Fighting Ghosts: How to Talk to a Loved One Who's Been Scammed
The anger is real and it has nowhere to go. The criminals are unreachable, so it lands on the person across the table, the only one you can reach.
UNmistIFIED
Digital fraud and abuse run on the same manipulation, and from the inside they feel the same. Here are personal essays and poems about living through abuse, and a monthly column on how digital fraud actually works, with resources at the end of every piece. It is written for the people it happened to, and for the people who love them. Because, when the mist drops away, the world comes together: UNIFIED.
The Love Bomb: Same Con, Different Costume
Romance scams begin somewhere different, on a dating app rather than in a stray text, but the goal is identical: weeks of engineered attention, and then everything you have.
The Long Con: How "Pig Butchering" Scams Actually Work
A confidence game does not work because someone lacks instincts. It works because months of manufactured friendship build enough trust to override them.
The $196 Billion Heist: Breaking Down Pig Butchering Scams
Americans lose as much to cyber fraud each year as they spend on hotels. Inside that number is a scam built to take months of trust first, and then everything.
The Scam That Hit Home: My Journey to Advocacy
A late-night text from a family member read like an ordinary favor. It was the first thing I saw of a scam that had already taken hold, and the beginning of everything I have learned since.
Abandoning Hate
Why acceptance is more powerful than forgiveness
Christmas Gaslight
Memories of waiting for a bus on a wintery night
Behind Closed Doors
Speaking out for survivors of domestic violence
If I Lay Down
A poetic response
Silver Linings
A poem written in 2020, looking back at a marriage whose damage I kept hidden. The silver lining was real; it simply never came from him.
An Open Letter to a CatFisher
Since the day I found out you weren’t real, I have been thinking about how to write to the real you. There is a real you, underneath. This is the letter.