You Are Probably the Perfect Target. Here Is How to Change That.

To the Girl or Woman Reading This

I see you.

You want to see the world. You want to live fully and freely and throw yourself into everything life has to offer. And underneath all of that, sometimes quietly, sometimes at 3am, the fear lives rent free in your head.

That fear is trying to tell you something.

The world is beautiful, but it is also very dangerous.

The Epstein files showed us just how dark that danger can get. Children. Powerful individuals. Institutions that looked the other way. And not one prosecution that matched the scale of the crime.

I don’t know how to explain that to my daughters.

What I do know is that our nervous systems were not surprised. Our gut already knew that the people in power don’t always protect us. The files just put a name and a number on what women have always quietly understood.

We are on our own.

Not in a hopeless way. In a clarifying way.

Because if the systems will not protect us then we protect ourselves. We learn. We prepare. We pay attention. We teach our daughters to do the same.

Fear Is Not the Enemy. Unawareness Is.

That is exactly why I am writing this.

I want you to be aware of danger. Awareness is not fear — it is power. I don’t want it to become the room you never leave. Because when fear becomes your permanent address, your frequency drops, and low-vibrational energy attracts more of exactly what you are afraid of. The law of attraction is not just a spiritual concept. It is physics. It is real. And it works in both directions.

The goal is not fearlessness. The goal is a high-vibrational, safe life.

Why I Am Writing This

I learned the hard way that I was the perfect target. I have had more close calls than I want to count. One moment in particular at a sporting event with my daughters that changed the entire direction of my life. That moment is why I founded Pretty Loaded.

You deserve to know how to be a hard target and protect yourself. Not after something bad happens to you.

Three things. Starting now.

One. Put the phone down. Every single time you are on the move.

Driving. Walking. Running. Any time your body is moving through the world, you should not be looking at your phone. Period.

This is not a suggestion. It is the difference between life and death, or between an accident and death.

Nearly 80% of all vehicle crashes are caused by driver inattention. Nine people are killed every single day in the United States in distraction-related crashes. And those are only the ones we can prove. The real number is higher because no one admits to being on their phone when it happened.

But distraction is not only dangerous behind the wheel. The moment your eyes drop to a screen, you stop reading your environment. You stop noticing who is walking toward you. You stop hearing footsteps behind you. You become exactly what a predator looks for — someone whose attention is somewhere else entirely.

Your phone can wait. Your safety cannot.

Two. Trust your intuition. Honor the signals even when you cannot explain them.

You do not owe anyone an explanation for leaving a situation that feels wrong. You do not need evidence to change direction, cross the street, or decline an invitation. The cost of a false alarm is a moment of mild social awkwardness. The cost of ignoring a real signal can be catastrophic.

Your body knows before your mind does. That feeling in your stomach. The hair on your arms. The sudden urge to leave a room you just walked into. That is not anxiety. That is not paranoia. That is millions of years of human survival intelligence speaking directly to you in the only language it has.

Listen to it.

Every single time I have ignored that feeling, I have regretted it. Every single time I have honored it, I have been grateful.

Three. Become a hard target.

This is the tip that changed everything for me. And it starts before anyone ever gets close to you.

Stand tall. Project confidence even when you don’t feel it. Make brief, solid eye contact with the people around you — not aggressive, not challenging, just present. Aware. Awake. That alone communicates something powerful to anyone watching. It says I see you. I am not an easy choice.

Your posture is your first line of defense.

If someone continues to approach you despite your body language — if they are not reading the signals you are sending or they are choosing to ignore them — blade your body. Turn sideways. Put one hand in your pocket. This does something very specific in the mind of someone with bad intentions. It signals that you have training, and you may have a defense tool.  It shows that you have thought about this moment before they arrive in it, and you will fight.

Most predators are not looking for a fight. They are looking for a sure thing. The moment you demonstrate that you are paying attention — that you see them, that you are prepared, that you are not going to be easy — you have disrupted their entire calculation. They will move on. They almost always do.

What Predators Don’t Want You to Know

Predators almost always give themselves away before they act. You just have to know what you are looking at.

Staring is the single most ominous signal. When someone locks onto you with an unblinking fixed stare, your body will feel it before your mind registers it. That is exactly what happened to me at the hockey rink. I felt it before I looked up. I felt it before I could name it. Pay attention to that feeling. It is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition. It is your nervous system doing its job at a speed your conscious mind cannot match.

Trust it every time.

And finally, when you are safe, and your mind starts to spiral into your deepest fears, when the voice of anxiety starts running the show — give that voice a name. Mine is Cruella. When she shows up, I acknowledge her, then deliberately stop the thought and redirect toward something true, solid, and positive. Remember, you don’t want to be in that low and fearful frequency.

You cannot be a hard target with a soft mind. Protect both.