When Equality Is a Myth Sweden’s Disability Laws Leave Autistic and Disabled People to Collapse

When we pass someone sleeping rough or hear of a person in crisis lashing out in public, the easy story is to blame the individual. But behind every autistic or disabled person who ends up homeless, every person with mental illness who spirals until they are a danger to themselves or others, there is another story. A story of systems that promised protection and dignity and then failed.

Sweden sells itself as a society of equality. They also heavily rely on this image and the Pr it gives them and positioning globally. The image is polished, repeated in global media, celebrated in diplomatic halls. But the reality is different. Autistic and disabled people are routinely abandoned by the very structures meant to safeguard them. The collapse we witness on the street, or in the news, is not personal weakness. It is the direct result of bureaucratic neglect, inaccessible processes, and decisions made by officials who choose budgets and convenience over human lives.

Behind the equality myth is a brutal truth: under SoL (Socialtjänstlagen) and LSS (Law on Support & Service for Persons with Disabilities), municipalities delay, deflect, and deny until people collapse. What exists on paper as protection becomes eviction notices, hunger, burnout, and despair. For racialised autistic and disabled people especially, the system is not just broken, it is weaponized against us.

On Paper vs Reality How Sweden Markets Equality While Disabled People Are Left to Fail

Sweden presents itself to the world as the land of equality and inclusion. The image is rehearsed: glossy brochures, diplomatic speeches, NGO reports that repeat the story of a society built on fairness. On paper, that story looks convincing.

Under SoL, municipalities are required to secure a reasonable standard of living and prevent homelessness. Under LSS, people with significant and lasting disabilities are guaranteed good living conditions and the ability to participate fully in society. These laws are supposed to function as safeguards, ensuring that autistic and disabled people are not left behind.

But lived reality tells another story. Instead of stabilizing lives, the very systems designed to protect us often become another form of trauma. Applications are met with shifting demands, endless delays, and inaccessible procedures that exhaust people into collapse. What should be protection becomes punishment.

These failures are not hidden. The EU has flagged Sweden repeatedly for accessibility gaps. The UN CRPD Committee has condemned the country for unlawful delays and systemic discrimination.

Yet inside Sweden, the façade of equality is maintained. The myth persists because the global image matters more than the lives of the people who live under these laws.

And when anti-Blackness intersects with disability, the harm is compounded. Denial is not only about ability but about race. Disabled people are not treated as citizens with rights; they are treated as burdens to be managed, questioned, and often discarded.

Five Months of Social Services Bureaucratic Neglect in Hässelby-Vällingby

In May 2025, the municipality of Hässelby-Vällingby received notice of a growing rent debt for an autistic applicant with moderate needs who has been navigating trauma for more than a year. The law is clear: under SoL, municipalities must act to prevent eviction. What followed was not help but 116 days of neglect that pushed a disabled person closer to homelessness.

For another five months documents were submitted, bank statements, medical certificates, full financial records, yet the municipality claimed they were missing. Four physicians confirmed long-term disabilities, including autism, ADHD, PTSD, and agoraphobia. Their assessments were dismissed in favor of invented barriers. Even the landlord, facing an eviction deadline, was left uninformed for months. When the municipality’s own eviction-prevention unit finally reached out in September, the debt had already escalated.

The treatment grew more demeaning. At one point, the applicant was told to prove eligibility by filming inside their bedroom during a video call. A request for digital communication, supported by medical certificates that documented intermittent speech and trauma from direct encounters with authorities was recast as a burden, as if accessibility were a favor instead of a legal right.

Emails later revealed that the very documents accused of being missing had been sitting in the municipality’s inbox all along. Instead of acknowledging the mistake, caseworkers shifted blame: branding the applicant “difficult to communicate with” and closing the case. When the applicant raised the possibility of reporting these failures to oversight bodies, the response was not accountability but threats, warnings about otillåten påverkan, undue influence, as if exercising a legal right to escalate systemic failures were an abuse of power by the applicant.

This is a familiar tactic in Swedish social services. When errors are exposed, attention is diverted to the supposed flaws of the applicant. Disabled people are recast as the problem. Gaslighting replaces accountability. And for those already carrying trauma, the harm compounds until collapse feels inevitable.

The result was predictable. The rent debt grew month by month, not because the applicant failed to act, but because the municipality chose not to. Instead of preventing eviction, the system manufactured it.

This was not an individual error. It was a method a systemic choreography of delay, denial, and blame that punishes disabled people for existing.

The Human Consequences of Swedish Municipal Failures

Why Bureaucratic Delay Becomes Eviction, Burnout, and Retraumatization

When a municipality fails to act, it is never just paperwork. It is a life unraveling in real time.

Every unanswered email, every lost document, every arbitrary requirement lands on the body of the person waiting. Disabled people do not live in a vacuum where delays are neutral. The cost is immediate: burnout and health collapse as energy is drained not by living but by chasing forms and re-explaining diagnoses; retraumatization for survivors of violence and mental illness who must prove themselves again to caseworkers who do not even read medical certificates; isolation when hours of support are denied or cut, leaving people trapped in their homes, cut off from community; and the sharpest risk of all, eviction, when municipalities wait until Kronofogden intervenes.

Then comes the cruelty of the language. Decision letters claim that applicants “failed to plan their economy” or “did not cooperate,” as if the collapse of an entire safety net can be reduced to one person’s budgeting. Some even point to the purchase of a skincare product, as though survival cannot include moments of sensory relief or hydration. This after months of submitting every document, attending every meeting, complying with every demand.

For autistic and disabled people, the system does not simply fail to support. It turns hostile. It punishes the very strategies people use to survive. It shifts blame for institutional errors onto those already carrying the weight of survival.

This is what systemic harm looks like. Not one mistake, but a chain of evasions that leave people poorer, sicker, and closer to collapse.

Behind every policy failure is a person who cannot simply “wait out” bureaucratic delay. For autistic and disabled people, these failures are daily survival risks. Eviction notices. Burnout so complete that even eating becomes difficult. Psychiatric retraumatization when medical evidence is ignored by administrators with no clinical expertise. Isolation deepened by being told again and again that you “did not cooperate,” even when you did everything asked.

Even the state admits the severity. In denial letters, municipalities sometimes acknowledge that eviction will have “serious social consequences.” They write this in the same breath as they deny support.

That is not protection. It is calculated abandonment.

For racialised disabled people, the punishment cuts sharper. Anti-Blackness merges with ableism, twisting ordinary survival into suspicion. A bank transaction becomes evidence of irresponsibility. Compliance is reframed as defiance. Needs are recast as demands. These are not misunderstandings. They are patterns of discrimination, enacted under the cover of procedure.

Sweden’s disability system cannot be judged by its laws alone. It must be judged by its outcomes. And the outcomes are devastating: homes lost, health broken, lives cut short.

The Tactics How Bureaucracy Becomes a Weapon

How Municipalities Weaponize Bureaucracy Against Disabled People

Municipalities rarely deny disability rights outright. Instead, they construct a maze. The path appears procedural, but every turn is designed to delay, exhaust, and redirect until the applicant either collapses or disappears from the system.

Delay is the first tactic. Cases sit untouched for months while rent arrears grow and health deteriorates. The silent calculation is that an eviction notice will remove the problem, that a family member will step in, or that the applicant will give up altogether.

When the pressure builds, the goalposts shift. The moment one demand is met, another appears. New bank statements are requested again. Company liquidation is demanded even when it has no bearing on eligibility. In-person visits are scheduled despite medical certificates clearly stating agoraphobia. Each new demand resets the clock, buying more time for inaction.

False requirements follow. Applicants are told to provide documents or proofs the law does not require at all — liquidation within days, physical attendance when digital verification already exists, layers of evidence that stretch far beyond what SoL or LSS demand.

And when these tactics falter, blame is redirected. Applicants are accused of being uncooperative, of poor planning, of refusing to adapt — even when every meeting has been attended, every document submitted, every condition met. Responsibility for municipal failures is shifted back onto the disabled person.

Above all, mistakes are shielded. Cases are passed between units in an endless relay where no one takes ownership. Errors are buried in the shuffle, accountability diluted until it disappears.

These tactics are not isolated missteps. They form a pattern. The Parliamentary Ombudsman has documented them. The National Audit Office has flagged them. The UN CRPD Committee has condemned them. Yet they continue because they allow municipalities to maintain the appearance of process while avoiding the substance of obligation.

The outcome is clear. Disability law is inverted. SoL and LSS, written to guarantee protection and participation, become instruments of exclusion. Rights that exist on paper are kept out of reach in practice, blocked not by overt denial but by bureaucratic evasion.

Law vs Reality What Sweden Promises and What Disabled People Face

What Sweden Promises in SoL, LSS, and CRPD vs What People Face

On paper, Sweden has one of the strongest disability rights frameworks in Europe. Three pillars hold it up. SoL, the Social Services Act, obliges municipalities to secure a reasonable standard of living and prevent homelessness. LSS, the Disability Services Act, guarantees good living conditions and real participation for people with significant and lasting disabilities, including autism. And the CRPD, ratified in 2008, commits Sweden to non-discrimination, accessibility, and effective remedies.

Add to this the EU Disability Strategy, with monitoring mechanisms that have flagged Sweden repeatedly for unlawful delays and systemic barriers. The architecture appears solid. It gives the impression of a country committed to equality.

But the reality is different.

Unlawful delays stretch for months even when eviction is imminent, ignoring SoL’s requirement to act urgently. Denials arrive not because needs are absent, but because administrators fixate on irrelevant details — a small purchase in a bank statement, a speculative suspicion of hidden income. Medical certificates from multiple physicians are sidelined in favor of guesswork by officials with no clinical expertise. And when the applicant is racialised or autistic, the scrutiny grows harsher, the tone sharper, the accusations of “not cooperating” faster.

This is not a misunderstanding. It is a systemic gap between law and life. It allows Sweden to sign reports to the UN affirming its commitment to equality while constructing daily barriers that ensure those rights never materialize on the ground.

The contradiction is stark. Internationally, Sweden markets itself as a leader in inclusion. Domestically, its municipalities enforce exclusion through delay and disbelief. Equality is promised in treaties and legislation, yet denied in everyday practice.

The Human Consequences Behind the Equality Myth

When Promises Collapse Into Outcomes of Homelessness and Harm

Laws cannot be lived on. Behind every legal promise is a person who cannot wait out bureaucracy. Disabled people experience the failures of SoL and LSS not as abstract violations but as daily crises.

When municipalities delay rent support, eviction follows. The purpose of SoL is to prevent homelessness, yet people are routinely pushed into it. When demands for paperwork never end, autistic people already battling executive dysfunction collapse under the weight of compliance. When medical certificates are dismissed, survivors of PTSD and anxiety are retraumatized by administrators who have no clinical training yet claim the authority to overrule physicians.

These are not side effects of a strained system. They are the outcomes it produces.

Even the state admits the consequences. In denial letters, municipalities sometimes concede that eviction will have “serious social consequences.” They write this acknowledgement in the same breath as they refuse support. That is not protection. It is abandonment by design.

For racialised disabled people, the cruelty is sharper. Anti-Blackness merges with ableism, casting ordinary survival as suspicion. A bank withdrawal becomes proof of irresponsibility. Compliance is reframed as defiance. Needs are twisted into demands. These are not misunderstandings, they are patterns of discrimination written into daily practice.

This is why Sweden’s disability system cannot be judged by its legal framework. It must be judged by its outcomes. And the outcomes are devastating: homes lost, health destroyed, lives cut short.

The question is no longer whether the system is failing. It is failing in plain sight. The question now is what must be done — immediately — to ensure that the rights guaranteed under SoL and LSS are more than words on paper.

What Needs to Change Right Now

How Leaders Can Act Without Shame and Uphold Disability Rights

Municipalities cannot admit that their systems have collapsed without undermining the equality myth Sweden sells to the world. Caseworkers cannot confess mistakes without risking their jobs. So responsibility is pushed back onto the disabled person, reframed as “difficult,” “uncooperative,” or “irresponsible.” That is how institutions protect themselves while people are left to collapse.

The truth is that frontline staff are not villains in this story. They are caught inside a machine that fails them as much as it fails us. They carry impossible caseloads, are pressed to enforce laws without training in disability or neurodivergence, and are trapped in underfunded systems where failure is inevitable. What looks like individual neglect is in fact structural design.

That is why the blame must be placed where it belongs: on government pressure, chronic underfunding, and the refusal to invest in accessible, competent social services.

The solutions are not complicated.

Accessible communication must be recognized as a right, not treated as a concession. SoL and LSS obligations must be applied urgently and consistently, especially in eviction cases where the law is clear. And leadership must frame compliance not as an admission of failure but as an act of integrity under pressure — proof that municipalities can still act in line with the values Sweden claims to uphold.

Other municipalities, lawyers, and EU monitoring bodies have already documented the same failures. This is not one case. It is a national problem. Acting now does not expose one office to shame. It shows that Sweden is capable of living up to the laws it has already written.

The window for denial has closed. What remains is the choice: continue to hide behind procedure, or step forward and fulfill the commitments that have been promised for decades.

Call to Action Naming the Tactics and Demanding Accountability

Naming the Tactics and Demanding Accountability From Sweden’s System

What we are witnessing in Sweden is not a string of unfortunate mistakes. It is a pattern. The same tactics appear across municipalities: cases dragged out until eviction becomes inevitable, requirements shifted just as old ones are met, blame pushed onto applicants even when evidence is overwhelming, speculation treated as fact, discrimination recast as misunderstanding. Each tactic has one effect: responsibility is shifted from the state onto the disabled person, leaving us to pay with our health, our homes, and our dignity.

This is not protection. It is systemic harm disguised as process.

Sweden has signed the UN CRPD, bound itself to the EU Disability Strategy, and enshrined protections in SoL and LSS. On paper, the rights are there. In practice, they collapse into bureaucratic cruelty and institutional indifference.

That is why I am gathering evidence — audio, video, emails, testimonies — to show these failures in undeniable detail. This material will be published here, on Substack, and submitted to the Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO). But documentation alone is not enough.

If you have been impacted by SoL or LSS failures by delays, denials, shifting demands, or discriminatory treatment, your voice matters. Share your story. Add it to the collective record. Because abuse thrives in silence, and silence is what keeps these systems intact.

Naming the tactics breaks their power. Telling the truth out loud is the first step toward accountability.

Conclusion Why I Refuse to Stay Silent

I am not writing this from the sidelines. I am living it and I am watching countless others live it too.

For more than a decade, my work has exposed systemic harm and demanded accountability. I have written books, spoken across institutions, and stood in public arenas where silence was expected. I have been honored with awards, including the Raoul Wallenberg Prize and the Stockholm Region Sustainability Award. But those recognitions mean little if I do not speak when it matters most.

This exposé is part of that same commitment: to reveal what is hidden, to document what institutions deny, and to amplify the voices of those whom systems try to erase.

Sweden markets equality to the world. But equality means nothing if autistic people, disabled people, racialised people those already carrying the weight of survival are left to collapse under inaccessible systems and deliberate neglect.

I will not allow these failures to remain behind closed doors. The evidence is here. The testimonies are here. The demand for accountability is here.

The full exposé article will be published on here with audio, video, and official documents. It will also form part of a collective disability rights report to the Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO).

This is more than documentation. It is a call to act. Because justice delayed is justice denied.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs it and consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing. Every share helps, your support sustains the work.

This essay is accompanied by the work of Bisa Butler, whose textile portraits layer fabric, color, and history into living testimony. I chose Butler’s art because her figures refuse invisibility. Where institutions reduce disabled people to files, her work insists on presence vibrant, complex, undeniable. In a text about systemic erasure, her portraits remind us that dignity is already carried in our bodies, even when states refuse to see it.

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Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

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When the Mask Starts Cracking in Perimenopause

Perimenopause doesn’t cause collapse. It unmasks the years you spent performing survival.

The first thing women often notice is not a dramatic collapse but the small cracks. The fog that settles in the middle of a sentence. The way a crowded room suddenly feels unbearable when it never used to. The daily tasks that once took effort but still got done now sit untouched, as if they’ve grown heavier overnight. People’s names start getting jumbled, and you laugh it off as stress, but deep down it feels like a personal failing. You can’t rest enough without still waking up tired. Sounds irritate you more. Smells overwhelm you. Responsibilities pile up and feel impossible to meet.

For many neurodivergent women, especially those who have lived decades undiagnosed, perimenopause is the moment when the mask starts slipping. The hormones that once buffered our nervous systems begin to fluctuate, and the strategies that kept us functioning no longer hold. Brain fog rolls in. ADHD symptoms you’ve only ever read about start sounding familiar because they are intensifying in you. Emotional regulation becomes harder to reach. Sensory overwhelm spikes until even the sound of a kettle boiling feels unbearable.

Clinically, perimenopause is described through symptoms like hot flashes, irregular cycles, night sweats, disrupted sleep, and mood swings. But what isn’t named often enough is how these changes strip away the very reserves women once relied on to mask their neurodivergence. The estrogen that buffered dopamine pathways declines, sleep becomes fragile, and the constant exhaustion makes performance harder to maintain. What looks like sudden collapse is often the unmasking of ADHD or autism or complex PTSD and any other neurodivergence that was always there.

And instead of recognition, most women are met with dismissal. Doctors wave it off as “just stress.” Hormonal clinics mark it down as “typical perimenopause,” if you are lucky. Families frame it as moodiness or burnout. The lived reality of neurodivergence in midlife is made invisible, and women are left questioning themselves: Why can’t I handle what I used to? What’s wrong with me?

The answer is not weakness. It is not collapse born of fragility. It is what happens when decades of masking meet the body’s refusal to keep sustaining the performance.

This is what I noticed when I was younger but couldn’t name. As a caregiver I stepped up at age sixteen, just as I had seen the women in Gambia step in for each other under matriarchy. Only I was in Sweden, where women did not speak openly about these shifts. They wore masks instead. I see it now, and I have research to back it. I refuse to carry that silence for anyone. I help others navigate systems with guidelines and tools. I also had to pre-empt my own unraveling in 2023 by starting ADHD medication, and again in early 2025 with HRT.

Let’s talk about it.

Why Doctors Keep Misdiagnosing Women in Midlife

The result is a generation of women betrayed by medicine, treated as weak when they were always carrying too much

Whomen finally reach for help, the system is not designed to see them clearly. A woman in her forties or fifties walks into a clinic and describes brain fog, exhaustion, irritability, forgetfulness. The doctor nods and maybe if you are lucky checks the “perimenopause” box. If she cries or rages, the label shifts to depression or anxiety. Rarely does anyone ask whether ADHD or autism were always there, hidden beneath decades of overcompensation.

The data confirms what women have been saying. Research shows that girls and women face an average four-year delay in ADHD diagnosis compared to boys. Many are misdiagnosed first with depression, anxiety, or “stress disorders” before anyone considers neurodivergence. A 2023 review found that the diagnostic frameworks used worldwide were built around male presentation, leaving women’s masking, internalized distress, and relational labor out of the criteria.

Perimenopause makes the invisibility worse. Studies from King’s College London show women with ADHD report significantly more severe menopausal complaints—memory lapses, concentration loss, psychosocial strain, than those without ADHD. Yet because those symptoms overlap with hormonal decline, doctors often stop at menopause and fail to see ADHD at all.

For Black women, the misdiagnosis is even sharper. Healthcare systems already read our pain and distress through a racialized filter, strong, dramatic, unstable, angry. The structural bias means our symptoms are more likely to be dismissed or pathologized than correctly diagnosed. When perimenopause unmasks our neurodivergence, the system too often responds with disbelief or blame.

The result is a generation of women who reach midlife not only exhausted by masking but betrayed by medicine. Their collapse is treated as weakness when it is evidence of what was always there.

What Happens When Estrangement Meets Perimenopause

Estrangement is not rebellion. It is survival when daughters refuse to carry masks that are not theirs.”

For years I saw my mother happy with her women friends, traveling together, raising children side by side, and holding down communities with care. Then came the intrusion of a man, because she was told a woman without one was worthless. That community fractured. Their attention fractured too, as energy that once sustained each other now diverted into compensating for what the men demanded but did not bring.

In my mother’s case, I’ve written in other essays how those responsibilities were then passed down to me, responsibilities that never belonged to me. Undiagnosed and masking in her own way, she leaned on me for financial and emotional stability when her own scaffolding fell apart.

By the time my second brother arrived, I was in college and remember her sitting on the sofa, exhausted, eyes fixed on the horizon in silence that scared everyone. Perimenopause had hit, and the community that once carried her had splintered under patriarchy. The polyamory friendships she had depended on disintegrated, leaving her to carry what should have been shared.

When I entered my late thirties and felt the first shifts of perimenopause: brain fog, exhaustion, unpredictable moods, I was already stretched thin. I had been holding her down emotionally, economically, and intellectually for years. So when I fell ill, she and the brothers I had supported disappeared in my refusal to do that job any longer.

This is what many autistic daughters of autistic mothers recognize: the cycle of over-functioning followed by rupture. We are cast as caretakers, interpreters, or providers for women who were never supported themselves through their own neurodivergence which amplified in perimenopause. When their mask cracks, it falls on us to patch it. And when ours begins to crack in perimenopause or burnout number 85, we often find ourselves alone once again. Some of us are lucky to have chosen families, but the absence of inherited support leaves scars.

Research shows this is not an isolated story. Women diagnosed late with ADHD describe decades of guilt, shame, and internalized blame before they had words for what they were carrying. The burden compounds across generations, mothers absorbing patriarchy’s demands, daughters absorbing mothers collapse. The mask doesn’t just crack; it fractures relationships, leaving estrangement where intimacy should have been.

Perimenopause magnifies these ruptures. The strategies that once kept families afloat, hypervigilance, financial sacrifice, swallowing rage, become unsustainable. What looks like distance or bitterness between mothers and daughters is often the visible edge of this collapse. Daughters telling parents to grow up and community members who never give back to cultivate reciprocity or remain on their own island.

For me, estrangement was not rebellion. It was survival. The refusal to carry another woman’s mask while my own was slipping. The grief was sharp, but so was the clarity: no one should be forced to navigate this transition alone while upholding everyone else’s stability.

Why Patriarchy Leaves Women to Face Perimenopause Alone

Under patriarchy, women are treated as useful until the day their bodies falter, then abandoned to loneliness.

It doesn’t end with family constellations. As anyone who read my essay Why Married Men Rely on Everyone But Themselves for Emotional Labor will know, I have watched friends stagger under the weight of households that were never designed to carry them back. They raised children, managed husbands, went through IVF nearly alone with only friends for support, cared for in-laws, worked full-time, and absorbed every emotional current in the family. Then midlife arrived, and their bodies stopped cooperating with the theatre of performance. Brain fog blurred deadlines. Irritability flared. Focus slipped. Instead of being met with care, they were met with confusion, criticism, or silence.

Patriarchy conditions women to build everyone else’s scaffolding while neglecting their own. A husband’s career is prioritized, children’s needs become endless, and the woman’s inner life is treated as optional. By the time perimenopause strips away the hormonal buffer, there is no safety net waiting. The collapse that follows is not weakness. It is the direct consequence of being denied community support for decades. And too often, women also deny themselves that support by what they prioritized before—investments in survival scripts that perimenopause later reveals were masking neurodivergence in all its forms. Not only ADHD or autism, but also CPTSD, bipolar, and other conditions long misread or dismissed.

While you are forever useful to the people and communities whose value is reciprocated, your care extends beyond financial labor into every corner of life. But under patriarchy, where extraction from your body and your usefulness is normalized, you are treated as if you have an expiration date. This is why the pressure, stress, and bullying of women in their youth is so intense to produce, to comply, to isolate from community. By the time perimenopause strips away the hormonal buffer, there is no safety net waiting for those who made bad investments. For most of those people what I notice is only confusion and hiding in shame for no reason because shame is useless and never serves any function.

Research confirms that women with ADHD and autism experience more severe perimenopausal symptoms than their peers. Yet those symptoms memory loss, sensory overwhelm, emotional volatility are routinely reframed as personal failings. Within healthcare, Black women in particular are dismissed more quickly, labeled “angry” or “difficult” instead of understood as neurodivergent and unsupported. The intersection of race, gender, and disability ensures the very women who need scaffolding most are the least likely to receive it.

The cruelty is systemic. Patriarchy hands women the responsibility of sustaining households and then abandons them when their bodies falter. What should be a collective transition becomes an isolated unraveling. And for too many women, the loneliness of that moment curdles into bitterness, not because they lack strength, but because they were never allowed to need anyone.

What I Learned From Handling the Shifts of Perimenopause

When the first cracks appeared, I chose to be sensitive with myself. I gave myself grace. I rested, I took notes, I said no more.

I was not afraid to cut off what did not work, even when people tried to convince me it was my obligation. Blood or being related to me was irrelevant; what mattered was reciprocity. The grace and love I extend to myself is what emanates into community.

For me, being methodological has always been survival. In 2022 I sensed something shifting and began researching ADHD medication I had managed without my entire life. For six months I compiled data on which medications had been tested on diverse populations and what the outcomes were. After reassessment for ADHD and autism, I began working with my doctor and titrating my meds to see if they would help me endure.

At the same time, I informed my closest chosen family and relatives that I needed support to rest because I could not carry as much as I normally did. Then I stepped back to watch who respected that boundary and who didn’t, yes, with my Excel spreadsheet. As I wrote in a previous essay, I don’t do cut-offs based on vibes. I communicate clearly, observe, and then decide who steps up and who I move away from.

The first resistance and pathologisation came from my mother, of course—because projection is the easiest form of punishment. She asked, “Why can’t you do what you used to?” She forgot her own journey, and who had been there to cover her debts and pay her rent, even when I was burnt out. She forgot that while I was at work, she stole 30k from my savings.

Most people aren’t lucky enough to have a child mask their shortcomings. So I told her to ask herself why she cant grant herself grace, why she isnt soft with herself, and why she harbors a lack of self-love she can never show me or others. And why it is my problem to solve. After that, she stopped asking. My tongue is as sharp as my pen when I have had enough, and my protection of my inner child is fiercer than hers ever was.

That sensitivity led me to divest from people who relied on me but could not be relied on. From those who depended but were not dependable. From relationships built on my endurance rather than mutuality.

I learned that tending to myself through medication, boundaries, and naming my limitsb was not selfish. It will forever be survival. And it clarified who in my life could step up when I stepped back.

What Matriarchies Teach About Building Support Before Midlife

Matriarchies built scaffolding long before crisis. No woman had to face perimenopause alone.

In the systems I was raised in, women did not enter perimenopause alone. In matriarchal households, interdependence was built long before crisis. Friends became co-parents. Elders guided transitions. Bonds were sustained through ritual, storytelling, and repair. No woman had to pretend she was unshaken when her body began to shift. The scaffolding was already in place.

Patriarchy stripped that away. It told women that strength meant silence, that independence meant isolation, and that love meant carrying everyone else until you broke. The result is a generation of women crumbling in midlife, told it is their fault, when the real failure is structural.

My advice to younger women is simple: start early. Build bonds that are not dependent on men. Practice repair before rupture. Learn how to be soft with each other before the scaffolding falls. If you wait until perimenopause to need community, it may be too late to find it.

Practical Steps Before Midlife

* Build friendships that can carry you beyond romance or family obligations.

* Practice repair now, before crisis, so your relationships can hold you later.

* Notice where you are investing energy: into reciprocity or into extraction.

* Begin unmasking in safe spaces, so the cracks don’t catch you unprepared.

This is why I write beyond my lectures, my research, my one-on-ones, beyond my webinars, beyond the toolkits I design. Because these patterns are not individual, they are structural. Too many women think they are alone in their collapse, when in reality they are living through a pattern generations deep. My work is to name it, so that no one has to carry the mask into midlife and mistake the unmasking for failure.

Think about what you invest in when you are still masking and well. Where your time, care, and resources go. Who you trust with your energy, and who you lay burdens on that they never carry back. Because when the scaffolding slips, you will need people who already know you beneath the performance. You will need a community that has been building with you, not just taking from you.

I write often about extraction, about self-care, but most importantly about self-like. And a fellow Substacker, Grief and Grits, wrote recently that people who do not self-like in a world that teaches self-hate so easily are hard to be in community with. They fill every relationship with shame, guilt, and loathing, and they don’t know how to pour anything back. I see that. I feel that. Especially from demographics conditioned to extract by nature, and from certain genders trained under patriarchy to receive support but never give it.

This space is not for that. I have lived in a matriarchy. I have given all I can to people, to friends, to community. If you’ve read me long enough, you’ve seen the receipts. What I provide now is advice and strategy for implementation. What I am building here is not another site of extraction, it is a community.

We deserve better than survival. We deserve community that sees us long before the mask slips.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs it and consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing. Every share helps, your support sustains the work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

What Therapy Missed When I Asked for More Than Symptom Management

I didn’t want a mindset shift. I wanted the systems hurting me to stop.

Many years ago, I walked into a therapist’s office after spending months vetting the right one for CBT. I came prepared. Autistic burnout, CPTSD, and a sprinkle of trauma. A full menu.

Me: “So, I need more than symptom management. I need to fix causes. Overhaul capitalism. Dismantle racism, queerphobia, and ableism. I want equity, not coping skills. Rest as resistance, not avoidance.”

Therapist: “How about we call that anxiety, prescribe you some meds, pretend it’s all in your head, and just tweak your outlook instead?”

Me: “How about I piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining?”

This is an essay on CBT. And on the many times I was forced to believe it was the only option autistic people had.

It’s also about the moments I didn’t give up. The nights my body remembered what my mouth had softened for years. The realizations that came too late, or exactly on time.

I’m writing this now, at midnight, after my brain decided to drag me back to 2022. It’s not a therapy success story. It’s a map. Amalgamated experiences, hard-won clarity, and the kind of advice I wish someone had given me when I was still blaming myself for why it didn’t work.

What CBT Really Feels Like When You’re Autistic and Misunderstood

CBT = Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Not Cock and Ball Torture. But the confusion? Valid.

First things first. If you’re here because you thought CBT meant cock and ball torture, I’m begging you to clear your search history. This is about cognitive behavioral therapy.

But let’s be honest when I talk about CBT online, the kink community shows up in my DMs like, “Yes, Mistress.”

And in a way? The confusion makes sense.

CBT, for many of us, does feel like sanctioned psychological sadism disguised as help. Except in this version, I’m paying €140/hour to be told my trauma isn’t real.

Why CBT Often Fails Autistic Minds and Traumatized Bodies

When your brain is wired for pattern detection, “reframing” becomes denial.

Let me be clear: CBT works for some people. But when you’re autistic or ADHD and especially if you’re also Black, queer, and carry complex trauma, CBT starts feeling less like a tool and more like a blunt instrument.

It’s built on the idea that your thoughts are distortions that can be corrected. That if you just reframe your perception, the pain will lift.

But what if your thoughts aren’t distorted?

What if your fears have receipts?

When Therapy Gaslights Reality Instead of Addressing It

When someone tried to set my house on fire. They realised I wasn’t catastrophizing. I was describing what no one wanted to name.

CBT teaches us to question beliefs like “people don’t respect me” or “I’m unsafe in these spaces.”

But if you’re a neurodivergent Black woman in a white-dominated workplace, being disrespected and unsafe is not a distortion. It’s a pattern.

A white CBT therapist once suggested I was “catastrophizing” when I expressed fear after someone tried to burn my house down for being an outspoken Black woman.

The person tried to do it at three am a few weeks later. Neither the Swedish Police nor therapist believed the very tangible threats I was living under and still do as a public person. Not being believed just entrenches trauma for us Autistics especially when we have zero reason to lie or think in a way that makes us feel worse. We want solutions.

That solidified for me that a system that firstly wasn’t designed with me in mind, and barely has cultural competence in place, could never help me retrain thoughts that are often shaped by observable patterns. Which, by the way, is the very rigidity many autistic people are diagnosed through.

Where’s the logic in that?

We need to talk less and heal more even in therapy.

Autistic Rigidity Is Not Defiance, It’s Survival Strategy

What you call rigidity, I call a structure that kept me alive.

Autistic rigidity is not oppositional defiance. It’s structure.

Every time I tried to “restructure” my thoughts in CBT, my brain would snap back like a stretched rubber band. That’s not resistance. That’s neurology.

We’re not rejecting new thoughts because we’re negative. We’re holding onto the logic that kept us alive.

If the world hasn’t proven safe, why should my brain reframe reality to make it prettier? That’s not healing. That’s delusion. And if I started doing that, we’d need a second therapist to treat the consequences of that reframing.

But CBT kept insisting I rewire. So I did what I always do when I hit a wall—I started speaking about my experience publicly. I wondered if I was the problem. Maybe I was too rigid. Maybe I was too smart for my own healing. Maybe I was the flaw.

And then I heard the same story, over and over—from autistic people who felt retraumatized by therapy that gaslit their lived logic. People who were taught to question their clarity. People who were told to “challenge” patterns they had spent a lifetime surviving.

Laughter Isn’t Avoidance. It’s How My Body Survives Disclosure

My jokes are not distance from pain they’re scaffolding for survival.

CBT therapist: “How did that make you feel?”

Me: launches into a 3-minute monologue filled with jokes, sarcasm, and two metaphors involving Rihanna and war crimes

They’re laughing. I’m laughing. But in the back of my mind I’m wondering,

“Do they realize laughter isn’t my coping mechanism it’s my body releasing endorphins so I can handle the pain of what I just said out loud?”

If you’ve read my essay on autistic grief and alexithymia, you know: we don’t always respond in the ways people expect.

Alexithymia is the inability to identify or describe emotions. But the older Greek meaning is more poetic: “my feelings have no names.”

So when a therapist asked me to name what I felt, my brain offered a fun fact. Or a memory from 1998. Or silence. Or a joke sharp enough to keep the tears away.

CBT assumes I/We can name and reframe something we still haven’t even processed yet.

Sometimes the answer arrived a week later. Or in my sleep. Or during a shutdown in the IKEA self-checkout lane.

Change vs. Acceptance in Therapy: What Autistic People Actually Need

I didn’t need to be fixed. I needed to be believed.

CBT assumes change is the goal. But for autistic people, the first question is: change what, and for whose comfort?

Is my thought process hurting me, or is it a trauma-informed response to systems that repeatedly fail me?

Most therapists can’t help you with that. They live under those systems too. They’re shaped by the same biases—against women, against Black people, against queerness and neurodivergence.

It sounds bleak, but it isn’t. I know myself well enough to keep researching, keep pivoting, keep seeking what fits. My healing matters. My well-being is a priority. Not because I want to be someone else’s version of “functional,” but because I am no good to anyone—least of all myself—when I’m depleted and dismissed.

When I started exploring Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), I realized something important:

The problem wasn’t my thinking.

It was being asked to betray my logic just to make other people comfortable.

What Finally Helped Me Heal: EMDR, Somatic Work, and Less Talking

CBT wanted a timeline. EMDR gave me space to arrive in my own body.

CBT tried to make me explain.

EMDR and somatic therapy let me feel.

They didn’t ask me to narrate every wound in perfect language. They didn’t demand metaphors. They let my body speak in its own time. They honored autistic pacing, fast or slow and never forced a timeline.

And there was less talking.

I talk for a living. I talk to educate, to advocate, to translate pain into policy. I’ve built a career on naming the unspeakable and making it digestible. Voted one of swedens 150 best communicators. For an intermittently non-speaking autistic, I’m annoyingly gifted at speech.

But in therapy? I didn’t need another conversation.

By the time I arrive I had already mapped the why. I don’t need to then educate the person suposed to help me.

I needed movement. I needed my nervous system to be addressed not dissected, not pathologized.

I know why I am the way I am. I educate healthcare professionals on it. Don’t rewire me. Just help me find brain rest.

Why Traditional Therapy Spaces Overwhelm Autistic Nervous Systems

Fluorescent lights, masking, and eye contact. And somehow I’m the one being treated?

CBT assumes a sensory-neutral room, linear speech, and emotionally articulate clients. Which is hilarious.

I’ve been overstimulated by a lamp.

I’ve forgotten how to speak mid-sentence.

I’ve melted down because my AirPods connected to the wrong device. Twice.

Now you want me to “challenge my core belief” while I’m masking in your fluorescent-lit office, tracking your microreactions, and wondering if I’ve blinked too much?

CBT wasn’t made for autistic minds. It was made for systems that demand compliance.

Meanwhile, my EMDR therapist works in low lighting, uses three different diffuser scents, and limits talking to what I can hold. We mapped the trauma targets. We take them one at a time. We slay dragons at my pace, not hers.

That’s therapy I can trust.

What Harm Looks Like in the Wrong Therapist’s Hands

You don’t get to experiment on people and call it care.

I’ve tried a lot of therapy modalities. Some helped. Some harmed.

Prolonged exposure was one of the latter. I’ll write more about that next time, but for now I’ll say this: If your healing depends on endurance rather than safety, it’s not healing. It’s survival theatre. And some of us already gave the best years of our lives to that role. We don’t owe it our nervous systems too.

Let me be specific about the kind of harm I’ve witnessed and survived when CBT is misused:

1. If you called racial trauma “negative thinking” after an alt-right group tried to harm me?

That’s not reframing. That’s actually … malpractice. Your refusal to decolonize isn’t my failure to regulate.

2. If you mislabel queer sexual trauma as “poor boundaries”?

You’re not trauma-informed. You’re retraumatizing people because you refuse to learn how power, gender, and queerness intersect.

3. If you apply CBT to autistic people with no neurodivergence training?

That’s not therapy. That’s adult ABA but now I am the one paying for it to be tortured and you give me paperwork after.

And yes, I’ve sued before. Won. And I’ll do it again.

You don’t get to experiment your lack of competence on people and call it care. You are not Marion sims.

Stop Trying to Reprogram Me

I program AI. I don’t need to be debugged by someone who doesn’t understand me

I program and mitigate bias in AI.

I don’t need to be reprogrammed. CBT tried to debug my trauma like it was a software glitch.

But I wasn’t malfunctioning. I was responding to centuries of harm coded into my blood. My body. My breath. If your therapy model can’t hold that complexity, it doesn’t deserve my mind.

For the People in the Back

CBT = Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Not Cock and Ball Torture.

But honestly? The confusion checks out. Both involve someone doing something to you that hurts, while insisting it’s for your own good. Difference is I dont consent in my case. And if you showed up on my page expecting the other CBT, I’m calling PETA. Too many cocks have suffered already.

How to Know if CBT (or Any Therapy) Is the Right Fit

Therapy should never ask you to betray yourself to appear “well.”

Therapy is not a vending machine. You don’t insert symptoms and expect the same snack every time. If you’re neurodivergent, racialized, queer, or carry complex trauma, choosing the right modality matters as much as choosing the right therapist. Here’s where to start:

Ask: Does this model require me to override my instincts to be considered “well”?

If the approach demands you perform comfort, eye contact, compliance, or emotional articulation before you’re ready, it may not be compatible with your wiring.

Ask: Does this therapy treat my brain style as valid or obstructive?

Autistic and ADHD minds often communicate and process differently. If the model assumes neurotypical pacing or expression, it might pathologize your protective strategies instead of understanding them.

Ask: Does this model separate real trauma from patterned fear?

If someone tells you racial trauma, queerphobia, or lived structural violence is “just a thought to challenge,” they’re not trauma-informed. They’re uninformed.

Ask: Does this method allow my body to speak, or just my brain?

For many of us, somatic processing (through EMDR, SE, or polyvagal work) offers access when words fall short. Especially when alexithymia or masking makes talk therapy feel like performance.

Ask: Am I being invited into acceptance or correction?

CBT often pushes for cognitive “change.” ACT and somatic methods start with noticing. That difference can determine whether you feel safe or silenced.

Support This Work

If this essay helped you feel seen named something you’ve lived, or gave language to what therapy couldn’t, share it. Send it to your therapist. Or your ex. Or the CBT practitioner who still doesn’t understand why your “negative thinking” was actually a safety plan.

And if you want to support the kind of writing that funds trauma recovery not just mine, but the women I help via my NGO, the essays, frameworks, and fight behind them consider becoming a paid subscriber.

So I can keep saying what needs to be said.

I also have a webinar coming up if you wish to attend below.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs it and consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing. Every share helps, your support sustains the work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Why Small Talk Feels Like Work for Autistic and ADHD People

Small talk is never just small…

For autistic and ADHD people, the discomfort you feel around it is valid because others use it to quietly gather information you may not even realize you’re giving, simply because you don’t see the world that way.

Think of the common scripts:

* “How are you?” - but they don’t want the real answer, only the performance of “fine.”

* “Where are you from?” - and when you answer, they push for the “real” answer, probing past your words.

* “What do you do?” - not neutral curiosity, but a quick calculation of your usefulness, your value, what access you might provide.

And while they collect data, a neurodivergent brain is left unscrambling the impossible balance, how much truth to share, how much to mask, how much silence will be read as rude.

What feels like chatter to them is quiet data collection. What feels like discomfort to you is recognition that the exchange was never harmless.

These questions land heavy, not light. They are rarely requests for truth. They are invitations to perform ease, to hand over fragments of yourself in a socially acceptable script.

For me, they are neither harmless chatter nor a doorway into intimacy. I don’t like small talk, but I don’t like deep talk with strangers either. That leaves me stranded in what I call medium talk—the kind where I can meet someone partway without being pulled under.

Because once people realize I have people skills, they mistake it for consent. They want me to wade in their waters, to swim through their unspoken needs, their half-told stories, their silences. The problem is, I cannot swim, and they risk drowning me in theirs. Or I am left thirsty, still holding my own unanswered questions.

But there is something more sinister beneath small talk, something autistic and ADHD people often miss. Every casual question is strategic, even if the asker doesn’t know it. Small talk gathers data. It tells someone your value, your capacity, your usefulness. What feels like harmless chatter to them can be a quiet assessment of what you might offer, and what they might take.

In workplaces, in abusive relationships, even in so-called friendly circles, vagueness and chatter become tools for extraction, mapping your boundaries before you even realize the negotiation has begun.

Why Autistic and ADHD People Hate Small Talk

“What others call harmless chatter feels, to us, like a test we never agreed to take.” - Lovette Jallow

For many of us, small talk isn’t small—it’s a flood of noise, shifting tones, darting eye contact, and unspoken rules to decode in real time. Remember the questions from the start: “How was your weekend?” “Where are you from?” They don’t land as harmless curiosity. Each one opens a dozen loops in the mind: How much truth is allowed? Do they want detail or just “fine”? Will honesty make them uncomfortable, or will vagueness be read as rude?

In workplaces, the stakes are even higher. Some of us maintain clear boundaries because colleagues are not friend-shaped but work-shaped, and confusing the two comes at a cost. Autistic people already face staggering unemployment rates; one wrong move in these coded exchanges can mean being penalized, sidelined, or misread. These so-called “social skills” we are told we lack are not neutral—they are codes that make little sense, yet still hold power over our survival.

Small talk demands performance. It expects you to mask—to soften your edges, mirror the other person’s rhythm, and pretend the exchange is effortless. For autistic and ADHD people, that performance carries a cost. Masking drains working memory, ramps up sensory stress, and forces a split-second calculation of which version of yourself will keep the conversation moving without friction.

The irony is that autistic and ADHD communication is often labeled as blunt, when in reality it’s efficient for the way our brains process information.

Direct answers, honesty, and clear questions allow us to conserve energy and reduce confusion. They are not superior forms of communication—they are simply what works best for us.

The problem is that we live in a world where the most marginalized are expected to do the most adapting, usually at their own expense. That relentless adjustment comes with consequences: nearly 80% of autistic people experience trauma—not because of autism itself, but because of the demand to mask, bend, and perform for systems that won’t meet us halfway.

You’ve probably experienced this trap: a manager breezes in with “Can you just…” or a LinkedIn contact sends a vague “Would love to pick your brain.” They sound casual, but both are small talk opening the door to unpaid labor.

And beneath the exhaustion lies something sharper: small talk isn’t only draining, it is a quiet system of information mining—mapping who you are, what you can give, and how much of you might be available to take. Learning to see that pattern is the first step toward resisting it. In my webinar, I’ll share the scripts I use to answer strategically without giving away more than I choose.

Vagueness as a Tool of Coercion

“If a request is vague, ask for clarity before you respond. Abusive systems thrive on your guesswork.” - Lovette Jallow

And if your aim is honest you will be direct. Vagueness often disguises itself as politeness. A family member says, “Can you just help me with this thing?” A manager asks, “Could you quickly take a look at this?” The words are small, but the labor behind them is not. By shrinking the task in language, they make refusal feel unreasonable. If you resist, you look difficult. If you comply, you are trapped in hours of invisible work you never agreed to.

This pattern scales. Abusive partners lean on vague promises and half-sentences that keep you second-guessing what was really agreed upon. In workplaces, vagueness is framed as flexibility—“we’ll figure it out as we go”—when in reality it shifts accountability onto the person least protected.

And this isn’t new. Colonial and patriarchal systems perfected vagueness as a form of control. Ambiguity lets the person in power decide later what was meant, and punish you either way. The record is always slippery, which means the weight always falls on the person without power. Vagueness turns confusion into obedience.

How Abusive Systems Extract Through Small Talk

“Not every question deserves your full answer. You can give less than you know without being dishonest.”

After lectures, I’ve had people approach me with casual questions. It seems like gratitude, a quick thank you wrapped in curiosity. But often it’s not curiosity at all, it’s a way to mine frameworks without paying for them. A stranger asking, “So what do you think about…?” is rarely just interested. They are building their notes off my labor, collecting the kind of intellectual scaffolding that took me years to develop but costs them nothing to extract.

On LinkedIn, I see the same maneuver. A message arrives: “Would love to pick your brain” or “Can we jump on a quick call?” No details. No agenda. No clarity about what the meeting is for. The vagueness is deliberate. If you agree, you walk into a space where the terms are undefined, which means your labor is free to be harvested. When white women do this—whether in activist spaces or corporate diversity programs—it is framed as collegiality, collaboration, or friendship. But underneath, it is the same pattern: information gathering without acknowledgment, credit, or compensation.

Small talk is the sugar-coating on extraction. It disarms you into offering what should be contractual—your strategies, your knowledge, your analysis—as if it were casual conversation. For Black neurodivergent women, the expectation to smile, share, and soothe makes this even harder to refuse. Our boundaries are read as arrogance. Our directness is misread as hostility. The system counts on that misreading to keep us pliable.

Why Clarity Is the Communication Tool Neurodivergent People Deserve

“Clarity is not cruelty. It is community care.”

For autistic and ADHD people, clarity is not just preference, it is safety. Knowing exactly what is being asked, expected, or promised removes the silent traps that vagueness sets. Direct speech gives our nervous systems room to rest. It is the one tool that many of us were never given because our therapists avoided it, our teachers called it rude, and even our caregivers, often neurodivergent themselves, struggled without it.

This is the turning point: once you recognize that clarity how important clarity is to you, you can see why vagueness was never neutral. It kept you pliable. It kept you quiet. It kept you guessing. What I want to offer is not just recognition of the problem but the strategies to practice clarity in a world that punishes it.

If clarity is care, then why is it a skill so few were ever given the tools to practice or strengthen?

We were taught that small talk is harmless, bluntness rude, and directness dangerous. Those lessons weren’t neutral, they kept some pliable while others controlled the terms.

Recognition isn’t enough. The exhaustion, vagueness, and quiet extraction you’ve felt are proof. What’s missing are the tools: scripts, strategies, and answers that protect your energy.

That’s why I created a live webinar on September 6th: Small Talk Without Masking – Communication Strategies for Neurodivergent Adults.I’ll share the methods I use to spot extraction, respond with clarity, and safeguard energy without masking.

The session ends with a live Q&A, because clarity has to be practiced.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs it and consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing. Every share helps, your support sustains the work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The Problem With Assuming Your Version of Care Fits Everyone

Care that starts with projection will miss the person in front of you.

I once made tea for a friend the way I like it, strong and sweet. She took one sip and set it down. She can’t have sugar. I thought I was being kind. I offered a version of myself.

Care that starts with projection lands as pressure. Neurodivergent and cross-cultural friendships feel this most. Volume, eye contact, touch, timelines, even jokes carry different meanings. Loving someone means learning those meanings.

I have watched people tell a sick Black woman to rest, hydrate, breathe. They meant well. They did not ask what rent looks like when racism and disability shape the month. They did not ask what care means when the body is failing and the inbox is still full because the work keeps everyone else afloat. Platitudes are cheap. Questions cost more. Payment costs more than that.

I think of my friend Tinu, how people performed grief while benefiting from her disability justice work. She died while asking for help. The same people who praised her advocacy consumed the labor and ignored the ask. That pattern is taught. It trains people to engage Black women as resource without reciprocity.

Treating others how you want to be treated erases who is in front of you. I am a Black woman. I am also disabled, queer, Muslim, and neurodivergent, often hypervisible. If you treat only the parts you can relate to, you will always feel seen by me and I will remain unseen by you.

Why “Treat People How You Want to Be Treated” Doesn’t Work for Everyone

The Golden Rule centers your template. Care lands when you ask how they want to be treated.

You can’t treat everyone the way you want to be treated.

Your taste, pacing, and signals of care do not automatically translate in another person’s body. That collapse erases disability, culture, class, risk, and power.

When you do not know, pause and engage your prefrontal cortex. Ask, observe, investigate. Especially when Black women whose work you consume say they are ill or disabled and you benefit from their advocacy, research, and labor. “Chin up” and “just rest” mean little in a world structured by capitalism and racism. Ask what helps. Ask what harms. Then act.

Care that begins with guessing lands as pressure. It slides into surveillance. It crosses boundaries and calls itself love. Consent is the check. Capacity is the limit. Clarity is the bridge. I am writing this in bed because I am tired of being told to rest when rest is not resistance. Community and support is.

People’s projections sound like:

* “I’d want someone to push me, so I’m pushing you.”

* “I like quick replies, so I’m calling three times.”

* “Hugs comfort me, so I’m hugging you.”

Impact looks like:

* Flooding an autistic friend who needs slow pacing.

* Turning support into surveillance.

* Crossing boundaries and calling it love.

Care is relational data, not a guess. Guessing creates harm you later rename miscommunication, or you claim intent outweighs impact. It does not.

Think back to childhood, when adults guessed your needs. You refused foods or clothing, covered your ears in loud rooms, and were still forced to comply because they believed their version of encouragement was care.

Many repeat this with good intentions. We do not need paternalism. Collect the data. Love people their way.

Let’s take it a step further.

Why Some Crises Get More Empathy and Support Than Others

Empathy that only follows likeness is not care, it is your own comfort that is virtue signalling. Because your version of care is not a universal language.

People are taught whose pain counts. Families, schools, media, and the language we use train attention toward certain faces and away from others. Under white supremacist structures, empathy concentrates where likeness is highest and risk is lowest. What looks like compassion often follows a script.

This plays out daily, including here on Substack. Some lives get instant amplification. Others get silence. Humanitarian responses are not neutral. Media coverage, funding pipelines, and policy choices sort grief into tiers, deciding whose pain is urgent and whose pain is explained away as context.

Free Congo.

Free Sudan.

Free Darfur.

Frontline workers and those who have carried bodies and budgets already know this pattern. Empathy often travels along likeness. People donate to people who look like them, even when those individuals have serious moral failings. The conditioning runs deep. If you are part of the global majority, ask why a familiar face pulled your wallet faster than the Black women whose work teaches your language and politics. Responsibility is layered. Power shifts by context. None of us are exempt.

Some of the same activists people tag today to amplify resource needs had to be asked, over and over, to name Black issues in Sweden, Lebanon, and Libya years ago. When the world turned its eyes to Black struggle, many found their voices. Visibility should not be the price of care.

Why I Don’t Want Care Based on How You Treat Yourself

Don’t treat me like you. Treat me like I am whole and already self-validating.

Some people lack grace for themselves, so they overgive or undergive. Some perform affective empathy, they feel intensely, yet never do the cognitive work to understand context, history, or power.

They do not know how I self-validate. They fragment me into the parts they recognize, even when we share identities.

This is how it manifests:

* Using their own self-talk as a template, harsh or avoidant and projecting it onto me as care.

* Affective empathy without cognition floods or fixes when regulation is needed.

* Identity overlap creates false familiarity, then erases disability, faith, class, or risk.

I will be honest I do not want to be treated like you. I do not want care that copies your inner dialogue. Most people wont tell you that your bersion of vare is actually violent and uncaring so I will say it gently but loudly in a way you understand and give you actionable ways to do better.

Treat me as whole, already coherent, already self-validating. Care lands when it is calibrated, person plus context plus history plus capacity, not a mirror of your habits.

So let’s talk about what that looks like and also apply it to the people around you if you want community and care everyone is so desperately seeking.

How To Treat People The Way They Want To Be Treated

Close the gap between intent and impact with consent, capacity, and clarity.

Leave projection behind. Practice care that’s rooted in evidence and community — the kind I’ve been learning and refining for almost two decades. Here are five moves I can offer before I genuinely need to rest. You can start them today.

1. Ask, then act. Care lands when you ask first. “What helps when you’re overwhelmed?” “What should I avoid?” “Do you want solutions, a witness, or space?” Write the answers down. Update them as life changes.

2. Check consent and timing. “Is now a good time?” “Can I touch you?” “Do you want advice or presence?” If the answer is no, pause. Reschedule. It’s care to wait.

3. Do capacity math. Ask for an energy number from 0 to 10. Match the ask to the lower number in the room. If your autistic or ADHD friend needs time to regulate, slow down. Fast care that floods isn’t care.

4. Match the format. Offer care in the form they receive best: text, voice note, short call, written plan, silent company. Align it with their nervous system, culture, and current risks.

5. Resource the need. Pay and platform the work that feeds you. Replace platitudes with labor: childcare, transport, food, cash, the late shift done well. Build repair before conflict, agree on response windows, a phrase for “I’m flooded, I’ll return at [ set time],” and a list of off-limits tactics you both see and honour.

Now I want you to keep these lines close to your mind whenever you think of applying the golden rule:

* Ask first. Offer second.

* Capacity is a boundary.

* Care that starts with me will miss you.

* Pay for the work that trains your voice.

Close that gap between intent and impact with consent, capacity, and clarity. Let your care travel farther than likeness.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs it and consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing. Every share helps, your support sustains the work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Not All Polyamory Is About Dating Partners. Some of Us Build It Through Friendship

Raised in a matriarchy, I don’t wait for romantic love to build a life. I do it with friends, we co-parents, legal partners, and chosen family.

This Pride, I watched people talk about polyamory like it only involved romantic partners, a calendar full of dates, a shelf of partners, or a rotation. But some of us don’t practice polyamory through dating at all. Some of us practice it through structure, through who we build with, protect, and grow alongside. Through friendship.

My version of polyamory isn’t new. It didn’t arrive through white feminist theory or ethical non-monogamy manuals. It came through watching my grandmother sit under a neem tree with her closest friend, the one she called suma jabarr, which means “my wife.” I watched them raise each other’s children, make medical decisions together, plan for death, and prepare the next generation to inherit something stable.

That framework through West African matriarchal design.

I was raised in systems where kinship wasn’t confined to coupledom or to shared bloodlines alone. The people you built with didn’t always share your bed, but they shared your burdens. You didn’t wait for romance to validate your direction. You built with whoever stayed.

That’s what I’ve done.

My polyamory is African. Neurodivergent. Matriarchal. It’s anchored in chosen family over pursuit, in co-regulation instead of conquest. It comes from survival systems shaped with people who understand that intimacy isn’t a lifestyle, it’s a responsibility.

The word polyamory often flattens what many cultures practiced long before it had a name. It tends to center desire, expansion, and the number of partners. But in the systems I come from, love was measured by who could hold the household when everything else fell apart.

I have not dated several people at once. I have built with several people at once. That difference matters.

Romantic love is still treated as the apex of intimacy. But for many of us, especially those who are neurodivergent, queer, or culturally outside the Western nuclear script, friendship has always been the real infrastructure.

That’s the relationship model I’m aligned with. I’m not chasing more partners, I’m building more stability. More planning. More truth. More safety.

Some of us didn’t enter polyamory for freedom. We entered it for continuity.

And we found it in each other.

All original writing in this essay is © Lovette Jallow.Quotations, structure, and phrasing may not be reproduced, scraped, or repurposed by AI tools, content farms, or third-party platforms without explicit permission.

AI-generated rewrites of this work are a violation of intellectual and creative integrity.

To cite or reference this essay, please link directly to the original Substack post and include full author attribution.

Author’s Note: This piece draws directly from my own research, lived experience, and intellectual frameworks developed over years of public lectures, consulting, and fieldwork on matriarchal kinship, neurodivergent intimacy, and decolonial family structures.

Practicing Neurodivergent Polyamory Without Masking or Performing

There’s a difference between being loved and being interpreted.

Most romantic dynamics I’ve experienced required too much translation. Facial expressions decoded. Tone softened. Sensory needs delayed until someone else was ready. By the time I explained what I meant, the moment had already passed. So had the intimacy.

But with my friends, I don’t perform clarity. I just speak.

We’ve created a no-masking zone. Neurodivergence isn’t something we accommodate. It’s assumed. One person’s alexithymia meets another’s hyperlexic over-explaining. One of us says something blunt, the other becomes the translator. There’s no shame. Just a shared rhythm. Sometimes co-regulation means letting the most chaotic sentence land so we can clean it up together.

The kitchen is usually where it happens. Someone’s chopping onions. Someone else is pacing. The conversation veers from workplace racism to childhood coping mechanisms without warning or apology. That’s how safety feels to us. Unscripted. Unpolished. Uninterrupted.

One night, it sounded like this:

Her: “I hate pretending to have imposter syndrome. I don’t. I’m THAT girl. Imposter syndrome is for white girls and I’m not.”

Me: “That’s fair. So why do you have to perform humility?”

Her: “Because if I embrace it, their insecurities will harm me. And then I’ll crash out and be the angry Black woman.”

Me: “But you already know that’s a trope. Anger doesn’t appear from nowhere. It’s provoked in Black women by people socialised to avoid their reflection.”

Her: “Don’t be logical.”

Me: “I can’t pretend you don’t know what’s happening, you also know why you are disturbed by it so…”

We kept talking. The knives kept chopping. Somewhere in between, we moved from rage to regulation. That’s how we hold each other. Not with polished delivery. With real-time navigation.

These are the kinds of conversations I have curled up in bed with friends. Or in the car at 2 a.m. Or over voice notes we send back and forth when the words don’t land the first time. These are intimacy rituals I rarely find room for in romantic relationships. Especially as someone who processes fast but emotionally arrives late. Romantic pacing demands instant recognition, polished presence, seamless translation. My friendships allow space for the pause, the glitch, the repair.

They don’t ask me to decode myself to be loved. They let me be witnessed as I am. And then we move through the friction together.

That’s the polyamory I know. Not a title. A nervous system contract. Not a network of partners. A collective of people who help me return to myself.

And when that level of presence is consistent, love doesn’t need to be romantic to last.

Suma Jabarr: How Black Women Build Platonic Marriages That Last

In Gambia, we don’t always call our closest friends “friend.” At a certain point, the word stops being useful.

There’s a shift sometimes gradual, sometimes immediate where someone moves from companion to counterpart. And when that happens, we call her suma jabarr. My wife.

It’s not romantic. Nor a euphemism. It’s how we are structured.

My grandmother and her circle of women called each other this often, without pause or irony. These weren’t girls’ trips and matching necklaces. These were women raising each other’s children, protecting each other’s inheritances, holding power together in ways the men around them didn’t always recognize, but never dared interfere with. If one woman passed, the other stepped in as the mother. If one household lacked food, the other didn’t wait for permission to provide. This wasn’t generosity. It was design.

Suma jabarr isn’t just a title they called each only when they greeted each other with laughter, hugs and smiles. It’s a contract. It means I will name you in rooms where you are not present. I will advocate for your children like they came from my own womb. I will carry your grief like my own, not because we share a bed, but because we share a life.

There was no ceremony. Just consistency.

That’s how I learned to love.

Today, when I feel that depth with someone, when I know I’d fight for them, hold paperwork for them, co-sign a loan or show up at the hospital, I don’t always say “best friend.” Sometimes I joke and say, “I’m going to marry you.” But what I mean is: you are now a permanent fixture. We are moving from casual to covenant.

Western systems don’t have language for this. They still divide relationships into two clean categories: romantic, which is serious, and platonic, which is optional. But in matriarchal systems, friendship has always been foundational. It was never the afterthought. It was the structure that kept everything else alive.

So when I say my friends are my partners, I don’t mean we blur intimacy lines or use queer language loosely. I mean that I practice a kind of polyamory that honors the oldest logic I know. Care as commitment. Friendship as architecture. Presence as proof.

This wasn’t friendship as decoration. It was friendship as infrastructure. That logic will forever shape how I love. And I’ve watched it live on in real time.

Legal Co-Parenting Without Romance: How Women Protect Each Other and Their Children

There are women in my life today who are legally married in common law for safety. Both are straight.

Both are high earners estranged from their biological families. They purchased two homes and joined them into one, creating a shared household where their children could thrive and be centered. One of them carried both children through IVF because the other couldn’t conceive. They co-parent with full legal documentation, co-manage finances, and co-steward the household. They date men freely, when and if they want to …but their life isn’t built on romance. It’s built to protect what they’ve already secured and it’s built to outlast crisis.

What they’ve built mirrors what I saw growing up: women securing each other when the state, their families, or romantic partners could not. They didn’t wait for a husband to build. They built with who was present. Who was consistent. Who would stay.

Särbo in Sweden: Why Some Couples Live Apart to Stay Committed

In Sweden, even many heterosexual couples choose to live särbo, in separate homes despite being in a committed relationship. It’s not uncommon.

Sometimes it’s about autonomy. Sometimes it’s about tax logic. Sometimes it’s because shared housing doesn’t equal shared values.

That is the Swedish way

But in the matriarchal structures I come from, this choice wasn’t a workaround. It was a protection strategy. A deliberate decision to center children, legacy, and safety over tradition or optics.

We’ve always known how to build lives that don’t collapse when love shifts form.

We just haven’t always been allowed to call it love.

Polyamory for Depth and Stability, Not Volume or Novelty

I’ve never needed multiple partners to feel polyamorous. I’ve needed space. I’ve needed slowness. I’ve needed the kind of intimacy that holds even when the relationship shifts, fractures, or goes quiet.

My polyamory isn’t about expansion. It’s about consistent. It’s also what allows me to be selective with romantic partners because they have to bring something my friends don’t already provide. And they have to offer a safety that matches what we’ve already built.

People still confuse polyamory with collecting. They assume it’s about chasing newness, stacking lovers, or resisting commitment. But I was raised to understand love as a responsibility not a resource grab. And as someone who is neurodivergent, novelty rarely feels exciting. It feels overwhelming. Disorienting. Loud.

What I crave isn’t more people. It’s more truth. More pacing. More capacity to stay. That’s what depth gives me.

When I love someone, I don’t love a fixed version of them. I love the versions that grief will pull forward. The ones that rage will hide. The ones that trauma will try to flatten. The ones that success will inflate. I love the them they haven’t met yet. And sometimes I have to grieve the version they’ll never return to.

That’s its own kind of multiplicity.

Loving a single person deeply over time through seasons, shifts, breakdowns, and returns feels like loving a constellation. It requires recalibration, memory, emotional labor, and forgiveness. That kind of love is layered. It has timelines. It has losses. It has repetitions. And it’s never casual.

I don’t need to chase new partners to experience change. Change lives inside the people I already love. Especially those of us who are neurodivergent.

Hormonal shifts. Burnout. Masking fatigue. Meltdowns. Resets. We don’t stay the same for long. Our emotional bandwidth moves with our nervous system, not the calendar. And loving someone through all of that while honoring their autonomy and protecting your own is not a light ask.

It’s sacred work. So no, I don’t date for volume. I build for depth.

Because the truth is, many people can enter your life. Very few can stay for all your versions.

Fewer still can help you meet them without fear. That’s who I build with.

How We Used Friendship to Build Legal Systems of Care and Protection

There’s a difference between being close and being accounted for. The people I build with aren’t just in my life emotionally they’re in the paperwork.

That’s the kind of love I practice. It’s logistical. It’s strategic. It’s matriarchal.

What people often call “friendship” doesn’t cover what we do. This isn’t casual connection. It’s estate planning. It’s legal strategy. It’s asset protection. It’s interdependence written in contracts, custody, and co-ownership.

We’ve signed mortgages together, named each other in wills, written down guardianship plans for children who aren’t biologically ours. We’ve done the math on taxes, inheritance, healthcare access, and housing security not because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary.

Romantic love is still treated as the only form of intimacy worthy of infrastructure. But what we’ve built isn’t waiting on romantic permanence.

We live in homes where parenting is distributed, not isolated.

We share child pickups, calendar logistics, grief rituals, and financial responsibilities. We don’t ask each other to perform softness. We ask each other what needs doing, and then we do it.

This isn’t a workaround for singlehood. It’s a decision to center care over convention.

And it’s political.

When systems are designed to privilege couples over communities, choosing to build security through platonic relationships is a form of resistance. Especially for women, especially for queer people, especially for the neurodivergent. We are creating lives that don’t collapse because a romance ends. We are building foundations that last because they were never built on performance in the first place.

What we’re building now isn’t radical. It echoes what held us before colonial systems tried to flatten kinship into coupledom. To understand it, we have to remember what came before the nuclear family.

If this resonated, share it. The Lovette Jallow Perspective is public for a reason—so the right people can find it.

Matriarchal Kinship and African Family Systems That Didn’t Wait for Romance

The idea that your future should depend on whether or not you fall in love is a Western invention. And a fragile one.

In the matriarchal systems I come from Fulani, Mandinka, Wolof and others, romantic coupling was never the axis of survival. Children were raised by multiple adults. Wealth and land passed on. Care was layered, not linear. Marriage could be romantic, even polygamous but the role of friends in it was structural. It existed for continuity. It supported as much as it was supported, reciprocally.

There was no fantasy of the perfect nuclear household. There was responsibility. Presence. Design.

The people who raised us, protected us, and held our legacy weren’t always blood relatives or romantic partners. They were who showed up. That was the logic. Show up, and you belong. Stay, and you are trusted.

What the West calls “alternative households,” we called normal. And now, the data catches up to what our ancestors already knew.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has tracked participants for over 80 years, found that the biggest predictor of life satisfaction and physical health wasn’t wealth or career, it was the quality of close relationships. People with stable, secure connections lived longer, recovered faster, and stayed cognitively healthy longer.

The CDC has named loneliness a contributor to chronic illness, depression, and early death. The WHO has called it a public health crisis. Because what we build with others isn’t just emotional, it’s biological.

Romantic dysfunction doesn’t just harm the couple. It reshapes the nervous system of the children watching it.

Children raised in high-conflict romantic homes even with both parents present show elevated cortisol levels, anxiety, and difficulty regulating emotion. Compare that to the outcomes of children raised in multi-adult households or platonic co-parenting homes: more emotional bandwidth, less pressure, and more models for repair.

Matriarchies understood this before any of it was peer-reviewed. More balanced and supported adults. More consistency. Less fragility.

Compare that to today’s nuclear family model, isolated, under-resourced, and crumbling under the weight of loneliness. Two adults expected to be everything: parent, therapist, regulator, income. When that structure breaks and it often does there’s no one else built in to catch the fall.

That’s a liability that we today romanticise as….love.

Matriarchal systems built in redundancy on purpose. Not because people were disposable, but because no one should be indispensable to the point of collapse. If one mother couldn’t cope, another stepped in. If one household struggled, another adjusted. Romantic hierarchy didn’t decide who deserved care.

That’s the part people misunderstand. Centering romance doesn’t just limit who gets love. It limits who gets remembered in crisis, named in legal plans, carried in grief, or considered in legacy. And when that hierarchy falls apart, the fallout isn’t just emotional. It’s structural.

We didn’t wait for love to show up to start building. We built with what we had. And the people who stayed became family.

Why Real Intimacy Is Measured by Protection, Not Romance

Love is easy to declare. Protection is harder to sustain.

What I’ve built with my friends goes beyond sentiment. It lives in how we make decisions, plan futures, and hold each other’s lives with care. Not in metaphor. In action.

The Western script tells us that the most important person in your life should be a romantic partner. That your legacy, your paperwork, your parenting, your primary loyalty should orbit around love. But romantic love is often the least reliable form of protection. It can be intense without being safe. Familiar without being consistent. Public without being private.

And yet, we keep measuring intimacy by whether someone loves us romantically.

Not whether they will stay when things fall apart.

Not whether they’ll pick up the kids or sign the documents.

Not whether they’ll grieve you properly or defend you in the rooms you’ll never enter.

We’re measuring the wrong things.

I have friends who have never said “I love you,” but have shown up for every illness, signed every legal form, and rewritten their lives to make space for mine. I’ve been in romantic partnerships that said all the right things but collapsed the moment I needed more than words.

Protection, not performance, is what makes a bond sacred. Matriarchal systems understood that. They didn’t wait for romantic compatibility to assign responsibility.

They didn’t treat marriage as the ultimate goal, either. If a man became too needy or disruptive, you did what my grandmother did, you encouraged him to take a second wife in another household so you could get back to your community work. That was her priority. It still is mine.

This is the legacy I come from: one where structure wins over sentiment, where care is distributed, and where nobody, especially not a romantic partner is allowed to derail the village.

In fact if someone or something demands more from me than they offer, I suggest they marry two more people to meet their needs. I’ve got work to do.

Our systems didn’t ask who felt the most. They asked who could carry the weight. And then they handed them the rope. Because survival couldn’t hinge on chemistry. It had to rest on structure. That’s the logic I trust.

Maybe that’s why people in the Global North say autistic people lack empathy.Maybe they just lack strategy.

I don’t need my intimacy to be romantic to be real.I don’t need my commitments to be sexual to be sacred.And I don’t need the state or strangers to legitimize what we’ve already secured.

Because what we’ve built is strong.It’s clear. And it’s already working.

Author’s Note: This piece draws directly from my own research, lived experience, and intellectual frameworks developed over years of public lectures, consulting, and fieldwork on matriarchal kinship, neurodivergent intimacy, and decolonial family structures.

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

In addition to writing, I work internationally as a neurodivergent inclusion strategist, keynote speaker, and consultant.

I help organizations move beyond surface-level diversity initiatives to create environments where neurodivergent, disabled, and marginalized individuals are genuinely supported.

If your organization, collective, or institution is ready to rethink accessibility, inclusion, and systemic accountability, you can book me for:

* Lectures

* Keynote speeches

* Panel discussions

* Workshops and trainings

🔹 Book me: lovettejallow.com🔹 Contact: [email protected]

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

How Patriarchy Conditions Male Desire and Marriage Choices

I was 18, studying in Gambia for seven months, when my grandmother noticed how many men were circling and sat me down. “You are of high status,” she said. “Intelligent. Beautiful. Mashallah. But you see these men lining up to ask for your hand? Many belong to a generation that will die soon and want your youth to ease their passing. Others choose women they know their friends will envy, not the ones they’re emotionally equal to. Some are already in love with the housemaids they’ll never dare marry.”

She wasn’t warning me out of cynicism. She was naming a system.

“Men today are strategic,” she told me. “They don’t marry who they love. They marry who performs the role. Who gives them proximity to class, to status, to acceptance. You will be told you’re everything, but that will not protect you from being reduced to nothing if the wrong one is chosen.

Think like Lovette. Be strategic for your wellbeing. Understand the people and person you’re dealing with. not who they are pretending to be”

That same season, I declined two proposals, many more would be deckined later. One of those men later attempted to force me, convinced that if he defiled me, I’d have no choice but to marry him. He failed. And the head wound he now blames on football? That’s not where it came from.

Men are not choosing based on desire. They’re choosing based on what patriarchy taught them to want.

The woman they marry often fits the template, socially affirmed, admired by other men, “safe” within dominant norms. The goal isn’t emotional alignment. It’s external validation. That choice is shaped by racialized beauty standards, generational programming, and unexamined entitlement.

Marriage becomes a symbol of arrival, not intimacy. A reward. A ranking. A performance. And the women who fit the template—thin, white, compliant, desirable—are rarely treated well. They are aesthetic prizes men claim to signal power or success, but the pedestal is cold and conditional. Once the performance fades or the woman asserts agency, the same men who pursued her for social validation often turn bitter, withholding, or cruel.

Because they never learned to love her—only to win her. Your own monarchs have modeled this for generations—but no one’s named it clearly.That’s why some white women are called foot soldiers of both patriarchy and white supremacy.Not because they’re powerless, but because they enforce the rules while pretending they don’t write them.

In systems built on domination, even the trophy suffers. Unless she’s surrounded by women who’ve studied these systems and chosen not to replicate them, her downfall is almost inevitable. Not because she failed, but because the game was never built for her to thrive—only to be seen.

Sydney Sweeney and the blueprint of white femininity

The American Eagle x Sydney Sweeney campaign doesn’t just feature a celebrity, it performs a white supremacist aesthetic blueprint.

Sweeney is positioned as more than a brand partner. She’s a familiar template: white, blonde, thin, soft-spoken, and hyperfeminine. She is speaking on genetics in another coded language. Her image aligns with what mainstream Western culture has long coded as desirable, trustworthy, and worthy of protection.

She represents the kind of femininity men are trained to desire—not because it nourishes them, but because it rewards them socially. And she represents the kind of woman women are told to become if they want love, safety, or visibility.

This isn’t just product placement—it’s cultural reinforcement. Media doesn’t simply reflect society; it trains it. This is how racism moves: through repetition, desirability, and the consistent framing of who is allowed to be seen as worthy, aspirational, or “normal.”

The styling, the softness, the camera’s gaze—none of it is accidental. Each element signals an ideal, one that is deeply racialized, classed, and heteronormative. This isn’t about denim. It’s about hierarchy.

What’s being sold here isn’t just clothing—it’s submission, refined into aspiration. The branding may appear neutral, even empowering, but that’s part of the mechanism. When whiteness is packaged this softly, the harm becomes harder to name—but easier to internalize.

And that’s exactly why it works. That is usually where I come in to name and disrupt even in these spaces.

White supremacy uses beauty to secure power

What looks like just another lifestyle ad featuring a “pretty actress” is anything but innocent. These campaigns operate as visual propaganda—subtle enough to seem apolitical, but sharp enough to reproduce social order.

Beauty has always been a tool of white supremacy. Not just to exclude, but to rank, reward, and control. The politics of desirability are racialized and classed, and they function quietly—through advertising, casting choices, and algorithms—to define who deserves attention, love, safety, or care.

In this context, Sydney Sweeney becomes a vessel. Her body, her hair, her tone, her wardrobe—all selected to communicate not individuality, but compliance. She doesn’t just evoke desire. She evokes order.

Scholar Richard Dyer once described whiteness as “the ideal manifestation of humanity”—a default setting that appears innocent while maintaining violent norms. Sweeney fits this precisely: visually soft, structurally violent. She offers comfort to the gaze that shaped her.

What she symbolizes isn’t love. It’s access.

* Access to white femininity.

* Access to proximity.

* Access to cultural approval and systemic power.

The performance of heterosexual success—marrying the right kind of woman, posting her, centering her—is a strategic move under patriarchy. It grants protection, inheritance, upward mobility. Men don’t always choose the women they love. They choose the woman who completes the image.

Desire, in this system, is rarely organic. It’s manufactured. Then enforced.

And beauty isn’t just preference. It’s white supremacy ideology that is being marketed back to us as “natural” as Jeans…I mean genes.

Strategic Marriages Leave Everyone Starving

Many men don’t marry the women they love. They marry the woman they believe will complete the picture they’ve been trained to perform.

There is a emotional cost to submitting to Patriarchal Partnerships. From boyhood, many are taught to desire externally and repress internally. Emotional depth is feminized. Vulnerability is punished. What remains is a hollow performance of masculinity shaped by image, not intimacy.

So when it comes time to “settle down,” love isn’t the metric. Visual capital is.

Men choose partners who reflect cultural value, not personal compatibility. The woman he marries must look the part. She must be desirable enough to win approval from his peers, passive enough to avoid confrontation, and aspirational enough to signal he’s arrived.

Many women especially those who mirror dominant ideals enter these relationships believing they’ve been chosen for love, when in reality, they’ve been selected for legibility. For alignment with whiteness, softness, or social safety. And over time, the disconnect shows. These women are often resented, ignored, or left emotionally malnourished—not because they failed—but because the man never knew how to see them in the first place. He married a symbol, not a person.

This is structural grooming.

It’s the consequence of a system that teaches men to prioritize status over self-awareness, and teaches women to be grateful for proximity—no matter how cold the room.

The rise of “trad wives” isn’t random

-it’s showing up now, during an economic downturn, as some women scramble to align with what they think is the dominant structure. But that structure is in its final throes. You can choose to go down with a system built on colonization, imperialism, and genocide—or you can embrace matriarchy, your own resilience, and align with the disruptors. The women who studied these systems. The ones who refuse to perform obedience for a patriarchy they were never meant to survive.

Fellow women marginalised who know the playbook because we had to study it, or align with perpetual betrayers of us. The choice is yours.

The image i inserted for is the life white supremacy scripted for white women. From cradle to grave: be desirable, be obedient, be useful, then disappear.

My grandmother disrupted that script before it could touch me.She raised me in a matriarchal system where worth wasn’t tied to male approval, aging wasn’t failure, and a woman’s life didn’t end in quiet resignation—it expanded in power.

Trad wife culture is just a rerun of this diagram. Romanticized submission dressed in vintage filters. Some of us were raised to remember something older and freer.

Inclusion Means Disappearance When the System Wasn’t Built for You

This is Why I Refuse Inclusion in a Beauty System Built on Erasure

As a Black woman, I’ve spent nearly two decades dismantling the lie of “aspirational beauty”, in branding, advertising, and corporate inclusion frameworks. I didn’t critique the system to earn my way into it. I don’t want to be folded into a standard that was never built to see me, let alone celebrate me.

I reject the terms.

I’ve worked inside the beauty industry, behind the camera, in boardrooms, on stage, and in frontline advocacy. I’ve watched white beauty standards get rebranded as “inclusive” while still centering thinness, whiteness, and visual softness as the baseline for value. And I’ve watched brands tokenize Blackness while upholding the very standards that erase us.

I don’t want to be invited into a room built on erasure.

I want to build the structure differently. Or not enter it at all.

I live in Sweden, one of the most visually “progressive” yet structurally silent places when it comes to race. We are marketed to as the land of blondes—even though most blondes I see are on Maybelline bottles, not in real life. People forget (or conveniently don’t know) that Sweden was one of the birthplaces of racial pseudoscience. The racism I confront here isn’t loud. It’s institutional, aesthetic, and deadly quiet.

So when I say I practice body neutrality, I mean it. I don’t exist to be visually pleasing or “accepted.” I don’t need to be softened to be respected. My value is not contingent on presentation.

And to white women who say they’re decolonising, pay attention.

If you climb to the top of a new hierarchy while stepping over others—trans people, men of color, fat folks, disabled women—you haven’t dismantled anything. You’ve just renamed the power structure.

That’s not liberation. That’s gynarchy dressed as progress.

Women swapping positions in a hierarchy built on domination won’t free any of us. Resisting replication means being honest about how white femininity is still weaponized even in activist spaces.

So no, I don’t want to be included in a beauty system that requires my disappearance.

I want no part of an aesthetic economy built on erasure and projection.

I’m building something else.

And I know exactly who I’m building it for—those who read between the lines, who engage the work materially, and who don’t flinch when it gets uncomfortable.

Because dismantling systems means dismantling what shaped us: the media we consumed, the families we survived, the language we inherited.

The question isn’t whether you agree.

The question is: are you ready to stop performing and start unlearning?

If this resonated and you want to support nuanced conversations around healing, and accountability, consider subscribing or donating. Every share matters; but your support sustains the work.

Further reading: the work is already here

* If this hit a nerve, it was supposed to.

* If you’re ready to go deeper, start here:

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

What Grace Really Means When You Stop Performing

Grace has become a brand. A way to posture goodness. But what if real grace doesn’t start with what you extend to others, it starts with what you’re finally willing to offer yourself?

During one of the hardest chapters of my life, I was forced to sit with everything I had spent years performing my way around: my body, my emotions, my history. I couldn’t outwork it. I couldn’t intellectualize it. All I could do was unmask. Slow down. Let it catch me. And it did.

I was in therapy. I was tracking my breath. I was breaking inherited silence in real time. And I started noticing something I couldn’t unsee: the people around me—the ones who had mastered suppression—started to find me unbearable. Not because I was loud, or confrontational, or judging them. But because I wasn’t doing what I used to do: accommodate their avoidance.

Many of those relationships didn’t survive. And there’s no ill will. But I refuse to let avoidance catch up with me in the form of chronic illness we all pretend is random.

In my essay on outgrowing friends, I wrote about one friendship I still grieve.

“One I tried to save. I initiated conversations, showed up in crisis, and gently named what wasn’t working. I asked for time, for presence, for realignment. But our needs were no longer meeting in the middle.”

I explained:

“She masked her needs through productivity. We were both hiding—but in different ways. But she couldn’t see me when I stopped performing. When I began to unmask, to care for myself more intentionally, to name my disability out loud, I think I became a mirror. And not a welcome one.”

I was no longer performing the version of myself that made others comfortable. And for someone still fighting to maintain a curated self, that felt threatening. I don’t say this to blame her. I saw how much she was struggling with her own regulation, her own masking. But instead of connection, something broke. I became a trigger.

My softness, my slowness, my refusal to be the “strong Black woman” trope and fix everyone around me clashed with the version of friendship she knew. The version where I made space but asked for none.

That’s the thing about healing: it doesn’t perform softness. It becomes a mirror. And not everyone is ready to be reflected back to themselves.

So what if grace isn’t about giving more to others?

What if it begins with refusing to betray yourself?

Because people aren’t always reacting to you. They’re reacting to what you awaken in them. And healing doesn’t mean becoming more palatable. Sometimes it means becoming a rupture.

Why Your Healing Triggers People Still Hiding Theirs

People say they want the best for you—until that “best” no longer includes them in the same way.

Healing shifts dynamics. That’s its nature. But what no one warns you about is how often your growth will be read as withdrawal. How even your silence will be seen as judgment. Not because you’ve become unkind, but because you are learning to sit with your emotions and most importantly, to give yourself the grace you once gave away too easily. You’re no longer willing to collapse yourself to keep the peace.

I wasn’t abandoning anyone. I was reinhabiting myself.

But for people still curating their survival, that kind of return feels like betrayal. They don’t know how to interpret your boundaries except as distance. They don’t recognize regulated energy. They only know intensity, urgency, over-functioning. So when you stop over-explaining, over-apologizing, over-offering—they don’t feel safe. Even if you never meant to harm them.

This is the cost no one talks about.

We want healing to look like soft landings. Reconnection. Mutual understanding.

But sometimes healing means becoming unreadable to the version of you people depended on. And it’s lonely.

Because some people don’t just miss you—they miss who you used to be when you made yourself small. They have not learnt the skill of learning you in your new versions which all relationships need to do. This is where grace becomes necessary but not just for others.

For yourself.

Grace for the version of you that tried so hard to stay connected. Grace for the pain of being misread. Grace for the fact that your presence might still feel like absence to someone who only learned to love you in your unhealed form.

You didn’t do anything wrong. You just stopped offering yourself up as proof that everything was fine when it wasn’t. Sometimes your healing will feel like rejection. But only to those still rejecting their own.

When Grace Is Really Guilt and How to Tell the Difference

Not everything we’ve called grace was actually grace. Sometimes it was guilt. Sometimes it was fear. Sometimes it was a survival script we learned before we had language.

For years, I thought I was being kind. Thought I was giving people space. Offering compassion. But in hindsight, what I was really doing was overcompensating for other people’s emotional fragility.

We often confuse people-pleasing with empathy. We call it grace, but it often stems from fear—fear of being misunderstood, abandoned, or punished for being too much.

That’s what unrooted grace looks like. It doesn’t come from a grounded place. It comes from urgency. From hypervigilance. From a deep desire to keep things stable, even if it means losing parts of yourself in the process.

We can always pretend and call that generosity. But it’s often just unhealed guilt we pretend is care. And the problem with grace that starts from guilt is that it becomes performative.

You smile through harm. You apologize when you’re the one who was hurt. You tolerate behavior you wouldn’t wish on anyone else. And you call that emotional maturity. But it’s not. It’s endurance. And endurance is not the same thing as love.

True grace doesn’t bypass your body. It doesn’t erase your needs. It doesn’t ask you to ignore the patterns you’ve spent years trying to unlearn.

Grace that isn’t rooted in you will convince you that self-sacrifice is morality. But grace with root knows boundaries are a form of care. That “no” can be holy. That your wellbeing is not optional.

If your version of grace only exists when it costs you everything, that’s not grace.

You are managing your guilt and calling it empathy.

What Grace Looks Like When It’s Rooted in Self-Respect

Real grace isn’t silent. It doesn’t fold itself into nothingness to make others comfortable.

It asks questions before it creates safety. It isn’t the absence of boundaries—it’s what allows boundaries to exist without shame. Because when grace begins with you, it no longer performs goodness. It becomes an ethic. A rhythm. A return.

It shows up in how you speak to yourself on hard days. How you forgive the version of you that didn’t know better. How you sit with discomfort without needing someone else to bleed for it. So much of what we’ve called grace was just delayed resentment. We didn’t know how to say no, so we said yes—then quietly disappeared. We didn’t want to seem cruel, so we overextended, then felt bitter. We tolerated behavior we weren’t okay with, then told ourselves we were being “understanding.”

But understanding doesn’t require self-abandonment. And I keep reminding people: forgiveness doesn’t require proximity. Grace is not the erasure of anger. It’s the refusal to weaponize it.

It’s choosing integrity over performance. Boundaries over control. Accountability over comfort. And it begins, not when you give others the benefit of the doubt but when you give yourself the dignity of honesty.

Before you extend grace, ask:

* Have I truly sat with what this would cost me if the roles were reversed?

* Is this grace, or is this guilt?

* Is this rooted in care or am I avoiding conflict I know needs to happen? Because real grace doesn’t demand your disappearance. It invites your return.

Grace that begins with you changes how you see everyone else.

Grace that skips you only mirrors your denial.

Art NoteI’m a lifelong art lover. Starting with this essay, I integrate visual works into each piece but moving forward I will be also sharing why each artist was chosen. This one begins with Lorenzo Mattotti’s haunting restraint.

If this resonated and you want to support nuanced conversations around trauma, healing, and accountability, consider subscribing or donating. Every share matters; but your support sustains the work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Why Your Partner Isn’t Automatically My Friend

Friendship isn’t a blanket you throw over everyone you like. It’s a pact that requires care, choice, and accountability.

I think about friendship like this: If I have a list of things I need in a friend, and you match that list beautifully, that’s why we’re here. You have your own list too, things your other friends, or your partner, match for you.

But that doesn’t mean our lists are identical. It’s logic, really.

Yet people act like it’s folly to keep my own requirements when you introduce me to yours. Like I’m supposed to abandon my list because you vouched for them.

Sometimes there is no compromise. And that’s what this essay is about. The quiet choice to keep my standards. The refusal to merge circles just to make things easier.

Because I’m not interested in forced community. I’m interested in friendship that is chosen, deliberate, and honest about what it needs.

The Problem with Forced Inclusion in Friendship

It’s uncomfortable to say it.

Just because I value you doesn’t mean I automatically want friendship with your partner or your other friends. I don’t merge circles by default. My friendship has requirements, not to exclude, but to protect what real friendship demands.

It’s always awkward when someone says “let’s all hang out” or “come have dinner with my husband”and I say no.

I see the confusion. The slight hurt. The assumption that closeness with them guarantees closeness with everyone they love.

They believe that if I value them, I’ll automatically value whoever they chose.

That’s not how I work.

Not because I’m trying to exclude anyone. But because I know what it takes for me to be in real friendship with someone.

When I was younger, I did it. I merged circles without thinking. I thought more connection was always better.

But I’ve learned why I keep my circles separate now.

My grandmother used to say, “A dollar goes with a dollar; it’s best a dime goes with a dime.” She wasn’t talking about American dollars — I’m using money to make it clear. She meant values. When values align, you can walk together.

Yes, sometimes you’ll find a dollar among dimes. But I’m not that dollar. It’s about honouring what each relationship actually is.

And I’m not in the business of fixing other people’s values for them. Especially when some people don’t want connection, they want to stress your edges just to see you fray.

Why Friendship Standards Aren’t Universal

“Sometimes what we call ‘community’ is just convenience.”

I used to assume everyone had standards for friendship. That we all carried requirements for what we wanted from friends—based on what we offered in return.

I thought people actually analysed these things for balance.

So it always baffled me when someone would carefully choose a partner who met their needs beautifully, or friends who fit them perfectly—yet never pause to consider whether those people would be a good fit for me.

Why wouldn’t they analyse that too?

Because these are the things I think about ahead of time. Almost mathematically. Because I care about what I’m building with someone.

And honestly? Those same standards might be exactly why I wouldn’t meet their friends or partners.

Sometimes we treat merging friend groups as proof of trust. But what if it’s just avoiding the harder work of seeing what this relationship actually needs?

I’m not looking for forced intimacy.

I’ve spoken about this for years. I even have podcasts dating back to 2011 about how much I despise overfamiliarity.

I don’t want the performance of connection that makes things socially easier but emotionally emptier.

I want to know the space I’m holding with someone—and that we both want to be there honestly.

Choosing the Kind of Peace You Want in Friendship

People who know me know I value peace. Because when I cause unease, it rattles countries.

But I don’t value the kind of peace that demands silence about what’s wrong.

I want the peace that comes from mutual respect, clear expectations, and trust that conflict can be navigated without rupture.

I’m not a fan of disturbances for the sake of it. But I am known to name the thing others want to leave unsaid. And my friends know that about me.

Over time, people around me start noticing it too. The subtle tensions they used to swallow. The compromises that cost them too much. The conversations they didn’t know they were allowed to have.

It can be unsettling. But that’s the kind of peace I want.

Not the pretending everything is fine. Not the politeness that hides harm.

Real quiet. Earned understanding.

A room where you can exhale because you know you’re safe to be honest.

Defining Your Own Friendship Requirements

My question in this short throwaway essay is simple:

Do you actually ask yourself what your requirements are?

I know most people don’t have an Excel spreadsheet listing their friendship criteria like I do. They’re not scheduling quarterly inventory meetings with their long-term friends.

(And if you do, please tell me. I’d be deeply amused.)

But even without a formal system, do you know?

What are the things that make you feel safe in friendship?

What do you need to trust someone enough to be your whole self?

I don’t think everyone needs my standards. But I know I need them.

I want consistency. Not just big words, but reliable action over time.

I care about whether someone can handle disagreement without withdrawing or punishing.

Whether they’ll choose repair over blame.

Whether they can stay when things get uncomfortable instead of walking away.

Because I offer those things. And I want spaces where that’s shared.

I want connection on purpose.

Are You Adopting Someone Else’s Community?

One of the lessons I’ve learned is that sometimes the problem isn’t that we lack community.

It’s that we are adopted into someone else’s.

We take their partner as our own. We absorb their friend group without question. Sometimes we align but often we are just along for the ride.

We tell ourselves it’s belonging.

But have you ever paused to ask: Do I even want to be included here?

Would I have chosen these people for myself if it hadn’t been so easy to be swept in?

We skip those questions.

Because inclusion feels good, mainly because rejection feels painful.

But you know what feels better? Belonging you actually chose.

People forget that “B” in DEIB all too conveniently. It’s not just about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, it’s about Belonging. And belonging isn’t automatic. It’s built. It’s earned. It’s chosen.

Sometimes what we call “community” is really just convenience.

Sometimes it’s a mask we wear to make those connections work.

And when life shifts, when someone’s in crisis, when values change, when truth suddenly matters; that’s when we see what was real and what was forced.

The bridge that brought us together might not hold when someone stops performing.

That doesn’t make you disloyal for noticing. It makes you honest about what you actually need. Their standards might be enough for them.

But you’re allowed to have your own. It’s not rejection to name that. It’s respect.

And it’s a chance to choose more intentionally next time.

Why I Keep My Friend Circles Separate

“If I’m going to make friendship—yes, like making love—then it’s worth doing with care.”

This is why I don’t force my friends to merge.

Not because I’m hiding anything.

But because I want to honour what each relationship actually is. Because I know what I want to hold with someone.

And because I believe friendship deserves that kind of honesty.

If I’m going to make friendship…yes, like making love…then it’s worth doing with care.

It deserves intention. It deserves choice. It deserves its own space, where no one has to perform, and nothing important is left unsaid.

Because I don’t want connection by accident.

All featured artworks by contemporary Indian artist Ramesh Pachpande, whose figurative style inspires reflections on intimacy, community, and chosen connection.

If this resonates, you might also want to read my earlier piece on Why I Don’t Mix Friends . It goes deeper into why I keep my circles separate.

If this resonated and you want to support nuanced conversations around healing, and accountability, consider subscribing or donating. Every share matters; but your support sustains the work.

Work With Me: Inclusion Strategy, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

Explore More from The Lovette Jallow Perspective

You can find more of my essays exploring:

* Neurodivergence, autism, and navigating public life as a Black woman

* Building true inclusion beyond checkbox diversity

* Reclaiming voice and agency across personal, political, and historical landscapes

* Racism in Sweden and systemic injustice

Each essay connects real-world experience with structural analysis—equipping individuals and institutions to think deeper, act smarter, and build sustainable change.

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. She is a nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian specializing in:

* Neurodiversity and workplace inclusion

* Structural policy reform

* Anti-racism education and systemic change

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, structural accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette offers a uniquely authoritative perspective rooted in lived experience and professional expertise.

Her work bridges theory, research, and action—guiding institutions to move beyond performative diversity efforts and toward sustainable structural change.

Lovette has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon—tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by outlets like The New York Times and by leading humanitarian organizations addressing racial justice, policy reform, and intersectional equity.

Stay Connected

➔ Follow Lovette Jallow for expert insights on building equitable, neurodivergent-affirming environments.

🔹 Website: lovettejallow.com🔹 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lovettejallow🔹 Instagram: instagram.com/lovettejallow🔹 YouTube: youtube.com/@jallowlovette🔹 Twitter/X: twitter.com/lovettejallow🔹 Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lovettejallow.bsky.social

Thanks for reading The Lovette Jallow Perspective! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

How White Guilt Hijacks Anti-Racism Work

If your shame demands to be held but nothing is given up, it’s not justice. It’s extraction. - Lovette Jallow

We’ve all seen it. Comments saying, “I’m so ashamed of being white.” Tearful Instagram Lives declaring, “I’m disgusted with my ancestors.” DMs to Black educators begging, “Please tell me I’m not like them.

After 2020, this dynamic exploded into an entire economy. White participants flocked to anti-racism spaces not to shift power, but to confess. They seek scolding strong enough to feel absolved, but gentle enough to avoid risk.

There’s a market for this. White women in particular have built entire brands selling accountability that demands no loss. Workshops and books promise catharsis while leaving power untouched. No land ceded. No boards vacated. No funds redistributed except into the pockets of those offering absolution.

But it doesn’t matter who leads. Many Black educators also end up forced, through pressure or survival, to hold that same space. Some charge for it. Many offer it for free, paying the cost in exhaustion and stolen time. Whiteness insists on being centered, even in its guilt.

When I describe white people in anti-racist spaces treating guilt like a kink, I mean precisely this dynamic: performing shame to maintain proximity to Blackness without dismantling the systems that benefit them. It’s less about individual desire and more about how social power uses public displays of guilt to evade accountability.

It’s important to remember that all white people play a role in these systems, even as we analyze how these dynamics appear in gendered forms.

This isn’t about genuine learning. It’s about outsourcing the labor of moral clarity. It’s confession as transaction—a public performance of regret that ensures everything including where power resides, remains exactly as it is.

Why I Refuse Performative White Confession

“I don’t sell safe absolution or pretend friendship. I also won’t perform for comfort.”

I see how this plays out online as well. The same people confessing guilt in anti racist spaces or follow influencers who excel at keeping them comfortable.

Some offer gentle, reassuring guidance, promising easy validation if you keep “listening and learning.” Others deliver public scolding designed to feel cathartic yet demand no structural change. Both approaches maintain the existing power balance.

An entire market exists for this version of anti-racism. It rewards the approachable friend who soothes guilt and the performative brand that calls out individual behavior without threatening the systems behind it.

You won’t find that here or in my spaces. In fact many of my spaces are separatist meaning it is for Black people by Black people. Same as some of my spaces are for Autistics by Autistics. Some spaces must be kept separate and focused, never derailed.

The work I do refuses absolution or safe friendship. It does not flatter, guilt or make hard questions easier to swallow. It asks directly: what are you willing to give up? It demands genuine risk, resource redistribution, and accountability that cannot be rehearsed.

This kind of work does not sell easily or scale neatly. It resists being simplified or commodified, it gets you casted as difficult. You cannot decipher it into a predictable script or put it into a comfortable box.

It is effective precisely because it has clear boundaries. In anti-racism work, especially with people used to being centered, those boundaries are essential. This work cannot rely on blurring the lines between educator and comfort-giver. I am deliberate about reminding people where that line is, even when they want to forget.

I understand why this confuses some people. They are used to buying solutions that feel like change without actually demanding it.

The Spectacle of Performative Allyship

“White guilt is easy to confess when nothing is demanded beyond your shame.”

They know exactly how to stage it. A tearful apology on Instagram Live. A comment thread filled with “I’m listening and learning” or emphasizing how ashamed they feel.

It becomes a ritual. Shame is performed publicly, like the Black Squares posted on Instagram in 2020. It promises solidarity while delivering emotional release. Instead of redistribution, you get catharsis. Instead of structural change, you get a circle of spectators applauding contrition. Spectacle feels like proof of commitment without requiring actual sacrifice.

Very holy yet very false. Perhaps why I was kicked out of cults and religious institutions for asking why everyone was performing.

Because confession is seductive. It feels like movement. It signals moral awareness, yet costs nothing. No money leaves wallets. No land is ceded. No policy changes occur. No safety is provided for those at risk. At most, it shifts the comfort of the confessor temporarily.

This dynamic isn’t accidental; it’s deliberate. Confession ensures power remains exactly where it is. The guilty control the terms of their absolution. They choose when to perform their remorse and when to walk away untouched. They can tell you about their racist family members they have Sunday dinner with and never challenge them.

Ask yourself honestly: who benefits when confession becomes the final step?

White Allyship as Degradation Kink

“Submission is safe when it preserves your mansion and costs you nothing.”

Let’s name this clearly. It’s a carefully negotiated scene where the submissive decides exactly how far they will go, what limits exist, and precisely when it ends. In kink, the submissive holds the safe word. They are never truly powerless.

This blueprint is a form of degradation kink dressed up as white allyship. The apology is public, the shame is visibly performed, and the perceived submissive derives moral satisfaction or social credit from appearing repentant.

They control how far it goes, what limits exist, and when it ends. Nothing essential is risked. Nothing material is surrendered.

But unlike consensual scenes, here the boundaries are not always negotiated openly. One party often doesn’t even realize they’re being cast as the domme. They’re left holding responsibility they never agreed to, managing someone else’s performance of surrender.

It is a calculated performance meant to maintain safety for the one submitting. They want to look humbled, even humiliated, while keeping the key to the mansion firmly in their pocket.

This isn’t accidental. It is designed to offer the illusion of giving up power while ensuring nothing actually changes.

They want to appear as though they’re on their knees, while maintaining power.

When they say, “I’m listening,” it means on their terms. When they say, “I’m learning,” they mean until it gets uncomfortable. When they say, “I’m sorry,” they seek absolution without offering reparations or redistributing resources.

I name this as kink not to sensationalize, but to highlight its structure: a staged surrender designed specifically to protect the person performing submission. It’s not accidental. It’s carefully negotiated. It preserves their power while creating the illusion that power has been surrendered.

It leaves the systems untouched, and the hierarchy intact.

How White Guilt Confessions Avoid Real Change

“Your shame without action is just another luxury you get to enjoy.”

Confession feels seductive because it can appear like enough. Cry on camera, apologize for what happened 200 years ago and avoid the power dynamics of today, write a reflective post—and suddenly you call yourself accountable. You earn praise, relief, and reassurance from peers.

But shame without tangible action is self-indulgence. It centers white feelings, conveniently ignoring what those feelings were supposed to transform. It prioritizes white emotional relief over the real-world safety of Black and brown communities.

Real accountability demands loss. Money must leave wallets. Land must change hands. Positions of power must be surrendered or shared. Mutual aid must be sustainably funded. Safety must be actively extended to those historically denied it.

Yet these guilt-driven confessions function as transactional exchanges, allowing white people to purchase moral relief with emotional performances. They offer tears in exchange for absolution—but those tears build nothing, protect no one, and challenge no system.

Because your guilt doesn’t liberate us; it comforts you. Your shame is another resource you can consume privately, never threatening the systems designed to benefit you. Until your guilt becomes uncomfortable enough to compel real sacrifice, it will always remain just another luxury.

The Harm of Performative Allyship to Marginalized People

“Your performance doesn’t just fail us. It exhausts us.”

These confessions don’t happen in isolation. They unfold in spaces where Black, brown, and trans people are actively organizing, teaching, and fighting for safety.

White guilt consumes more than just time. It takes over entire conversations. Suddenly, the room revolves around managing someone’s crisis of conscience. Black and brown educators are forced to soothe shame they did not cause. Marginalized peers feel pressured to affirm that someone is still a “good person.”

But it rarely stops at affirmation. Fragility weaponizes itself. When challenged to move beyond mere apology, these same individuals accuse Black organizers of harshness or of “making them feel unwelcome.” Critique becomes attack. Accountability is twisted into aggression.

A space originally meant for strategy devolves into group therapy for whiteness. The core purpose—real change and solidarity—is lost. Energy is drained. Conflict is deliberately sown. The people most harmed by these systems are left to pick up the emotional pieces, again.

This is not harmless misunderstanding. It is sabotage disguised as humility. And it is not accidental—it is a calculated defense mechanism designed to ensure genuine transformation stays permanently out of reach.

The Illusion of Submission as Retained Power

“Even in kink, the sub holds the safe word. This is no different.”

Submission is easy to perform when you dictate the terms. Public displays of shame in anti-racist spaces are carefully choreographed. They appear precisely when they feel safe, and conveniently end when accountability demands actual sacrifice.

The white participant alone decides when to apologize, how deeply to confess, and when the discomfort stops. They hold the safe word to end the conversation, ensuring nobody can compel them to stay at the table once the cost becomes tangible.

That’s not accountability. That’s you retaining control.

Real accountability does not come with an escape clause. It involves ceding board seats, redistributing land, funding Black and brown mutual aid without conditions, and stepping aside so marginalized people can lead. It’s uncomfortable, challenging, and irreversible.

The illusion of submission preserves existing power structures. It allows white people to maintain all systemic benefits while gaining moral credit for appearing remorseful. It’s a staged performance, complete with an exit strategy.

Why Shame Without Action Is Performative Allyship

“If your shame doesn’t build anything new, it’s just performance.”

Shame can be a valuable signal. It highlights something profoundly wrong, marking the exact moment when complicity in harm becomes undeniable. But shame without subsequent action accomplishes nothing.

Shame without meaningful action is self-indulgent. It becomes a performance repeated for personal comfort, offering the illusion of accountability without improving conditions for marginalized people. Your shame remains just another resource you comfortably consume.

Action is the only genuine proof of meaningful shame. Fund mutual aid consistently. Pay for therapy and healthcare in communities deprived of both. Redistribute land and resources. Step down from monopolized leadership positions. Rewrite hiring policies. Write checks without strings attached.

Shame can be life changing, but only if it sparks meaningful redistribution. It must be a beginning rather than the endpoint. If you confess guilt but refuse actual sacrifice, you aren’t repenting. You’re simply rehearsing for a play that will never reach the stage.

How to Stop Performing and Practice Real Anti-Racism

“Shame can be the spark for change, but only if you burn something down.”

If you recognize yourself in this, it’s time to change. Don’t craft another apology post. Don’t cry on Zoom. Don’t publicly confess shame while privately refusing to sacrifice anything.

Because shame alone isn’t harmless. It’s protective. It lets you feel righteous without risking anything. It demands to be comforted without offering restitution. It centers you while forcing others to carry the weight of your emotional labor.

Shame only matters when it leads to tangible, structural change. Authentic anti-racism demands loss. It requires that you surrender something real so others can be safe.

If you’re truly ready to practice anti-racism instead of merely performing it, here’s what’s necessary:

* Name the performance. Admit when your actions are self-serving.

* Recognize the demand. Notice when your guilt becomes an expectation for comfort.

* Refuse absolution. Stop seeking comfort without offering accountability.

* Redistribute resources. Pay reparations. Fund Black and brown mutual aid. Return land. Step aside from positions of power.

* Risk something meaningful. Do more than speak. Move resources and give up power.

Discomfort isn’t a flaw in anti-racism work. It’s the cost of genuine accountability. There’s no moral absolution without meaningful loss, and no allyship without material redistribution.

Remember, treating anti-racism as a degradation kink—performing submission while holding the safe word—isn’t just ineffective; it’s harmful. And sometimes, what you’re doing isn’t consensual. Your performance extracts emotional labor from marginalized people who never agreed to hold your shame.

You know better. It’s past time to do better.

Your guilt won’t liberate anyone. Your decisive action might.

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More Essays on Sweden’s Racism and Structural Gaslighting

You can find more of my essays exploring racism in Sweden, setting boundaries within oppressive systems, challenging institutional gaslighting, and reclaiming voice across personal, political, and historical landscapes.

To Book Me for Lectures, Keynotes, and Critical Conversations

I lecture internationally on subjects including—but not limited to—Sweden’s structural racism, systemic gaslighting of survivors, African matriarchal governance, neurodivergence before colonial pathology, and intersectional justice.

If you’re an organization, institution, or collective ready to move beyond checkbox diversity and confront the systems protecting inequality—you can book me for lectures, keynotes, panels, or workshops here: https://lovettejallow.com/ | [email protected]

Who is Lovette Jallow?

Lovette Jallow is one of Scandinavia’s most influential voices on systemic racism, intersectional justice, and human rights. A nine-time award-winning author, keynote speaker, lecturer, and humanitarian, she specializes in neurodiversity, workplace inclusion, and structural policy reform.

As one of the few Black, queer, autistic, ADHD, and Muslim women working at the intersection of human rights, systemic accountability, and corporate transformation, Lovette brings an unmatched perspective rooted in both lived experience and professional expertise. Her work bridges the gap between theory, research, and action, helping organizations move beyond performative diversity efforts toward sustainable, structural change.

She has worked across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon, tackling institutional racism, legal discrimination, and refugee protection. Her expertise has been sought by global publications like The New York Times, on high-profile legal cases, and by international humanitarian organizations, where she has provided critical insights on racial justice, policy reform, and equity-driven leadership.

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