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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈

@lovettejallow.bsky.social

2K followers 210 following 570 posts

Published Author || 9x Award Winning Lecturer || Public Speaker || AuDHD || 🇬🇲🇸🇪🇳🇬🇨🇮 || 📧[email protected]

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · Apr 25

In West Africa, traits like deep focus, sensory sensitivity, speech loops, and emotional intensity weren’t pathologized.

They were sacred.

Not diagnosed respected, and supported in community.

🔗 : lovettejallow.substack.com/p/neurodiver...

#Neurodivergence #BlackHistory #AutismAcceptance

Neurodivergence in Ancient Africa: What History Forgot but Our Ancestors Knew

How West African societies embraced autism, ADHD, and neurodivergence as spiritual gifts and essential community roles—long before diagnosis existed. This essay reconnects Black neurodivergent readers...

lovettejallow.substack.com

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 1d

We out here! 😅

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 2d

3/ link here

open.substack.com/pub/lovettej...

When Childhood Wounds Drive Adult Relationships

How unhealed trauma, whiteness, and emotional displacement keep people recreating the same unsafe spaces they claim to escape.

open.substack.com

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 2d

2/Your inner child doesn’t need to be exiled, but they can’t drive.

When you let unhealed parts of you steer, every relationship becomes a reenactment. Healing begins the moment the adult takes the wheel and says, “We don’t live there anymore.”

✍🏾 Read or listen: 👇🏾

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 2d

New essay out now: on what happens when unhealed childhood wounds steer adult relationships how trauma, whiteness, and emotional displacement keep people recreating the same unsafe spaces they try to escape.

Both written and audio versions available.

open.substack.com/pub/lovettej...

1/3 ⤵️

When Childhood
Wounds Drive Adult
Relationships
How unhealed trauma, whiteness, and emotional displacement keep people recreating the same unsafe spaces they claim to escape.
The Lovette Jallow Perspective

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 5d

This is exactly the problem - diagnostic criteria that exclude people who’ve learned to cope ‘too well.’ High IQ becomes a weapon against getting help because we’ve decided masking = fine, when really it = exhausted. Your kids deserve assessment regardless of grades or how quiet their struggles are.

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 15d

4/When I get my sht together it’s over for you h**s.

But no one knows when that is, cos 1 minute I’m writing essays at 3am, next plotting beef with your grandma.

Whatever superpowers y’all claim we have…YOU end up becoming tge kryptonite we have to wade through.

We aren’t new. 🫵🏾 are tiring.

Neurodivergence in Ancient Africa: What History Forgot but Our Ancestors Knew

How West African societies embraced autism, ADHD, and neurodivergence as spiritual gifts and essential community roles long before diagnosis existed. This essay reconnects Black neurodivergent readers...

open.substack.com

1 1 9

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 15d

3/ Spectrum they said. I thought rainbow, soft glowing balls, titt*es maybe, unicorns a side of legos?

Reality: loud noises, busted ear, light too bright, brain buffering like 2001 dial-up modem.

Where’s my rainbow guys?

a man and a woman are standing in front of a door with a sign on the wall that says oak

ALT: a man and a woman are standing in front of a door with a sign on the wall that says oak

media.tenor.com

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 15d

2/ 2/ And every year it’s the same suspects:
• #Tylenol
• Vaccines
• WiFi towers
• The moon looking at us funny

Meanwhile the real answer is in your family tree.

Lovette
@lovettejallow • 25/02/2024
Fellow autistics I finally figured it out. When people tweet on here asking why there are so many autistics around these days. What they want to know is... hear me out...graphic details of our parents having *whispers intercourse.
Because that IS how we are created amirite?

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 15d

1/4 Autistics: minding our business

Randos: “Hey freak, why are you like this? Let’s rattle off 10,000 fake causes instead of just making life accessible.

Cos it couldn’t possibly be my parents doing the horizontal mambo 9 months before I was born no protection…like every other human.”

Carry on.

two women are sitting next to each other and one is making a surprised face .

ALT: two women are sitting next to each other and one is making a surprised face .

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Lovette 🏳️‍🌈

Maria Celina @mariacelina.bsky.social · 16d

Please read the article at the end of this thread.

It saw parts of me I didn’t know were longing to be acknowledged.

#Neurodivergence

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 16d

1/3 Why do so many parents only realize they’re autistic or ADHD after their child is diagnosed? Because children are not clay to mold. They are mirrors genetic, ancestral, unflinching.

#AutismDiagnosis #ADHDParenting #Neurodivergence #AutismAcceptance #IntergenerationalHealing #CureCulture

Why Parents Discover Their Own Autism or ADHD Through Their
Child's Diagnosis
The Lovette Jallow Perspective

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 16d

Every morning I make plans. #Autism rewrites them, #ADHD loses them, and somehow I end up reorganizing the fridge at 3 a.m.

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 16d

Oops I do have a knack for naming things you know 🥹

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 16d

3/ Cure culture doesn’t heal. It punishes children for traits their parents also carry. True inheritance is acceptance unmasking side by side, breaking silence across generations.

#AutismDiagnosis #ADHDParenting #Neurodivergence #AutismAcceptance #IntergenerationalHealing #CureCulture

Why Parents Discover Their Own Autism or ADHD Through Their Child’s Diagnosis

Many parents only realize they are autistic or ADHD when their child gets diagnosed. Some accept the mirror, others chase cures. Children are not clay — they are mirrors reflecting what adults were fo...

open.substack.com

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 16d

2/ Autism is ~83% heritable. ADHD ~74%. A child’s diagnosis often reads like the parent’s lost diary. The fidgets, the noise, the meltdowns all the traits they were told to bury.

#AutismDiagnosis #ADHDParenting #Neurodivergence #AutismAcceptance #IntergenerationalHealing #CureCulture

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 16d

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 17d

I am out here for longer captions because I am verbose. www.instagram.com/p/DO3yfsiDcC...

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 17d

2/ this is so serious Karolinska Institutet confirms that Autistic people without intellectual #disability face up to a 10fold higher risk of suicide

Not because autism is fatal, but because support systems collapse. 0.9% of us report discrimination every 3 months

open.substack.com/pub/lovettej...

Sweden’s Disability Rights Failures Under SoL and LSS

Autistic and disabled people in Sweden are pushed toward eviction and collapse as SoL and LSS are twisted into tools of delay and denial.

open.substack.com

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 17d

Sweden sells itself as an equal welfare state. I call it having a good PR system. Behind the façade, the numbers/testimonies tell a different story.

It doesn’t matter if we have a left or right wing government disabled people are ignored by laws & systemically discriminated.

Link below 👇🏾
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When Equality Is a Myth Sweden's
Disability Laws Leave Autistic and Disabled People to Collapse
The Lovette Jallow Perspective

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 23d

🤣🤣🙏🏾

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 24d

3/ I might call you a tism cousin, half-joking.
If internalised ableism makes you block me, that’s fine.
You’ll circle back when the mask slips and the assessment becomes unavoidable.
I’ve been 21 years deep in this.

open.substack.com/pub/lovettej...

https://open.substack.com/pub/lovettejal…

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 24d

2/ When skills regress, sentences dissolve mid-thought.
Noise overwhelms. Strategies collapse.
Doctors often mislabel it as stress or dementia.
It isn’t weakness. It’s involuntary unmasking.

#AutisticWomen #Perimenopause

"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."
Lovette Jallow
Why So Many Neurodivergent Women Discover ADHD and Autism During Perimenopause
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSTACK.COM

"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."
Lovette Jallow
Why So Many Neurodivergent Women Discover ADHD and Autism During Perimenopause
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSTACK.COM

"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."
Lovette Jallow
Why So Many Neurodivergent Women Discover ADHD and Autism During Perimenopause
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSTACK.COM

"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."
Lovette Jallow
Why So Many Neurodivergent Women Discover ADHD and Autism During Perimenopause
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSTACK.COM

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · 24d

1/3 The mask many women have worn for decades rarely survives perimenopause.
Brain fog creeps in. Tasks unravel. Emotional regulation slips. Sensory overwhelm spikes.
What looked like competence was masking. When hormones shift, the mask breaks.

#ADHDWomen #Neurodivergent

Why So Many Neurodivergent Women Discover
ADHD and
Autism During Perimenopause
Perimenopause unmasks ADHD and autism in women, leaving many misdiagnosed and unsupported.
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSTACK.COM

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · Sep 8

Small talk isn’t harmless for autistic & ADHD professionals. It’s labor, not glue. In workplaces it allocates access, credit & care while punishing clarity, esp. in Black neurodivergent women. Directness is care. Clarity is ethical.

#Autism #ADHD #Neurodivergent #WorkplaceCulture #Inclusion

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Reposted by Lovette 🏳️‍🌈

Rabia @rahbeeuh.bsky.social · Aug 29

When I'm asked, "how are you?" and I reply, "I don't know" I get the oddest looks sometimes or someone who becomes concerned about me. My aide told me that "I don't know" is a valid response. #psAuDHD

Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · Aug 17

1/3 Small talk is not always harmless. For autistic + ADHD people, it’s a test we never agreed to take. “How are you?” (but don’t want the truth). “Where are you from?” (but won’t take the answer). “What do you do?” (so they can measure your usefulness). #Autism #ADHD

Why Small Talk
Exhausts
Autistic and
ADHD People
Vagueness isn't harmless it's often a tool for control, extraction, and gaslighting towards neurodivergent persons.
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSIACK.COM

"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?''
Lovette Jallow
Why Small Talk Exhausts Autistic and ADHD People
LOVETTEJALLOW.SUBSTACK.COM

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Lovette 🏳️‍🌈 @lovettejallow.bsky.social · Aug 29

It’s valid and I usually don’t know I have to pause and think and still don’t know and it’s fine by me. I can look back and think “it was ok” or “it sucked” and I am glad I think it in hindsight. All of it is ok I wonder if people need us to validate our emotions for them sometimes. I still won’t 🫣