with IFS—gently corrects that misunderstanding.

You are not your anxious part.
You are not your critical part.
You are not your coping strategies.

You are the one who can notice them.

A Simple, IFS-Informed Practice

The next time you feel activated, pause and try this:

1. Name the stimulus
   Something just happened.

2. Notice the part
   A part of me is reacting strongly.

3. Create the space
   Can I be curious about this part instead of believing it?

That pause.
That breath.
That moment of awareness.

That’s metacognition in action.
That’s IFS in real life.
That’s the space Frankl was pointing to.

Closing Reflection

That small space between stimulus and response may feel subtle, but it holds immense power. Each time you notice a thought instead of believing it, you reclaim a bit of your freedom. And over time, those small moments of awareness quietly reshape a life.

Unexpected Loss and the Healing Power of a Cat Named Lily Ming

This week, I lost one of my fur babies, Lily Ming, unexpectedly to cancer. Two weeks ago, I spent the weekend with her at the emergency vet, thinking she just had a UTI. When she didn’t improve after a standard round of antibiotics, further testing revealed the truth: cancer.

I got the call at 3:30 p.m. on Monday. My week shattered in an instant. I canceled all my evening calls and clients, except for my personal therapy session. I knew I’d need her support. (Self-care matters, especially in moments like this.)

Lily Ming taught me a lot about myself, and about how I show up in relationship with others, both people and cats.

I’ve always been a firm believer in adopting from rescue organizations. Lily Ming came from a shelter in Missouri, about an hour from me. I’ve had snowshoe cats before, and when I saw her photo online, that soft coloring, those striking blue eyes, I knew she was meant to come home with me.

If you’re not familiar with the breed, snowshoes are known for being affectionate, floppy cats, the kind that melt in your arms and soak up every bit of attention. I’ve had three over the years, and they’ve all been pure joy: loving, gentle, and endlessly snuggly.

Not so with Lily Ming. She was the first cat I’ve ever had who didn’t seem to love us in the way I expected. She was stand-offish, hated being picked up, and rarely sought affection. She was not the typical snowshoe at all. In fact, she embodied the classic cat stereotype in every “cats vs. dogs” meme: aloof, independent, and perfectly content to keep her distance.

When we picked her up at the shelter, they told us she’d been surrendered because her previous owner had faced a health crisis and could no longer care for Lily Ming or her other animals.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized I hadn’t fully considered how that early loss might have shaped her. What it must have been like to be separated from the person she loved, to suddenly find herself in a noisy shelter, surrounded by strangers.

Animals experience trauma too. They just can’t tell us about it.

Looking back, I see that I expected her to immediately trust, love, and attach to be the affectionate snowshoe I thought I was bringing home. But Lily Ming was teaching me something else entirely: that love looks different when safety has been shaken.

(Consider this my public service announcement for anyone who also prefers to adopt from shelters: we never truly know what our rescues have been through, and they may need time, patience, and space to learn to feel safe again.)

But my most startling moment of self-awareness was still to come.

As the months passed with Lily Ming settling into our family, the holidays arrived. One afternoon, I was humming to myself while doing chores. When I turned around, I noticed Lily Ming staring at me. I kept singing, this time just to her, and even playfully wove her name into the song.

To my surprise, she came toward me. And in that moment, I felt a rush of love and warmth flood my body—real, spontaneous love for her—for the first time.

That’s when I learned something that stopped me cold: it’s easier to like someone who likes you.

Until then, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding back. Of course, I’d been caring for her, feeding her, brushing her, making sure she was healthy. But that deep, open-hearted affection hadn’t been there. I only noticed it once it arrived.

We don’t like to think our love, or even our liking, is conditional, but I discovered that mine had been.

I had an expectation of who Lily Ming would be, how she would act, how she would show affection toward me, and when she didn’t, I struggled to feel affection for her in return. All of that unfolded quietly, beneath my conscious awareness, until that day my singing broke through something for her… and, I think, for me too.

In that small moment, I realized how much of my love had been waiting for proof that it was safe to be given.

After that realization, I started paying attention to how I respond to people, you know, the two-legged kind. Was I doing the same thing with them? Guarding myself from those who didn’t seem to like me?

It sounds smart, right? You don’t want to open yourself up to people who might hurt you.

But even as I write this, I can see it more clearly: what I was really doing, whether with Lily Ming or with people who seemed disinterested in me, was protecting myself from rejection. Guarding against hurt before it even had the chance to arrive.

But if I’m guarding against hurt, shields up, what else am I turning away from me? Love? Connection? The possibility of being seen and accepted, even when it feels risky?

I’d love to tell you that my behavior completely changed after that day, with Lily Ming or with people, but this isn’t a fairytale.

This is the story of an imperfect human (me), carrying her own wounds of rejection, and an imperfect snowshoe (Lily Ming) with a past I knew nothing about. It’s the story of how we slowly learned to love each other exactly where we were, in all our mutual imperfections.

As the years with Lily Ming went by, I began to notice that her love language was proximity. She refused to be in my arms or even on my lap; she just needed to be near. At night, she’d jump onto the bed and snug up against my hip. She’d tolerate a few ear scritches, and every so often, at first rarely, then more and more as time went on, I’d hear the soft, steady hum of her purr.

Losing Lily Ming has left a quiet ache in the corners of my home, the empty spot at my hip, the silence where her soft purr used to rise. But what she gave me remains: a gentler understanding of love. She taught me that love doesn’t always look like we expect it to. Sometimes it’s hesitant, cautious, or slow to bloom. Sometimes it just wants to sit nearby until it feels safe. And if we can stay open long enough —through the awkward silences, the missed signals, the tiny steps toward trust —love will find its own way in.

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Themes show up in my client sessions—and, uncannily, they mirror what I’m working on in my own healing at the same time.

This week’s theme?
👉 “I sound just like my mother!”

The Frequency Illusion

You could argue it’s because I’ve been focusing on this myself, so I’m more attuned to it.

It’s like when you buy a new car and suddenly see that exact make and model everywhere. That’s called the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon—or frequency illusion:

• Selective Attention – Once something feels relevant, your brain starts flagging it everywhere.

• Confirmation Bias – Every repeat sighting reinforces the pattern.

The truth is, the cars were always there—you weren’t noticing them.

My “Sound Just Like Mom” Moment

While I won’t divulge what my clients were discussing, I will share what made me blurt out:
“I sound just like my mother.”

My husband and I are the primary caregivers for my elderly father. He’s had ongoing health issues and often won’t follow the doctors’ or my advice to live a healthier lifestyle.

In those moments, I find myself channeling my mother—exact verbiage, same intonation, even hands on my hips.

And then other Parts of me are horrified:
“How could you speak that way? You’re supposed to be the loving daughter.”

We’ve been on a healing journey for almost ten years now. A Part of me wonders:
“Why aren’t we better yet? Why do we still get activated by everyday life?”

Another Part wishes we’d never be triggered at all.
I see you too, dear one—and you’re welcome here.

But that isn’t realistic. Caregiving is an uncharted, messy, stressful terrain.

Why We Channel Our Parents

So why do I suddenly find myself sounding just like my mother?
Psychology and neuroscience offer some clues:

1. Modeling & Mirror Neurons
   From birth, we learn through observation. Mirror neurons copy the behavior of those around us, especially caregivers. Even if we disliked how our parents did things, their patterns became our “default operating system.” Under stress, those defaults resurface.

2. Family Scripts & Familiarity
   Therapists call these invisible rules family scripts. They tell us how love, conflict, or discipline “should” look. Even when we want to do better, familiar patterns feel safe because they’re predictable.

3. Stress & Regression
   Stress, fatigue, and overwhelm pull us back to what’s most deeply ingrained—our parents’ methods. That’s why Mom’s words slip out when your child won’t eat dinner, even though you swore you’d never say them.

4. Unresolved Emotional Dynamics
   If childhood wounds remain unhealed, we often re-enact them. Someone who felt controlled may overcontrol others, ironically repeating the very dynamic they once resented.

5. Identity & Loyalty Conflicts
   On some level, not behaving like our parents can feel like disloyalty. Family identity is powerful. Without awareness, we may preserve parental patterns as a way of staying connected—even when they’re unhealthy.

6. Changing the Script Takes Effort
   Breaking cycles requires awareness, reflection, and support. Parents or caregivers who succeed usually identify triggers, practice alternatives, and—most importantly—offer themselves compassion when they slip.

From an IFS Lens

So dear readers, if you’ve ever felt horrified because you “sound just like your mother (or father),” I hope this gives you a little more clarity about why it happens.

From an IFS lens, I’m grateful to know that not all of my Parts want to behave in that way. Some of them still long to be the loving daughter.

I will continue practicing how to “change the script” while offering compassion to myself when I slip.

After all, I’ve been running on this operating script for nearly 60 years—it’s going to take time to rewrite it.

💭 Reflection Questions for You

• When have you noticed yourself sounding like one of your parents or caregivers?

• Which Parts of you are horrified by that—and which Parts might feel comforted by the familiarity?

• What would it look like to show yourself compassion the next time an old script slips out?

Instead, grief becomes part of you. You don’t move on, you grow around it. And if you’re lucky, in the middle of the ache, you might discover something unexpected—even beautiful.

When my mother died two years ago, I desperately needed a distraction. I had already let go of ultra-processed food, including sugar and alcohol, and I’ve never been much of a television watcher. So instead of numbing myself, I turned to something creative: junk journaling.

For those unfamiliar, junk journaling is a type of paper crafting that combines scrapbooking, journaling, and mixed media art. The name is a little misleading—“junk” isn’t garbage at all. It’s the bits and pieces of everyday life that might otherwise be thrown away: ticket stubs, old book pages, envelopes, lace scraps, receipts, vintage photos, fabric, postcards. All of it can be repurposed and transformed into a journal that’s part memory-keeper, part art piece, part personal expression.

Junk journaling gave me a place to put my hands, my restless energy, and my overflowing emotions. Instead of trying to silence my grief or pretend it wasn’t there, I was able to channel it into something tangible. Each page became a safe container for memories, creativity, and even the messy, contradictory feelings that come with loss.

And here’s the unexpected thing: in the middle of gluing scraps of paper and stitching pages together, I began to discover new Parts—but also some familiar favorites. One of the loudest? My Inner Critic. And boy, did she have plenty to say about my artwork.

Every page seemed wrong, ugly, not worth keeping. I quickly learned that if “I” really hated what I’d just made—that is, if I was blended with the Critic—it was best to set it down and walk away, let it “rest.”

And inevitably, always with a bit of surprise, when I came back a few hours later or the next morning, I’d look at the same page and say, “That’s not so bad.”

I also discovered Parts with very different ideas about what a project should look like. One is the Minimalist, who insists on shades of brown, black, or white. Then there’s Color Splash, who delights in pinks, periwinkles, and purples.

Some Parts love the act of cutting paper, happiest when I’m feeding scraps into a cutting machine. Others crave completion, getting frustrated if I can’t finish a project in one go or at least over a weekend.

I’ve learned to give each of them space: sometimes designing with the Minimalist in mind, other times letting Color Splash lead. And if I know a project will take longer than a weekend, I set that expectation up front to keep the “Completer” Part calmer.

Did junk journaling heal my grief for the loss of my mother? Not by a long shot. But out of that grief came amazing discoveries of my internal world, and allowed me to lean into art—something I’d never really done before.

Grief doesn’t vanish; it reshapes us. And in that reshaping, we’re offered an invitation: to notice, get curious about, and not just those Parts who need your help with the grieving process, but in this case, I met a fantastic set of Artistic Parts. Whether it’s the Critic, the Minimalist, or the Color Splash, each one has something to teach us if we’re willing to listen. The more space we give them, the more we discover about ourselves, and sometimes, even find unexpected joy in the process.

🖊️ Journal Prompts for You

• When I feel judgment about something, which Part of me might be speaking?

• Do I have Parts with different preferences or visions for me?

• What happens if I give those Parts space to take turns instead of fighting for control?

• Where in my life could I experiment with curiosity toward my Parts instead of annoyance?

✨ Sometimes grief takes things from us—and sometimes, if we let it, it gives us back pieces of ourselves we never knew were missing.

The question I kept getting was:

“So, Laura… are you saying we shouldn’t strive?”

It’s a fair question. And one I’ve been asking myself, too.
But let me start with the truth behind why I wrote that post in the first place.

Two weeks ago, a question rose up in me with more weight than usual:
Why am I striving?
Why have I always been pushing for the next title, the next degree, the next milestone?
What would happen if I didn’t?

And then, like a lightning strike, the answer came:
I was striving to attain my mother’s love.

She passed away 18 months ago.
But only recently, just weeks ago, did I realize how much of my life had been shaped by the ache of wanting to be seen by her. To be “good enough.” To finally feel her approval. Her delight.

I was never going to get it. And now, with her gone, I’ve been left with something I never expected:
Space.

Space to ask:
What if I don’t get the TEDx talk?
What if I never meet Oprah?
What if my book isn’t a bestseller?

Would I still be okay?

Surprisingly… the answer is yes.
Not because I’ve given up.
But, for the first time, I realized what was driving the need to strive.
And I can now consider that maybe I don’t have to.
Maybe… who I am is enough to love.

That’s the shift.

Don’t get me wrong—I still have Parts of me who would love all those things.
They’d be thrilled to see my name on a New York Times list or hear me speaking on a big stage.

But the difference is, those Parts no longer have to carry the weight of trying to earn love.
They can want what they want without believing their worth hinges on achieving it.
And they know I love them, no matter what.

So, back to the question:
Am I saying we shouldn’t strive?

Not at all.

I’m saying we can notice why we’re striving.
We can ask whether that drive is coming from inspiration or desperation.
From Self-energy—or from Parts who still believe love must be earned.

And we can hold space for all of it:
✨ The Parts that long to make a difference.
✨ The Parts that want to rest.
✨ The Parts that dream big.
✨ The Parts that whisper, “Maybe you’re already enough.”

We don’t need to exile our ambition.
We just don’t have to let it run the whole show.

Here’s what I’m learning now:
Sometimes the most radical act isn’t to try harder.
It’s to stop trying so hard to be someone else’s definition of “worthy.”

💭 Your Turn:

You don’t have to have the answers right now. Just start with curiosity. That’s where all real change begins.

Here are a few questions to sit with as you reflect on your own relationship to striving:

1. What am I striving for—and what do I hope it will prove about me?

2. Are there Parts of me that I need to achieve to be loved or accepted?

3. What would it feel like to be enough, even if I never reach that next milestone?

4. Can I be curious about the Parts of me that still want more, while also offering compassion to the tired Parts?
   

I’d love to hear what you discover if this resonates with you. Feel free to share in the comments or take a quiet moment to honor what arises.

If you haven’t already, I invite you to subscribe for more uplifting and compassionate content to help you and all your Parts!

With love and compassion,
Laura

To this day, I have this big, Oprah-sized dream: if people could

understand that they have Parts—distinct voices, emotions, inner roles—they could begin to relate to themselves with more compassion and clarity.

I didn’t invent the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model—that was Richard C. Schwartz—but I’ve dedicated myself to making it accessible. Simple ways to notice your Parts. Gentle invitations to get curious instead of critical. Because I’ve lived it, I’ve needed it.

And even with all that doing, a question kept tugging at me:
Where did this ambition come from?

Some Parts would whisper, “What makes you think you’re special?” or “Why would you think you have anything to offer?”

Others were louder, more insistent:

“Ambition is good.”
“You want to contribute.”
“You don’t want to be lazy.”

“You want to leave a mark, don’t you?” (This one is powerful as I don’t have children, and this Part wants me to be remembered after I’ve left this plane of existence.)

I could acknowledge feeling tired, overwhelmed, and in need of rest. But just the idea of slowing down? Of not striving?

That triggered a full-on internal storm:
“You only get one shot!”
“There’s no reset button!”
“Just do it!”
(Notice the cultural slogans baked into our nervous systems.)

I see this same pattern in my clients. Resting feels dangerous. Or lazy. One friend recently said something that stopped me in my tracks:
“Overwhelm is my litmus test for doing enough.”

And I had to ask myself:
Am I using burnout as proof of my worth?
Is exhaustion my measuring stick?

I’m actively unlearning it—getting curious about my beliefs, effort, output, and worth. I asked which parts of me were pushing so hard, wondering what they feared might happen if I stopped.

So I’ll leave you with the same questions I’m sitting with:

🔸 What is your litmus test for “doing enough”?
🔸 Who are you trying to prove your worth to?
🔸 Where did your beliefs about striving come from?
🔸 And most importantly… do you need a rest?

You don’t have to have all the answers. Just start with curiosity. That’s where all real change begins.

If you haven’t already, I invite you to subscribe for more uplifting and compassionate content to help you and all your Parts!

With love and compassion,
Laura

We’ve all seen the motivational mantras:

🧠 “Build self-discipline.”
💥 “Overcome the fear of being judged.”
✨ “Just show up for yourself.”

Well-meaning? Absolutely.
Helpful? Sometimes.
But often… they leave something out, and bonus: they cause a shame spiral

Because most of us already know what we “should” do.

We should eat better.
We should move more.
We should stop scrolling, speak up in meetings, or finally apply for that job.

So why don’t we?

🚫 It’s Not Laziness. It’s Protection.

That resistance you feel?
It’s not because you’re broken or lazy.
It’s because a Part of you is trying to protect you.

💭 A Part might be terrified of being judged or rejected.
💭 Another Part might turn to food, overwork, or distraction to self-soothe or stay safe.
💭 A high-achieving Part might believe that if you slow down, everything will fall apart.

These Parts aren’t “bad.”
They’ve helped you cope. Adapt. Survive.
But they might now be over-functioning, keeping you from the change you want most.

💡 A Gentle Reframe: From Discipline to Dialogue

Instead of pushing harder, what if you got curious?

Try this next time you feel stuck:

1. Pause.

2. Notice the resistance.

3. Ask: What is this Part afraid will happen if I follow through?
   

You don’t need a louder inner drill sergeant.
You need a softer, more compassionate inner listener.

Because here’s the truth:

You can’t shame yourself into lasting change. If you could you’d have done it by now, amiright?

But you can build trust with yourself.
One Part at a time, one bit of self-compassion and curiosity at a time

If you haven’t already, I invite you to subscribe to more uplifting and compassionate content to help you and all your Parts!

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With love, curiosity & compassion,
Laura