🎙️ Lov(ette) or Leave It

What do people actually mean when they say “call-out culture”? “The phrase itself is rarely neutral. It carries a judgement about how people are using critique, who is being centred, and whether the reaction is proportionate to the harm.” © Lovette Jallow. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, excerpted, paraphrased, or used in academic, commercial, institutional, or...

The phrase arrives packaged as kindness. Someone looks at you, takes in what they can immediately read, and offers it back: you don’t look disabled. They think they are being kind. They think they are reassuring you. What they have actually done is tell you precisely how narrow their frame of reference is, and then handed you the bill for it. This essay is a companion to the video above. Watch it...

Why Do You Keep Choosing the Same Emotional Climate in Different People A mother wound can follow you into adulthood and disguise itself as chemistry. There’s a specific kind of ache that shows up in adult relationships that has nothing to do with the person in front of you. It shows up when you wait for a reply longer than you should, when you accept “I’ve been busy” as a personality, when your s...

The Colonial Demand for Speech Nonspeaking autistic children in Black families are often treated as risks rather than as people communicating differently. When Black families raise nonverbal autistic children, silence is treated as danger rather than communication, and fear becomes the engine of discipline, secrecy, and forced speech. - Lovette Jallow © Lovette Jallow. All rights reserved. This se...

Why Offers Without Follow-Through Plus Continued Interaction Is Extraction Two years ago, three people I had never met popped up and asked for my address. They wanted to send me postcards. Gifts. Little “thinking of you” tokens. I never asked. They offered, unprompted, and with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you assume they mean it. So I gave it to them. Naively. Because there is a part of me t...

Why Late-Diagnosed Autistic Women Copy Others: Understanding the Copying Instinct Some women are diagnosed early, others decades later, yet both can grow up without room to know themselves. Diagnosis alone never guaranteed identity. Many were taught to perform a version of acceptable womanhood before they ever learned their own cadence. I rarely trust people who have never taken themselves serious...

When Scammers Pretend to Be Victims Davina Campbell’s DARVO Tactic and Narrative Theft This is where the story begins: with evidence, not emotion. The screenshot speaks for itself. Davina Campbell of Digital Davina Designs, publicly presenting herself as the victim after taking full payment for work never delivered. The person who caused harm rewriting the story to claim it instead The Lovette Jal...

8 Signs You’re Over-Explaining (Not Just Being Thorough) There’s a difference between being detailed and being driven by fear. One comes from competence. The other comes from a nervous system that learned survival depends on proof. Here’s how to tell which one you’re doing: * Your heart races when you pause. Silence feels like a trap. You fill it before anyone else can. * You end sentences with “d...

They still treat “disabled” like it’s a dirty word I was genuinely happy giddy, even to meet another autistic person twitching under the fluorescent lights at a conference. You know that silent bond when two nervous systems recognize each other? Same rhythm, same overstimulation, same grimace at the buzzing lights. I leaned in and said, “Wait… are you autistic too?” They froze. Eyes darting like I...

When Your Inner Child Drives the Car Survivors of trauma often ask, ‘Why is this space unsafe?’ But the real question shufts during healing to, ‘Why am I outsourcing my healing to spaces I haven’t vetted?’ Until we confront that, our inner child will keep driving our adult life straight back into old wounds. Because you know what’s dangerous? Knowing you have trauma and triggers and then proceedin...

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 an...

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...

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...

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...

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 f...

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...

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 coul...

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. Bu...

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 e...

Being Diagnosed Autistic as a Black Woman Across Three Continents I didn’t get to self-diagnose and be believed. I had to prove myself on three continents. I know what it costs to be taken seriously as autistic. Not the aesthetic of autism. Not the neurodivergence they romanticize when they want to look interesting. The formal, clinical, contested, pathologized label that shapes every institutiona...

When ADHD and Autism Assessments Become Exploitation: Why This Investigation Exists This is an evidence-based investigation documenting how LBee Health marketed itself as a safe, neuro-affirmative space while selling unregulated assessments to some of the most vulnerable members of the autistic and ADHD communities. This is not a feud. It is not gossip. It is not a vague callout. This is an eviden...

What Are Blind Spots in Neurodivergent Relationships? “ My grandmother taught me there’s a difference between friends and advisors. Not all friends are advisors—but some friends hold both roles. It’s important to know which is which, and treat them accordingly. ” I grew up hyperlexic, I read before I could walk, consuming books faster than most people could finish chapters. But speed is not clarit...

Why We Fail at Repairing Relationships and Community Some parents didn’t teach us how to love, they taught us how to punish. I pay attention to people, and one thing I’ve learned is that in so many households, rupture was met with silence, withdrawal, or threats. Repair wasn’t a process, it was a power play. Conflict meant someone had to disappear, someone had to beg, someone had to lose. I spent...

Welcome to Slow Like This A neurodivergent sapphic fiction series about desire, consent, and the intimacy of being deeply noticed. These are stories where I write from my neurodivergence—where pacing is shaped by alexithymia, sound by auditory processing, and desire by sensory attunement. Love isn’t rushed here. Intimacy is slow, textured, and built from the inside out. Every Sunday, with intentio...

From Survival to Reenactment: The Quiet Tragedy of Trauma Loops You’re grown now. But some part of you—some younger version—is still responding for you. You survived the wound. But survival doesn’t teach repair. That’s learned later—if at all. You still bracing for abandonment. Still flinching at correction. Still misreading accountability as attack. You survived what you should never have had to....