Keep the appointment.

I know. You feel better. You made the appointment when you were really struggling, and now things aren't so bad and it feels unnecessary. You're fine. Probably. Maybe.

Here's the thing about neurodivergent brains: they're really good at reaching for help in a crisis, and really good at talking themselves out of it the second the crisis passes. A 24-hour improvement is not a support system. It's just the top of the roller coaster.

In this episode, I talk about why you need to keep the appointment even when you feel fine — especially when you feel fine.

PLUS: I tell you about the book my dad never finished that I'm going to finish for him someday. It's about Betsy Ross, who apparently owned a brothel, not a sewing circle. History is a lot.

AND in Small Talk: Alison shares a question from to Marcus in Chicago, who canceled plans, had a perfect solo day (soup, documentary about bridges, no pants), and then felt guilty about every second of it.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:57 — Dad's Unfinished Book: Betsy Ross's Drawing Room

00:03:07 — The Instruction: Keep the Appointment

00:04:19 — Why We Cancel (When We Finally Start to Feel Better)

00:07:33 — The Roller Coaster: High Points Don't Last

00:08:06 — Build the Support System Before You Need It

00:09:28 — Small Talk: Marcus from Chicago on Canceled Plans and Guilt

Here's the thing about asking for help: the ask itself is the labor. And I learned that the hard way during the two worst weeks of my life.

My youngest came eight weeks early. I'd just had a C-section. We were running back and forth to the NICU, trying to care for a two-year-old at home, healing from surgery, and keeping an entire life running on fumes. People kept asking, "What can we do?" And we kept saying, "We're fine." Not because we were fine. Because figuring out what to ask for was just as much work as doing it ourselves.

And then a woman showed up at my door without warning, without asking, and handed me a gift I'll never forget. And it was the most incredibly simple but caring one imaginable.

This episode is also about what happens when I stop talking — which, if you know me, is significantly more terrifying than anything that comes out of my mouth.

I talk about productive yelling, why silence in our house is a five-alarm situation, and the very Italian way my in-laws communicate.

And in this week's Small Talk, Alison shares a question from Darnell in Atlanta.

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"I sold my company. I guess technically we're still in the process, but it's done. The thing I built from scratch. The dream I lay in bed and imagined. Done."

That alone would be a whole episode. But there's more.

In this episode, I'm talking about the 120 days that changed me on a molecular level — because that's not an exaggeration. My mom got sick. The burnout was real. The lights were staying on, but barely. And then a news story hit my phone that I was not prepared for.

It involves an IVF clinic we used eight years ago for our youngest daughter.

I'm not ready to share everything, and there are things I legally can't say. But I want you to know where I've been, mentally, with this whole *gestures arms wildly at everything*.

And I want you to know that sometimes the thing that brings you to your knees has absolutely nothing to do with your business, your calendar, or your capacity — and everything to do with something you didn't see coming.

Maybe not all men. But what do we do when a site has 62 million hits originating from lots of them?

Hi, I'm Lauren Howard. I go by "L2" and this week I'm going full Winter Soldier mode. You know that scene in Captain America where they say the trigger phrase and Bucky Barnes just... activates? Yeah, that's me. Every. Single. Time. someone types "not all men" in my comments.

We're talking about the 62 million hits logged on a website that existed to teach people how to s*xually assault women.

For context: Sony's entire website gets 24 million hits a month.

So let's not pretend the numbers are somehow ambiguous here.

We also get into the prototype employee — the 45-year-old white man that every workplace policy, dress code, and promotion pipeline has been quietly built around — and what that means for literally everyone else.

Timestamped summary

• 00:57 — The "not all men" trigger phrase
• 02:17 — The 45-year-old white man prototype
• 03:57 — Why workplaces weren't built for your brain
• 05:42 — 62 million hits. Let that land.
• 07:04 — Why women choose the bear
• 10:22 — The responsibility of the good men
• 12:23 — ADHD brain & too many tabs open
• 14:01 — My children are weaponizing their butts
• 14:34 — Small Talk with Alison: self-improvement culture
• 15:57 — The iPhone 1 analogy
• 17:32 — There is no finish line

The news broke me. The murder shows stopped working. So I watched a month of college basketball I do not care about, and it was the only thing keeping my nervous system upright.

In this episode I'm unpacking three things:

→ Why "distraction" is an actual mental health strategy, and why sportsball was the weirdly perfect antidote to doomscrolling.

→ A very clear message for anyone whose job is chewing them up: You are an asset, not a liability. Burnout culture is not only cruel, it's bad business. The math on replacing good employees is brutal, and your workplace being too short-sighted to see that has nothing to do with your value.

→ Small Talk Frank from Scranton wants to know why he can't relax into stability.

If you needed to hear "this isn't you, it's them" today — hi, it's them.

00:00 Cold open: You are an asset, not a liability

00:38 Hi, I'm L2 — welcome back to Different, Not Broken

01:05 Why I always have something on in the background (blame childhood chaos)

02:04 When the murder shows stopped working

03:00 The news broke me

03:43 Basketball as my zero-stakes sanity reset

04:48 Accidentally Pavlov'd by March Madness

05:54 The women's games are better, argue with the wall

06:35 Gratitude for dumb distractions

08:12 Workplaces are getting worse (and it's bad business)

08:54 The actual math on turnover and institutional knowledge

09:37 Short-term thinking is stealing your future

10:13 "It's not personal, it's just business" is an excuse

11:16 You are an asset, not a liability

12:26 You are not the problem for having boundaries

13:32 AI outsourcing and the coming pay cut

14:10 You deserve safety, accommodations, and a workplace built for humans

14:59 Small Talk with Alison: a question from Frank in Scranton

15:13 Hypervigilance, trauma, or just being realistic?

16:09 Why I can't let myself get excited about good things

16:44 Chaotic families and why I hate my birthday

17:45 Two trophies and a dead dog (and then, open-heart surgery)

18:42 Some of us are just wired this way

19:31 When it might be time to talk to a professional

20:22 Olympics tangent: how does anyone end up doing the luge?

• Got a question for Small Talk? Send it in: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail

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We're back. I put on makeup today. Seriously, that's where we are right now.

I took a break — a self-imposed silent hiatus you probably didn't know about, because I had a backlog and I'm nothing if not someone who runs her mouth into a microphone first and asks questions later. But the break is over, and I was not ready to come back today. I was very, very not ready.

And yet here we are, because I can do things scared, and apparently that includes walking downstairs and getting in front of the microphone when all I wanted was my best friend. (My kids confirmed my best friend is my bed. They weren't wrong.)

In this episode, I'm talking about:

— Odin, my 175-pound Great Dane who has exactly one person in this house and it is not me. Until he got scared. Then it was very much me.

— A listener question from Talia in Berkeley about how you grieve versions of yourself you never got to become — the careers, the relationships, the risks you didn't take.

— My dad's passing in 2016 and what happened in the four months after: every service line that was paying our business's bills disappeared. Every. Single. One. The universe was done with that chapter before I was.

This episode is 18 minutes. It's also a little unplanned, a little raw, and exactly what it needs to be. Come back with me.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 — War Paint On: We're Back (Armed with Makeup)

01:30 — What Counts as a Break When Your Brain Never Stops

02:09 — Content Brain Doesn't Take Vacations

02:50 — I Was Not Ready (But Here Anyway)

05:44 — Odin the 175-Pound Great Dane Who Only Loves Me in Crisis

09:02 — I'm the Safe Parent, Apparently

09:55 — What It's Actually Like Having Giant Dogs

12:24 — Small Talk: Grieving the Life You Didn't Live

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I'll just say it: don't send me a video.

Not because I'm technologically challenged — I literally make video content for a living — but because if I need information fast, I need it in a format I can actually consume. Scrollable. Skimmable. Mine to move through in the order my brain needs. Send me a video and you have just given me homework, and I am not paying you to give me homework.

That's the rant that opens this episode, and I stand by every word of it.

But then we get into something that I think matters even more. I'm sitting down with Joanna Strober, the CEO of Midi Health — a women-focused healthcare company doing what the standard system has historically refused to do: actually start with women's biology instead of working around it. Joanna spent years watching herself and women like her get handed SSRIs and sleep studies when what they actually needed was someone to check their hormone levels. So she built the company that does that. Insurance covered. All 50 states. Actually available.

We talk about perimenopause, the diagnostic desert most women wander through on their own, what it actually takes to build a healthcare company that investors have no existing pattern for, and why AI might finally be the thing that cuts through the prior authorization bureaucracy that is eating your doctor's time alive.

Then Alison is back for Small Talk with a question from Omar in Dearborn, Michigan, about how to ask for help when even the ask feels overwhelming — and why needing help is never the failure it feels like.

If this one lands for you, share it with someone who could use it. Leave a review.

Different, Not Broken is hosted by Lauren Howard. New episodes drop weekly.

In this episode, I talk about what it actually looks like when you prioritize people-first leadership — not the inspirational poster version, but the version where you're paying someone's salary while they're out sick, covering their workload yourself, and looking at your bank account like it personally offended you.

I share two real stories — one from a friend, one from inside my own company — about what happens when you commit to putting humans first, and applying compassionate leadership, even when the business case doesn't make immediate sense.

What happens to the employee who needed care she could actually afford.

What happens to the friend who finally called back to say... well, you'll have to listen to find out what he said.

The suck is temporary. The loyalty isn't. This episode is for anyone building something — a business, a team, a life — who's in the middle of the hard part right now.

Plus: Allison brings a question from Becca about replaying conversations at 2am and whether that's anxiety, rumination, or just your brain refusing to behave.

⏱ Timestamps

• 00:00 — Intro & the friend who never calls
• 02:31 — What people-first leadership actually costs
• 06:25 — This is temporary. I promise.
• 09:51 — The reward is real. I just can't tell you when.
• 11:03 — He called back. He saw it.
• 13:07 — The employee story. The health insurance bill. The reason.
• 19:52 — Oh. That's why.
• 20:33 — What you get on the other side of the suck
• 23:13 — Small Talk: replaying conversations at 2am

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