Author’s Note:

This piece draws on my own lived experience of PMDD, ADHD, and Autism, diagnoses that arrived late, one by one, and each time changed how I understood my own history. I am not a medical professional. What I share here is personal testimony, supported by research I encountered and sought out largely on my own. If any of it sounds like your story, I hope it offers what it gave me in that conference room in Amsterdam: a name, and the knowledge that you are not crazy.

Trigger warning:

This piece discusses premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), late diagnosis, and suicidal ideation, including statistics on suicide risk in people with PMDD and ADHD. Please read with care if these topics are close to home.

If you are struggling, you are not alone, and you don’t have to keep searching for answers on your own. If you are in crisis, please reach out to the 113 Suicide Prevention helpline in the Netherlands or the Crisis Text Line in your country.

The slide that changed everything

I eagerly got off the metro at Amsterdam RAI on a random Sunday afternoon in May 2023 to attend the 9th World Congress on ADHD. As I reached the dimly lit conference room, a quick scan of my surroundings was all it took for my anxiety to kick in, realizing that yet again, I was the only Black woman in the room.

Still, I sat there, amongst parents, neurokin, and scholars, steadfast in my quest for answers about my ADHD for the sake of my mental and physical health. I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this special-for-the-public day organized by a Dutch advocacy organization for people with ADHD, but I just knew I had to be there.

Professor Sandra Kooij.

I recognized her name from my post-diagnosis deep dives into my condition. She was there to speak of ADHD in women, particularly on the condition’s relationship with our hormonal cycle.

I got really excited to hear her speak until…

There it was, written in yellow.

My heart started beating faster as Professor Kooij started describing the increase in severity of mood swings in the premenstrual phase of women with ADHD’s cycle.

“She’s speaking of me”, I immediately thought. And “I am not crazy.”

There was an explanation for the monthly psychological torment I go through, and she was calling it PMDD.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

A condition characterized by brain fog, severe irritability, rage, sadness or depression, during the menstrual cycle. Basically, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) squared, or on steroids, as I often like to joke about.

As she went further into her presentation, it quickly became clearer why this condition, affecting only about 5% of people who menstruate, shows up in nearly 45% of women with ADHD.

Estrogen, a primarily female sex hormone crucial in the regulation of our menstrual cycle, rises and falls in ways that directly impact dopamine, a critical neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, focus, pleasure, and that fragile ability to just… get started on things, which is already dysregulated in people with ADHD.

My ADHD makes the experience of my menstrual cycle worse. And, the other way around.

“For Christ’s sake! When does one get respite?”, I thought to myself as a complex cocktail of emotions started bubbling up in me.

Though I wasn't officially diagnosed with PMDD until I sought my Autism diagnosis, nearly two years after my ADHD assessment, I knew deep in my gut that this woman was describing, and most importantly, naming much of my experience to a T.

PMDD, another medallion in the collection of delayed answers, diagnoses, I had to fight for, trickling down one by one, three decades in.

There was a bittersweetness to gaining this extra set of keys to my brain and body.

Professor Kooij tried to alleviate the atmosphere by making jokes about women's testimony of the cyclical rage their partners had to “endure”. A rage capable of turning us into some kind of monsters that had to be handled with extra care on PMDD days.

Two hundred and sixteen

I, too, laughed, but the relief I felt was juxtaposed with incomprehension, a sense of injustice, and profound grief at receiving this information only at 30. 216 menstrual cycles if I round it up.

The labour of knowing

Until that Sunday in May 2023, not being able to explain my PMDD experience to others had left me profoundly alone with it.

As I did not know what was actually happening to my body, I’d been led to believe I was just experiencing regular PMS, like most women do. Nothing to see here, move along type of experience. I had no label for it and not the faintest idea it could be connected to how my brain was wired.

This simply couldn’t just sit with me. I had to do something about it.

As soon as I left the conference center, I reached for my phone to alert others who might recognize themselves in what I had just learned, through these facts & figures on my Instagram stories.

At home, my ex-partner looked at me in confusion as I told them I was adding yet another condition to the list and that this one might actually explain some of the hardest moments in our relationship, particularly after ovulation.

A couple of weeks later, I went to my general practitioner (GP), as advised by Professor Kooij, to ask for an increase in my ADHD medication during my luteal phase — the two weeks before my period, when PMDD takes hold.

The female GP looked at me with the same perplexed expression my partner had worn days before, as I shared the information I had received from her peers at the conference.

There I was again, having to educate someone with far more medical training than I that my hormonal cycle affects my ADHD. My self-advocacy for better treatment made me share Professor Kooij’s slides, just to be taken seriously. To secure, as I came to think of it, a semblance of care.

After a couple of days waiting, my request was approved, and I started receiving an increased dose of my ADHD medication for 10 days each month.

Getting the medication was not the end of my struggle.

In true ADHD style, applying what I know best for me and how it actually plays out remains a challenge and a half. My brain experiences executive dysfunction, making it all the harder to self-manage through routines and impulse control, to remember simple to-dos like taking your meds, or to defeat binge eating or doomscrolling late at night.

A cruel irony, if you ask me. The very brain making my life more challenging was also the one standing between me and the things that could make it easier.

Over time, it became clear that medication alone wouldn’t be enough. In fact, I had to become more conscious of the importance of sleeping sufficiently, mindfulness, adapting my diet, and exercising as ways to manage these symptoms. I later found out that certain herbal teas and vitamin or plant-based supplements, even acupuncture, could be remedies for managing PMDD and easing our lives. Most of this additional information I had to find myself, through research articles and others’ lived experiences online. It wasn’t provided by my healthcare practitioners, even by the ones who diagnosed me.

The weight we carry

One thing was clear: if I was only finding out this late into my adult life, who was going to help the thousands, heck, millions of women and other menstruators walking through their doctors' offices seeking answers they might never get because the medical scholars and practitioners were still stuck in the 90s, armed with outdated, often sexist understanding of ADHD in women and women’s health, full stop.

Whether for endometriosis or ADHD, women continue to be misdiagnosed, underdiagnosed, or simply missed by the very systems meant to care for them.

The cost is not abstract: 72% of people with confirmed PMDD have experienced suicidal ideation in their lifetime, and 34% have attempted suicide (Eisenlohr-Moul et al., 2022). Among women with ADHD, suicide attempts are already seven times more likely than in women without it — with 23.5% of women with ADHD having attempted suicide compared to just 3.3% of women without — driven largely by the co-occurring anxiety and depression that PMDD only compounds (Constance, 2021).

Many of our lives are in crisis, and I still hear people making silly comments about ADHD being overdiagnosed these days or joking that “everyone is a little ADHD”, making me want to scream. It is infuriating that people are ignorant of how these health inequities and negligence are costing people’s lives.

The awareness I gained about these manageable conditions has been so life-changing that I committed to sharing what I had learned with friends, on social media, and even during my neurodiversity keynotes and workshops for my various clients. No matter how little or big my reach might be.

But there’s no amount of explaining, stating facts, and finger-pointing that could fully paint a picture of the lived experience of ADHD-PMDDers’ hormonal cycle.

Still, it is urgent that we, those with lived experiences, dump the taboos and find the courage to openly speak up about our experiences, for we may not fully measure how many lives the ripple effect of telling the truth is literally saving.

What has been equally hard to accept is how ADHDers affected by this combo of hell are systemically disempowered to fully participate in society. We carry a heavier mental load, with our disabilities’ symptoms endlessly fluctuating throughout the month and at different stages of our lives.

And yet we are still expected to keep going to work, to pay the bills, to perform our daily tasks, to manage the traditional household, to take care of children, and to take care of ourselves, with the same ease as others.

The invisibility of our conditions doesn’t make them any less real. It is a true disability that deserves the full range of accommodations in schools, at work, in the private and public spheres, as any other disability or impairment.

It shouldn’t get to the point of us creating a PMDD simulator or VR experience, as we've done with our periods, for others to take us seriously and support us.

Society still hasn’t caught up, and it forces me to work twice as hard to exist in a body and mind that is fatigued. As if being a woman, a Black woman, isn’t already hard enough in itself.

I think of my grandmother, who was undiagnosed before she left this earth, but displayed many signs of ADHD. And of my own mother, battling menopause with an ADHD brain — how no matter how I tell her the role of hormonal fluctuations in women with ADHD, she remains undiagnosed, untreated, and unsupported. No matter how I share how her symptoms could be alleviated if her ADHD was factored into managing the fatigue, severe irritability, or difficulty sleeping she's been dealing with lately.

Generations and generations of menstruators, our patriarchal society has neglected, one after another. I can only imagine how my mother, her mother, and my grandmother’s mother would have benefited from the knowledge I will share with my children when the time comes.

This is why I was relieved to hear that the preliminary results of Professor Kooij’s research, the research that changed the course of my life, have since been published in November 2025, confirming that hormonal fluctuations exacerbate ADHD symptoms and mood disturbances, and highlighting the vulnerability of undiagnosed ADHDers to PMDD, postpartum depression, and cardiovascular disease during perimenopause.

Beyond borders

Whilst these scientific findings are a turning point for women’s health, I hope that their translation into medical practice accelerates the saving of lives, beyond the borders of the West, where women facing these challenges are far less informed, supported, and cared for.

I think of my home country, Benin, where psychological support of mental health disorders remains fragmented and privileged; many moving from therapist to therapist, across both traditional and Western practices, in search of answers. Far more women are carrying the weight of undiagnosed ADHD, unnamed PMDD, or both, without the language, access, or research to make sense of their own bodies.

They should not be an afterthought.

As more of us speak up about the weight of our lives, may our voices reach those still lost at sea:

For my grandmother, who never got the words.

For my mother, who still doesn't have them.

And for every woman still searching, I hope this finds you before another 216 cycles pass.

References

Constance, L. (2021, January 5). Study: Nearly one in four women with ADHD has attempted suicide. ADDitude Magazine. https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-in-women-suicide-risk/

Eisenlohr-Moul, T., Divine, M., Schmalenberger, K., Murphy, L., Buchert, B., Wagner-Schuman, M., Kania, A., Raja, S., Miller, A. B., Barone, J., & Ross, J. (2022). Prevalence of lifetime self-injurious thoughts and behaviors in a global sample of 599 patients reporting prospectively confirmed diagnosis with premenstrual dysphoric disorder. BMC Psychiatry, 22, 199. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-03851-0

Kinoo, P. (n.d.). Valeur Vodun ou la famille restructurée. Retrieved from https://www.philippekinoo.be/enfants-vulnerables-et-ethnopsychiatrie/12-valeur-vodun-ou-la-famille-restructuree

Schmalenberger, K., & Kooij, S. (2025). Hormonal transitions and ADHD in women. Frontiers in Global Women’s Health. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/global-womens-health/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2025.1613628/full

© Axelle Ahanhanzo, 2026. Please do not reproduce without permission and attribution.

The Silence After the Fall

I didn't know how community-rich or community-poor I was until I got seriously ill.

Before my burnout five years ago, I was a social butterfly. My calendar was filled with frequent gatherings and dinners with friends. I hosted game nights and BBQs with ease. I was the five-a-week regular, well known to the kickboxing gym’s coaches. I actively spent time with my family and travelled to visit friends worldwide. At work, my social circle grew after co-founding an Employee Resource Group. And as the integrated Dutchie I am, I rarely missed out on the Vrijmibo or Vrijdagmiddagborrel.

Then, almost overnight, everything changed. One month bled into the next, and suddenly—poof!—there was deafening silence.

The burnout I experienced was soul-crushing before it became empowering. My body had reached uncharted levels of exhaustion. My hair fell out. I lost nearly 10 kilos.

Many things within me felt like they were dying, and I was transparent about it. Yet, most people I cared about seemed too busy to show up as I hoped.

I wondered why certain people had not checked in. I had considered them close friends, even chosen family in some cases. A few showed up. Most didn't.

Looking back, without the language to understand what was happening to my social life, my ego felt crushed. I found myself thinking:

“Surely if they didn’t reach out after telling them about my sick leave, perhaps it means I don’t matter to them in the first place,” or,

“Is this the friendship of a time and place people often speak about?” and,

“Oh, but I see such and such being out and about, yet they didn’t even take time to come over and catch up with me about how things are going.”

I had to ask myself whether I was projecting how I would have shown up for them had they faced a similar hardship. Or whether I was being confronted with the reality of living in Northern Europe, where my collectivist ambitions clashed with the individualism that rhythmed social life.

For a while, I thought that I was being negative and even selfish for expecting more people to show up for me. I felt hurt and uncomfortable confronting friends who had failed to show up.

It was not until I started hearing others’ similar experiences that the pattern became clearer.

An Asian friend had surgery that left them immobilised for some time. They shared the sadness of friends’ absence during their recovery. Their partner, whom they lived with, supported them, but most didn’t.

Later, a South American friend who battled cancer described the same experience. Our heartbreak was like a double homicide: first, your body fails you, and then, those around you vanish when you need them most, a mirage in the desert.

That is when it dawned on me: our disappointments were personal, but the pattern was cultural.

In my collectivist West African background, support during hardship means physical presence and personal sacrifice. There, community is defined by shared responsibility, closeness, and active involvement. My Western friends assumed I needed privacy. I needed presence.

This realization sharpened when a friend I confronted about her absence explained that she was giving me space I never asked for — to heal — whereas my own cultural expectations were for her to offer closeness and warmth.

Where I First Learned About Community

In the late 1990s, when I was about five years old, we moved to The Gambia for my father’s new job. For the second time, we had uprooted ourselves, miles away from our family in Benin, and found ourselves joining a community of international diplomats.

As in a traditional African family, I would see my parents’ new elders advise them and watch over us. The community showed up to organise my parents’ religious wedding when our extended family couldn’t attend. So it was the Burundians, Burkinabés, Beninese, and other African folks my parents had around them who stepped in to support their second official union. One family offered their car for the bridal cortege; another their beautiful garden for the reception. Others handled the catering or took my mother to the beautician. An organic network celebrated my parents’ union without expecting anything in return.

Similarly, about a year later — when my mom was nearing the end of her pregnancy — it was decided that she would take my little brother with her for the last trimester, and I would stay with my dad in Banjul, so as not to disrupt my school year. They considered that the temporary displacement wouldn’t affect my brother as much as it would affect me in my second year of primary school.

There was a challenge to this arrangement: my father, who often traveled for work, had to leave for a month. This time, it was decided I would stay with family friends.

They took me in, made sure I was fed, and ensured I attended school daily. This Tanzanian family adjusted their schedules and supported us, easing my parents’ worries about my education and helping my mom stay close to her family before giving birth.

Giving parts of oneself for others, in support of others, was natural, a tacit expectation. In fact, I saw my own parents do the same: picking up others’ children from school, preparing and celebrating Eid with Muslim friends, or bringing home-made meals during hardship.

I remember my mom, my brother, and me getting into her grey Jetta car to visit her heavily pregnant friend. On the way there, the smell of the nourishing stew my mom prepared for her friend blended with the heat of the harmattan sun, kissing our skin. I still have vivid images of how we would keep company with her friend, whose belly tied her to the green couch. My mom and her friend brainstormed solutions to their life challenges as we ate, watched movies, and enjoyed telenovelas.

There was a unique sense of reciprocity, camaraderie, and selflessness. I remember the laughter and joy in the gatherings that went on until dawn, often waking up to have breakfast as guests in the same house where we had been invited for dinner the evening before. The moments of empathy were there too — a hand on the shoulder in times of hardship.

The adults around me showed me how they had mastered the art of gathering and meeting others' needs. Most importantly, they taught me the unifying value of sacrificing one's individual convenience for those we deeply care about and share space with.

The art of hosting, of building community, and growing up in a Beninese household shaped my childhood. I was so young when I witnessed all of this and didn’t realise how deeply these core values would influence me. Even when far from the continent, these experiences deeply rooted my collectivist aspirations for social and community life.

When we moved to the Netherlands, the warmth of our West African dream faded quickly. The cold seasons matched the chill of our new social life, hitting us like a blizzard.

Over the years, I witnessed my parents’ gradual heartbreak as they tried to recreate the life of our Gambian community. Suddenly, there was little reciprocity and more wariness. The few efforts we experienced felt calculated, short-lived. Eventually, these attempts revealed a misalignment with our values. The classist cloaks became thornier. Our race grew more obvious. Our racial existence entered this lonely dance and further amplified the isolation that slowly seeped in, even in spaces like the church.

In fact, one of the few spaces where we found a semblance of community was at the French Catholic Church in the Hague. We were bound together in this space through our faith and a common language. But even there, it took us nearly 10 years to feel truly at home. The white Dutch priest was retiring, and his replacement, a younger, Black Burkinabe priest, helped partially close the racial divide and some of the classism we witnessed or directly experienced. His arrival enabled more folk to feel included within the predominantly white church and fostered a more genuine sense of belonging through community gatherings and support.

Much later, after these formative early years, I moved to the UK to pursue my bachelor's and beyond. I unconsciously replicated what my parents had taught me. It gave me a lot of joy to gather, host, and fill others’ bellies with tasty meals and crêpe parties, even on a light student budget.

My sense of duty also showed in celebrating birthdays or comforting a grieving friend. I would overextend myself, partly out of unconscious people-pleasing, but most importantly because it felt right, aligned with my core values. Sometimes, it pushed me to sprint down the scary streets of Birmingham’s Selly Oak, deep into the night.

I will never forget my time studying abroad in Mexico. I was an exchange student on campus, and I would just sit on a bench, on my own, minding my business; next thing I knew, I would end up at someone’s grandmother’s carne asada (barbecue), dancing salsa, and spending quality time with people I had never met but who trusted me inside their homes. A profound sense of gratitude and belonging grew in my heart, making me want to share more of myself with them, too. In Mexico, making friends felt easy, and I didn't feel isolated. I was not met with closed social circles, the abruptness of Dutch tikkie culture, or the constraints of social gatherings planned months in advance, where every moment felt like a disciplined transaction, overshadowing the opportunity for more reciprocal, sustainable community-building.

The Western Community Renaissance — and Why It’s Failing

After a decade of going above and beyond for others, adult life in the Netherlands and my burnout began to wear down this second nature. I started questioning who truly deserved access to me — particularly in a social culture where reciprocity feels scarce, and where any sacrifice beyond the bare minimum triggers an avoidant, individualistic “this is not good for my mental health, so check me out” response.

But then, with COVID-19, lockdowns, and social distancing, things began to change.

Like a mirror held up to our faces, we began to measure how lonely most of us in the West truly feel, amplified by the pandemic.

Ever since we’ve stepped back to normalcy, we've shifted from the anxiety of being seen and surrounded again to slowly cooking up solutions to address the disconnection and loneliness epidemic we’re facing.

“15 years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet."

Noah Smith

Lately, as a way to address the social disconnection the digital age has created, we’ve seen a return to more IRL (In Real Life) community efforts. From book clubs and running clubs to padel clubs and even hiking clubs for Black people—an activity we gather around on a periodic basis.

I, too, have joined some of these groups, like OMEK or TEN Women, where I commune with others who respectively share my values of biculturalism and entrepreneurial spirit.

There have also been groups I’ve wanted to join, but when I looked at their social media page, either I didn’t see myself among those allowed in, or it didn’t feel accessible for various reasons, ranging from financial ones to social capital and relevance.

“Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg.” - Dutch quote

Hearing “just act normal, that’s already crazy enough” — has always made me cringe, then laugh, then cringe again.

In the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, the big village where I live, authenticity is claimed as a core value, but in practice, it operates on soft, tacit compliance. Conform enough to belong. Deviate too far, and you’re out. It is perhaps the most subtle and effective barrier to genuine community I've ever encountered.

I see it everywhere. Compared to other European capitals like London or Paris, you won’t find a wide spectrum of how people dress, how they express their identity, or behave in social settings.

There seems to be an unspoken ceiling on how fully you can show up. I’ve found the same pattern visiting Scandinavian neighbours — the Swedish lagom, not too little, not too much, a sweet spot of conformism and conflict avoidance that presents itself as egalitarian but quietly suppresses the individuality that real belonging requires.

Because here’s the thing: you cannot build an authentic, inclusive community when you actively stifle the people in it. Conformity doesn’t create safety — it creates sameness. And sameness is a fertile ground for the denial of otherness, where exclusion, segregation, and classism quietly flourish, as we often see it in Amsterdam.

We’ve now reached a stage where community seems to be the answer to everything. Everyone seems to care about communities to the point that corporations have turned it into a profitable business venture to survive, strengthen their reputation, and stay relevant.

You just have to tap into the community, ey!

The word community becomes a placeholder for things it is not. I’ve seen organisers call their ventures a community when the transactional, capitalist approach to what it actually is — networking — exposes the confusion and resource extraction that are really at work.

Community has become so co-optable, so marketable, and trendy that we are dangerously depleting a word of its deeper meaning by applying it in ways that are deficient.

For a values-based community to ring true, it must nurture reciprocity in how individuals contribute, engage, and benefit from the collective, fostering a sense of belonging and purpose.

Often, attempts to build community lack the core elements such as reciprocity, sacrifice, psychological safety, and authenticity.

And this is not to say that these efforts fall short of bringing people outside the comfort of their homes to connect with others, reminding us of our essence as living beings.

Nor is it to say that some intentions are not in the right place and that we should ignore the difficulty of gathering in the Netherlands, for instance, where life mostly happens indoors, and gathering comes at a greater cost than in some other places. Our houses are smaller, inflation is real, and the corporate machine has most of us in a chokehold, making us ridiculously time-poor.

I deliberately offer some balance to my criticism and say I’m not spitting on many of these commendable efforts, especially when loneliness kills.

In fact, I had to add a bit of water to my wine while reading The Art of Community by Charles Vogl. My jaw dropped when I read that lacking social relationships or being lonely is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. A day!

Alarming to say the least.

And at the same time, validating, because this data makes me feel less crazy. It shuts up the self-critical voice in my head that tells me that the sob story of my burnout isn’t worth telling in the context of yearning for a more connected world.

If building community can become a venue where loneliness is defeated, and our health is restored through meaningful, reciprocal friendships, we should encourage more people and leaders to contribute to a world where human-centred connection is central to everything we do.

Community matters because our lives matter.

Therefore, we shouldn’t revel in our status as community-poor cultures, but rather encourage whatever this Western community renaissance is trying to achieve and proactively work to iterate on it.

And yet, the West, particularly the Netherlands, still leaves me feeling hungry for more, especially knowing how humanly capable we are of building empowering communities. The answer, I've come to believe, begins not with a grand gesture but something far simpler and far more inconvenient.

The Cost of Showing Up

The problem with community nowadays is that everyone wants it, yet very few actually comprehend, or worse, accept that it must come with sacrifices — accepting difference, and putting self-servingness and opportunism in the rear seat.

Community poverty — as I’ve been talking about in this essay — is characterised by transactional relationships in our lives. Relationships where value is exchanged in a more individualistic, extractive way.

Call me idealistic, but the idea of paying to access community feels deeply ironic.

Are you asking me to pay for profit, or is this directly contributing to shared resources, like a physical space, food, or something tangible? I must know.

I get that people are looking to make a dollar — after all, we all have bills to pay — but the very essence of community resists the commodification of space and resources for profit.

Community is the practice of inconvenience.

It is unconditional. Nobody should be keeping score.

It is about physical presence: how we show up with our bodies, with our time, through our food, in warmth, and with our voice.

It is reciprocal, not transactional. The distinction matters.

Reciprocity means that giving is a given, something that naturally flows through a community over time. Transactions don’t build trust; they make us indebted to others because others gave us something, and we expect them to give us something in return.

Real community doesn't extract, it expands. It is self-enlarging. It actually expands your capacity and desire to give. The more you receive genuine belonging, the more you want to contribute to it.

How many of us are actually willing to pay the price of communing, giving resources, and sharing our gifts without necessarily expecting something in return first?

How many times will we have to read that everyone wants to be in a village but no one wants to be a villager?

To truly be in community means we’re giving away or sacrificing parts of ourselves, whether in time, knowledge, material resources, or even personal comfort. It means we’re making space. It’s proactively asking that friend moving house when, instead of how you can help, and actually showing up when the time comes. It’s taking that friend who burned out on a lovely walk and checking in.

Individually, then collectively, we must train the muscle of giving — not to gain something back but to become someone worth communing with.

So I Started Building It Myself

In my sensemaking about community as I knew it, and as I envision it today, I stumbled upon Cat Latingua’s book Build it, and They Will Come. Reading her unflinching diagnosis of our social disconnection — and her refusal to tiptoe around how broken and lonely our collective experience has become — I not only felt seen, but I also found hope that there are others out there who yearn for something more meaningful, transformative, and genuine.

Cat’s reflections made me realise that perhaps what I was lacking is a compass for togetherness. And that I could proactively cultivate the richness of my communal life, until society finally catches up.

Similar to Cat, being community-poor — as revealed by my burnout — sparked my ambition to become the architect of my own community, building it so that they will come.

I dream of physical shared spaces where values-driven people can come together to catalyse solutions to issues of belonging in our society through dialogue, storytelling, and solidarity.

Then, recently, I stumbled upon Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Map, which illustrates how social transformation requires a whole ecosystem of roles — storytellers, healers, weavers, builders, disrupters, caregivers — each contributing their unique gifts towards a shared vision.

Deepa’s tool reminded me that community was never meant to be carried by a single person or by a single type of person. It truly takes a village, and every villager has a distinct role to play.

The question is whether we know ourselves well enough to know which one we are. And, ultimately, whether we’ll have the courage to take the initiative and be responsible for others, too.

Until I have the resources to build such a community, clarify my role, and find where I fit within my vision, I have been intentionally observing the world around me with more compassion for people who do not yet know how to show up, on the one hand, and immense gratitude for those who are getting it right, on the other.

Recently, I was adopted by a Filipino community in Amsterdam after a friend introduced me to Studio Tayo. When I entered this space for the first time, my autistic self didn’t fully feel comfortable. I felt like the outlier, was still making sense of the social codes in a room full of Asians, and felt like I had to tread carefully not to make a faux pas or offend anyone, as they kindly welcomed me into a cultural haven.

They were feeding me and sharing their culture with me. Some took the time to bring me a plate, another to tell me about the dish. Most kept to themselves, but all took the time to acknowledge my presence with a smile, a nod, or gentle eye contact. Enough to make me feel like: “You are here, and we see you.”

Fast-forward to a year later: after showing up to support the business venture that emanated from this community at a food festival, or simply showing up to share a meal with them at a studio, I found myself returning weekly, with the space used as a co-working space with my friends—for free, in Amsterdam of all places!

Ever since co-working there, I have been thinking of ways to give back. On the most accessible level, it has looked like cleaning after myself, washing the dishes in the sink when leaving the studio, or bringing snacks to share with friends. In other ways, ensuring that others in the space can continue to have a comfortable, sensory-friendly experience.

In a more structural way, my friend and I have been brainstorming how to organise a writing accountability club for people looking to take their writing more seriously. One of the many ideas Studio Tayo generated, imagined, and carried out by the group itself.

The strength of a space like this lies in its intimacy; its size is manageable, yet its social reach extends well beyond its walls. It is this intimacy that makes the kindness, warmth, and authenticity I often miss elsewhere so present, bold yet soft.

Another particularity of what is being created is the physical space they return to. Part workplace with a computer screen, part dining table, part kitchen, part lounging area, and even part DJ and tattoo stations. It allows for a multitude of people to come together and get what they need done. It becomes a home for shared meals, playing mahjong, and creative experimentation.

Studio Tayo enables folks to bring their unique gifts and cultivate a sense of belonging, delivering on the promise of its name — tayo, meaning “you and everyone here” in Tagalog. The promise of an embodied togetherness, through a spirit of communal solidarity and shared responsibility.

The case of the Filipino studio and the handful of meaningful friends who dream of community as I do tells me that not all hope is lost. The recent social awakening and shift away from digital individualism are also telling us that people want something different but are still finding their way there, and that is okay.

The past decade has taught me that my gifts are to have a vision, gather, disrupt, tell stories, build through organising, hosting events, and experimenting, and that I must use them. But for this to be effective, I had to get to know myself first, grieve old versions of myself, and remove myself from spaces that no longer aligned with the communities I dream of joining or leading.

Spaces that remind me of home.

I am not looking for community anymore.

I am building it.

And in doing so, I am becoming someone who belongs in it.

© Axelle Ahanhanzo, 2026. Please do not reproduce without permission and attribution

Three days after the BAFTAs, I've read enough takes on John Davidson shouting the n-word to know that almost all of them are missing something.

It was not until I saw a video of Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu — anti-racism activist and someone I respect — dismiss Tourette’s as an explanation for what happened that I felt compelled to respond.

“John Davidson is a racist white man with Tourette’s syndrome. […] Tourette’s syndrome is a disability. Disability is not racism and it does not make you racist. The Tourette’s syndrome simply brings out what is already in the heart, mind, and soul of the person speaking.

Because as a man thinketh, so is he.

The [n-word] is not a Tourette’s syndrome condition. It is a racist condition. That word is in John Davidson’s bank of vocabulary. And all the Tourette’s did was bring it out. Oh, I know what it’s like to have intrusive thoughts. But the moment those intrusive thoughts become actions or words, the impact is real.

For those of you willful and willful ignoramuses out there, racism does not require intent to be racist. It doesn’t matter if you meant to be racist, you did it with depraved indifference, or it happened because you have a disability. The racial impact on black people as they watched Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo be racially abused on the global stage was instant. Because we all knew exactly what they were thinking, what they were feeling, why they switched and kept on moving. We knew what it was. We were in that moment with them. That impact is freaking racism.”

Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu Instagram (@sholamos1)

Dr. Shola is not an outlier. Her response reflects a broader failure in public discourse: our collective inability to hold multiple forms of marginalisation at once. Calling out one form of oppression while negating another isn’t activism. It’s the same single-axis thinking that has always left the most complex identities behind.

Worse, in denouncing racism at the BAFTAs as she did, Dr. Shola’s argument quickly turned into ableism when she claimed authority on the lived experiences of a disability that she doesn’t have.

“Tourette’s syndrome simply brings out what is already in the heart, mind, and soul of the person speaking. […] I know what it’s like to have intrusive thoughts.”

No, you don’t, Shola.

How many times have neurodivergent and disabled people been on the receiving end of the classic ableist move: 'I experience something similar, and I manage just fine — so why can't you?'

Yes, John Davidson is a white man in his fifties.

Yes, we can agree that this reality affords him considerable privilege and requires him to have a certain level of responsibility towards racialised communities.

But he is also disabled.

Even as a neurodiversity consultant, I don’t claim expertise on Tourette’s syndrome. But research indicates that many people with this condition have little to no control over their tics, whether verbal or otherwise. Whether John Davidson had full, partial, or no control over his coprolalia — the tic that causes people to shout offensive words — is something none of us can know from the outside. That uncertainty alone should give us pause before rushing to judgment. Yes, hearing the N-word shouted in that room was aggravating, and it should have never made it on air. But that anger or scrutiny should be directed at the systems meant to prevent exactly this, not at John Davidson.

Unfortunately, what Dr. Shola did is not a one-off failure.

I see it every day in my DEI workshops. People want to be seen, want their voices to be heard, but rarely extend that instinct to others, defaulting to an “each their own” approach that keeps issues siloed.

One could call this an oversimplification, but for me, this sits in the same realm as white women understanding the pains of gender inequity, whilst actively oppressing historically marginalised racial groups. In the same way, people of African descent are the first to call out racism, but then describe queerness as a danger to moral order, as we’re seeing with the recent adoption of anti-LGBTQIA legislation in Senegal. Or as I see in my own work, disabled people with greater socioeconomic privilege can be just as quick to disregard the healthcare access and support needs of those with fewer resources.

If this pattern is consistent across groups, then how do we become more honest with ourselves about these paradoxes and address public callouts with more nuance?

As historically marginalised communities who know how it feels to be unseen, how do we translate the lived experience of a unique identity mosaic into a compass for navigating and recognising others' struggles?

This isn't an abstract ideal. It has a practical application right here: being able to hold John Davidson accountable for the harm caused, while receiving his apology with compassion — and keeping the conversation about the N-word's impact open, regardless of intent.

Nonetheless, if we’re going to point fingers, then we should point them at the BBC. They should be held accountable, not John Davidson.

The BBC got some things right: they included John at the event, informed the audience of his disability at the start, and even acknowledged the incident.

Alan Cumming addressed it on stage, saying:

“You may have noticed some strong language in the background. This can be part of how Tourette’s syndrome shows up for some people as the film explores that experience […].”

And yet, they failed to redact the live broadcast that had a 2-hour delay, even though it was technically possible. Nor did they hold space for the impact of the slur on Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, and Black viewers and guests.

They took time to briefly educate the audience about Tourette’s, but didn’t rise to the occasion to do so about the impact of racist slurs.

The BBC’s initial response is a symptom of a broader failure: institutions and individuals are still far more comfortable addressing one form of marginalization at a time. Until we build fluency in holding racism and disability in the same frame, moments like this will keep exposing the gap. And the cost will continue to be borne by the very communities we claim to centre.

Am I late to the game, or did Chinese New Year gain more attention on social media this year?
And am I the only one feeling that perhaps we might be culturally appropriating it to some extent?

Chinese New Year, or the so-called Lunar New Year, is traditionally celebrated by Chinese communities around the world and is also observed in several East and Southeast Asian communities, each with its own customs and traditions.

Like many of you, I’ve been seeing posts and videos about the meaning behind the Year of the Fire Horse, as a pivotal part of the 20-year fire cycle we entered nine years ago. And plenty of tips about what not to do before and during the Chinese New Year.

For the first time in my life, in the middle of my search for meaning in what feels like never-ending, unprecedented times, I found myself paying attention.

Perhaps because I related deeply to what the Fire Snake stood for at a time when it felt like I was shedding dead weight and my life was falling apart. And now, as the lunar year closes, the sense of renewal and transformation I’m currently going through feels strangely aligned with the arrival of the Fire Horse.

It had me thinking, intuitively, these Chinese people are certainly on to something, let me lock in.

And before I knew it, I found myself deep cleaning my house, buying mandarins, and meal-prepping ahead of the 17th of February this year, avoiding using knives or scissors to keep bad luck far, far away.

Of course, as I am not Chinese or Asian, I also feel like I should be taking several seats at the back of the room and keeping my opinions on who can and can’t chime in on this celebration to myself.

But in the spirit of externalising my observations of sociocultural phenomena around me—and as someone whose communities are often subject to cultural appropriation, from the mild to the extreme—I felt it was important to unpack the weird feeling I had in my gut when I saw trends like “#BeingChinese” or “First Time Being Chinese” roll in on my Instagram timeline or TikTok For You page.

In one video, I’d see white folks who, just like me, embarked on frantic deep cleaning. In another, a Black woman was showcasing her upgraded mornings “since discovering she is Chinese,” jokingly.

What surprised me even more was seeing Chinese creators themselves post guides on “Being Chinese” that went far beyond Lunar New Year relevance, almost as if they were greenlighting satire from outside their culture. There were warnings against wearing white or black, colours typically associated with death; advice to prioritise red or earthy tones; reminders to drink hot water in the morning; and even tutorials on the proper way to measure water in a rice cooker.

Many of these tips reminded me of the long list of dos and don’ts I get from my Traditional Chinese doctor, which made my guilty giggles even heartier.

And so I thought to myself:

If Chinese people themselves are allowing it, then why am I still feeling some discomfort?

This discomfort reminded me of other moments when a particular ethnic or racial group loosens its boundaries and allows others to play with its cultural markers. It felt like a softer, more digital form of cultural (mis)appropriation.

For instance, you might think of the 2025 “gingers being Black” or “invited to the cookout” trend, which began as a humorous, satirical assertion by Black creators — most notably sparked by @deiaratherootworker—that white gingers are “technically Black” due to shared experiences of being bullied, marginalised, or having unique physical features.

And then how it backfired, because some gingers misread the room and were then accused of performing solidarity and ignoring their own privilege as white people. It ultimately revealed how easily the line between shared experiences and the reality of racial or cultural struggle can become blurred.

And this is where the weird feeling in my stomach finally clicked.

Anticipation.

It was like I was bracing myself for the moment when the tacit boundaries of “a joke” would be breached, regrettably transforming a funny viral trend into racism from one sentence to the next.

This especially matters because it wasn’t long ago, just a few years back during Covid, when anti-Asian racism was at an all-time high, and Asian communities were being harassed, excluded, and attacked in public spaces simply for being perceived as Chinese.

And now, somehow, “being Chinese” has become palatable. A punchline, a trend, and a lifestyle aesthetic for content.

That kind of emotional shift matters.

Are we just going to ignore the reality of anti-Asian racism and suddenly pretend we’re all “united by rice”, as the internet likes to joke?

So then, how and when do we —the people of marginalised ethnic or racial communities — draw these cultural boundaries for ourselves and others?
And how do we reinforce them once the joke that was allowed to exist as humor or satire turns sour?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m usually the first to raise my hand when it comes to building cultural bridges between people in the four corners of the world.

My life has been shaped by them.
My work depends on them.
My politics are rooted in them.

But bridges shouldn’t be costumes.

And lately, it just feels like we don’t know the difference anymore.

I’m speaking about the difference between:

Learning about another culture
Being welcomed into sacred spaces and rituals
Being invited to share such joy

…and then shamelessly occupying space to perform it for content.

And maybe that’s why my stomach felt tight too.

Not because white people were deep-cleaning their houses, either.
Not because we all suddenly started our day sipping hot lemon water.

But because of how we do it.
And whether we do it responsibly, without diminishing the cultural importance of such a celebration.

So maybe the question we should ask ourselves isn’t:
Are we culturally appropriating the Chinese New Year now?

Maybe the question is:

What happens when another culture becomes algorithmic content?

And how do we stay respectful when everything online is designed to be shareable, remixable, and slightly ridiculous?

In theory, curiosity and cultural appreciation can be beautiful.
But we know the internet has a way of quickly turning curiosity into costume.

And costumes, unlike culture, can always be taken off when the trend ends and they’re no longer of socioeconomic value to people.

This essay was written following my recent visit to Benin and my first experience of the Vodun Days. It is not a call to conversion, nor an attempt to claim spiritual authority.

It is a reflection on inherited fear, cultural rupture, and what it means to reclaim proximity to one’s ancestry after generations of erasure shaped by colonialism and exogenous, often Abrahamic, religions.

I write this as someone from the diaspora, raised Catholic, learning, slowly and imperfectly, to replace fear with curiosity, and silence with responsibility.

Inherited Anchors, Inherited Fear

I recently returned from my winterscape to Benin, where I was born but which I left for other horizons at the age of two. Growing up, I had always felt a connection to my country through many anchors my parents passed on to my siblings and me.

From the food on our dinner table.

Sagbohan Daniallo or Gnonnas Pedro songs blasting in the living room.

My parents speaking Fon-gbé to us — a language I often associated with discipline and one that they never truly forced us to talk back to them.

Another anchor was the summers we spent in Benin every two years, visiting family and experiencing what felt like reverse culture shock through everyday life in Cotonou.

Since graduating with my bachelor’s degree in 2015, I have gained more agency in how I return home. I’ve travelled back far more frequently in recent years than during my formative ones, when my parents largely dictated how we spent our holidays, bouncing from one family member’s house to another whilst overprotecting us from what they perceived as a “harmful” external world. There was always something we had to watch out for: where and what we ate and drank. The chaotic traffic of Cotonou. People who might scam us because “we were children from Europe,” further alienating us from a culture that felt both ours and not quite at the same time.

Learning to Fear Vodun

Another salient fear instilled in us was that of Vodun — or any Indigenous spiritual practice — that my parents often associated with so-called charlatanism or witchcraft.

As a child, I remember going to bed shivering on certain nights, my imagination running wild at the sounds I heard in the depths of the night, or at what we were told were Vodun sacrifices or offerings, baskets or remnants left in the streets, which I had learned to read as signs of danger.

Once, after my father’s brother passed without having had children, the extended family on my dad's side, whom we had been taught to fear and avoid, decided that the eldest daughter of my uncle’s sibling would partake in a key part of the traditional send-off ceremony. As you might have guessed, the eldest daughter was me.

Panic ensued within our familial cocoon. A clear decision was made: I would not partake. It was framed as protection against potential harm from ill-intentioned, jealous family members. And besides, how could I participate when we were proud, fervent Catholics?

Through avoidance and quiet rebellion against the traditional order of things, I remember attending a novena with my mom, a Catholic practice in which prayers are repeated over nine consecutive days. These three-hour church assemblies included a segment for testimonials, during which churchgoers would line up to recount extraordinary experiences that priests or preachers often labelled as linked to esoteric practices. I will never forget people coming forward to share their lived experience of snakes that would suffocate them in their nightmares, or of individuals being freed from spells cast by an “evil” family member, co-worker, or neighbour. The room would erupt in fervour, clinging to narratives of good versus evil, and deliverance through prayer and faith in Christ.

To this day, I can’t tell whether it was that novena or sheer luck that led my extended family to ultimately choose a distant cousin in my place, without any friction. What has become clearer with time is not what Vodun was, but how deeply I was taught to fear it and to associate it with evil.

From Spiritual Erasure to Cultural Stereotypes

These negative associations, framing Vodun as primitive, dark, or occult, extend well beyond religious belief into broader cultural stereotypes about Beninese people. It is not uncommon to hear demeaning warnings from other African communities about “marrying a Beninese woman” or to be told not to set foot in Benin because of our supposed mastery of witchcraft or juju.

At the same time, the word Vodun itself has been flattened and distorted through its evolution into several syncretic forms following the Transatlantic slave trade. Across the Americas, spiritual systems carried by enslaved peoples from Benin and Togo merged with other traditions¹, including Roman Catholicism, giving rise to Vodou in Haiti, Vudú in the Dominican Republic, Louisiana Voodoo in the United States, and Candomblé in Brazil.

When I mentioned to a Canadian friend that I was working on this essay, she laughed and immediately referenced the stereotypical doll pierced with needles, crosses drawn over its eyes — imagery she instinctively associated with the word voodoo, courtesy of films and pop culture. Her reaction, however common, reflects how pervasive this image has become: the result of Western historical distortion and colonial imagination that needed African spirituality to remain unintelligible, ungodly, and threatening in order to justify its violent erasure.

Vodun Days

Witnessing the Vodun Days (an annual, multi-day festival in Ouidah, held around January 10th, celebrating Vodun as national cultural heritage) for the first time in my life this year felt like the culmination of a long, quiet journey towards reclaiming my cultural identity on my own terms.

Paradoxically, it also sharpened a familiar distance: being from Benin, yet never fully feeling at home there or anywhere else, for that matter. A feeling shared by many who identify as Third-Culture Kids, and one that has shaped my desire to re-approach my ancestry with curiosity rather than fear.

“Why Have We Not Been Taught This?”

Beyond the pride I felt witnessing the richness and visibility of this culture, there were emotions I hadn’t anticipated. During the official consultation of the Tofâ ceremony held as part of the Vodun Days, my youngest sibling sat beside me. When I turned to look at her, I saw tears streaming down her cheeks and instantly felt a tightness rise in my own chest.

“Why have we not been taught about this for so long?” she asked.

In that moment, we were both overtaken by a heavy mix of shame and anger. Shame, not for having left but for how thoroughly we had learned to turn away. And anger, at having unconsciously absorbed the vilification of Vodun, at having aligned ourselves, in many ways, with the Catholic Church and Western ignorance in the slow erosion of our cultural heritage. Not through malice, but through inheritance.

What Vodun Actually Holds

That night and the following day, we allowed ourselves to be curious. To learn rather than fear. Our jaws dropped at the sheer amount of Vodun (often translated as “spirits” or “deities”) and by what they actually represented. To name a couple:

• Mami Dan (also known as Mami Wata), Vodun of air and marine waters, associated with fertility, continuity, and abundance.

• Sakpata, Vodun of the Earth, linked to health, healing, and protection against illness.

• Hêviosso (or Xèviosso), Vodun of skies, thunder, and lightning, standing for justice, balance, and collective order.

None of them described through fear, but through care, protection, and responsibility.

We were mesmerized by the procession of the shimmering Egunguns — “spirits of our departed ancestors” — and the imposing presence of the Zangbetos, often described as “guardians of the night”, carried forwards by iron bells, layered drums, and call-and-response singing that filled the air, not as a performance, but as a form of communication, more alive than any music I had ever known.

Embodiment Without Policing

Vodunsi are initiated devotees within Vodun traditions.

The term refers to individuals who have undergone initiation and are committed to serving, embodying, and transmitting the knowledge, rituals, and responsibilities associated with specific Vodun.

Watching the Vodunsi move, I was struck by the authority of their bodies. Men, women, and children wrapped in layered cloths, skirts swaying in each step, beads resting against bare chests, headscarves tied with intention. The fabrics moved as much as they did. Greens, reds, and whites, multicoloured patterned symbols catching the light, creating a choreography that felt grounded, fluid, and powerful. There was nothing performative about it. The garments were nothing but extensions of ritual, lineage, and presence.

What lingered with me was how natural it all felt. How unremarkable, even, until I remembered how quickly these same non-binary expressions of adornment and embodiment would be policed outside this space. Removed from their spiritual and cultural context, these male bodies in skirts would likely be subjected to suspicion, ridicule, or homophobic scrutiny. And yet here, they were unquestioned. Held. Revered.

The observation made me smile, painfully. On the one hand, I found what I was witnessing undeniably beautiful. On the other hand, it reminded me that heteronormativity itself is not ancestral, but inherited: shaped through colonial rule and reinforced by Islamic, Christian, or other Abrahamic moral frameworks.

Rupture in Transmission

What I experienced during the Vodun Days did not exist in a vacuum. The distance I had inherited, the fear, the silence, the misunderstanding, is not accidental. It is the result of centuries of disruption.

About six years ago, I was introduced to the work of Senegalese anthropologist Tidiane Ndiaye, in Le Génocide voilé², where he examines the long and often minimised violence that unfolded through the Arab-Muslim slave trade — a system that lasted 900 years longer than the Transatlantic slave trade — and, more broadly, the impact of exogenous systems that did not merely exploit Black African bodies, but dismantled cultures.

Beyond physical domination, Islam and Christianity functioned, in different ways, across different regions as civilising projects that delegitimised Indigenous African knowledge systems, spiritual practices, and social structures. A clear example of this can be found in the work of the Pères Blancs (White Fathers) missionary order, whose evangelising missions across parts of Africa were explicitly tied to cultural assimilation, moral reordering, and the suppression of local belief systems.

What followed was not only religious conversion, but the systematic erosion of ancestral memory, scientific knowledge, cosmologies, and ways of being that had long organised African societies.

In Benin, Vodun survived, but often underground, caricatured or stripped of its spiritual and cultural legitimacy. What I inherited was not ignorance but rupture: a break in transmission.

Less than two years ago, I learned that my paternal grandmother — who passed when my father was six — was a Vodunsi called Nankponutɔ. I was also told recently that the significance of her name related to my paternal great-grandfather giving her some kind of important Vodunsi role in their community, linked to her endogenous name meaning “I will watch [it] for the father” or something along those lines. What I had known since childhood, however, was that she died prematurely, allegedly poisoned by a great-aunt, another figure I was taught to fear. That is all I know about my grandmother. I don’t know what being Vodunsi meant to her, how she embodied this cultural and spiritual intelligence, or how it shaped her life. In many ways, a significant part of my heritage died with her long before I was born.

And this is where the responsibility of the present becomes unavoidable.

Transmission Is a Collective Responsibility

Transmission cannot solely rest on individuals like me “finding their way back” through fragments of familial history, chance encounters, festivals, or personal curiosity. It cannot be the burden of the youth or the diaspora alone, nor of elders whose knowledge has long been marginalised. If cultural heritage is to survive beyond symbolism, it must be upheld as a collective responsibility — one that operates across systems.

At the individual level, transmission begins with curiosity over fear, and with refusing inherited taboos and shame. At the state level, it requires institutional recognition beyond spectacle: through funding, education, cultural policy, and historical truth-telling. And at the level of wider society, it asks for space: space to remember, to learn, to question, and to pass on what was never meant to disappear.

In this sense, the Beninese Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s recent efforts³ to revalorise Vodun culture offer an concrete example of how these levels can reinforce one another, illustrating how transmission functions as an ecosystem: creating spaces where local communities, younger generations and members of the diaspora, including afrodescendants returning from Brazil and the Carribean, as well as people like me, can reconnect with this part of their cultural heritage, not as folklore, but as shared living knowledge.

Choosing Proximity Over Distance

Reclaiming my cultural identity does not mean practising Vodun, nor does it mean claiming that I do not fully know. It means refusing further erasure. It means choosing proximity over distance. And it means recognising that what was broken through systems cannot be repaired through individual effort alone.

Transmission, after all, is not nostalgia.

It is responsibility.

What I witnessed in Benin was not a return to the past but a reminder that the future still has deeply ingrained roots.

References:

1. West African Vodún. Wikipedia, last accessed 28/01/2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_Vod%C3%BAn.

2. Tidiane N’Diaye (2008). Le génocide voilé : Enquête historique. Paris: Gallimard.

3. “About Us – Vodun Days,” Vodun Days (official site), last accessed 28/01/2026, https://vodundays.bj/en/about-us-vodun-days/

© Axelle Ahanhanzo, 2026. Please do not reproduce without permission and attribution

It’s a scenario that keeps repeating itself.

I’m in front of my computer, ready to join an online meeting or pick up the phone for something scheduled ahead of time.

It’s in my calendar. I triple checked.

I've set reminders to be notified 24 hours, 1 hour, and even 15 minutes before.

In case I forget, I’ve also scheduled an iPhone alarm to ring 5 minutes before the call.

This is how badly I want to be there on time.

And still… I miss it.

How?!

It sounds like a bad dream, but unfortunately, it has happened too often.

All the Alarms in the World, and Still…

I recently missed a meeting with a prospective client, which brought me back to a familiar place of shame and frustration, despite my intention to attend.

I set the aforementioned chain of notifications — yes, even the alarm, 5 minutes before!

But then, after the alarm went off, I thought, “Let me send this super-duper-quick email.” And then bam! Surprise, surprise! I got distracted for 15 minutes…

…until my phone buzzed as I received a LinkedIn message from the prospective client who sent me a message to cancel the rest of our scheduled time:

“Hi Axelle, I'm out of the call again, I didn't see you there. I'm very busy at the moment with all events, so I have taken the time to do something different.”

To which I responded:

Internally, I immediately started spiralling with shame and guilt and frustration with thoughts shooting right and left:

“Crap, crap, crap — not again!”

“They are going to think, I am not taking this seriously.”

“Or perhaps, they will consider that I am unprofessional for not making it to the meeting a second time, although for another reason this time, but still. A second time.”

“I must do everything I can to make up for this and ensure they know this was not intentional.”

This damn, ADHD brain!”

“Now that I have overexplained myself, they will think I am not genuine, because overexplaining can come across as suspicious. Aaargh!”

And the mental gymnastics went on and on and on.

Luckily, I was able to reschedule the call with the client for the following week, and he seemed relatively understanding about it during our fruitful conversation.

And still, missing the meeting affected me in the moment.

Why the Office Helped — Until It Didn’t

In my previous corporate role, before the pandemic, attending meetings on time was easier to manage.

Being in an office meant that the rhythm of others or the environment shaped my day.

Whilst I was in a state of hyperfocus on writing an email to a customer or completing a demanding task, an office buddy would remind me of the meeting I had scheduled with them when I failed to show up in the room we had booked.

Sometimes, it was just the 10,000 distractions and buzzing thoughts generated by a racing brain like mine that disabled me. All this despite having things blocked in my calendar religiously. OK fine — I'll admit it — at least 90% of the time!

Then there were the recurrent team meetings where colleagues would physically get up, and at the same time, I would be reminded that I had somewhere to be.

And even in such a scenario, I would sometimes become so deeply immersed in my task that someone had to come and tap me on the shoulder, often leading to an abrupt disruption to the “flow state” I was in, triggering another vicious cycle.

Living in a World That Runs on Time, with an ADHD Brain That Doesn’t

Ironically, while being my own boss grants me a lot of freedom in scheduling my day-to-day activities, working solo and primarily from the comfort of my home throws my sense of time into chaos.

Despite everything I know about my ADHD, how time agnosia and hyperfocus play with my brain, the shame of feeling and coming across"irresponsible" or "unprofessional" creeps in every time.

Luckily, the 2025 version of me — healing, more self-aware, and officially diagnosed with ADHD — found a way to disrupt the shame cycle before it consumed me whole, thanks to this recently gained knowledge.

“Time for Me Is Now, or Not Now”

I now understand how time agnosia works, also known as time blindness, if you prefer to adhere to the less inclusive term.

It isn’t just a “me” or carelessness problem.

Even the American Psychological Association (2013) defines it as:

“An inability to perceive the passage of time usually due to a disorder involving the temporal area of the brain… Individuals are unable to estimate short time intervals and believe long periods to be much shorter than they actually are.”

Or, as many in the ADHD community explain, our distorted perception of time:

“Time for me is either now, or not now”.

Sadly, this gets me into more trouble than missing meetings.

It’s the reason I underestimate how long it takes to complete tasks, catch a flight, get from any point A to any point B, or worse, forget I had something cooking in the kitchen.

It’s the reason I work for 12 hours straight without noticing the sun has gone down, only to realize I forgot to eat.

And don’t get me started about the amount of money I’ve lost as a result of this so-called “ADHD Tax” I regularly pay as a result of my challenges with time management.

Executive Dysfunction Is Invisible, But Real

My inability to perceive time as the social norms (neuronormativity) expect is entirely part of my spectrum of executive dysfunction, which, whilst invisible, qualifies me as a disabled person.

“Executive dysfunction is a behavioral symptom that disrupts a person’s ability to manage their own thoughts, emotions and actions. It’s most common with certain mental health conditions, especially addictions, behavioral disorders, brain development disorders and mood disorders.” - Cleveland Clinic (retrieved May 2025)

And yet, it is the same brain that grants me the ability to hyperfocus and exist in a parallel timezone that also functions as an edge when it works in my favor.

The only problem with this “gift” is that I don't have an on/off switch for it, so it can quickly become tricky, not just neurologically and cognitively, but also physically.

Being neurodivergent feels like I am living in constant contradiction with the world and myself. It’s like I’m in a lifelong obstacle course that is designed for me to fail.

When You Are the Brand, Even Your Brain Is on Display

My mental health would say I shouldn’t care about how I am perceived, but I do.

Why?

The hard truth is that I don’t live alone in this world, and in fact, my therapists say I care too much about how my behaviour and actions impact others.

My conscience keeps me up at night for this specific reason. No matter how unintentional it is, I don’t want to be disrespectful to how someone prioritises making time for me.

Additionally, I run a business. I am the face of my Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agency, LAUDACE, and when I don’t show up, it's not just my reputation at stake; it reflects on the entire brand.

Being known as “Little Miss Always Late” isn’t how I want to be remembered, especially not as the entrepreneur who is seen as careless with someone else’s time.

“Je me fais violence” or Surviving in a Neurotypical World

Our neuronormative society rarely makes room for gaping differences in how our brains function.

Either you fit the box, or you break yourself trying.

An ADHDer I used to know often said something that first puzzled me and later made me laugh :

“Je me fais violence.”

A very French way to describe inner resistance and effort, which in its literal form means “I inflict violence on myself” — or, closer to its actual meaning, “I force myself to do something that feels unnatural, uncomfortable, and against my instinct”.

The word violence being used here, to depict the bridge we desperately built between our brains and the world's expectations, speaks volumes about what this ADHD-meets-real-life marathon demands from us.

I, too, have been applying violence, or if you may, various coping strategies to hack my brain.

• Creating a manageable daily routine, including frequent breaks

• Setting multiple alarms and layered calendar reminders

• Blocking downtime in my Bullet Journal to avoid back-to-back spirals

• Meditating daily to anchor myself (…I try, okay!)

• Proactively asking folks to call or text me if I don’t show up

Still, all of this requires a lot of effort from me, which in itself is an added workload for my brain, contributing to chronic fatigue or burnout.

I have had to forcibly teach myself how to reach this point, with a brain that craves novelty, despises routine, responds to urgency like a firefighter, struggles to grasp the purpose of habits, and is unable to power down fully — not even in sleep, as MRI scans of ADHD brains have shown.

But how do I explain this to a world that judges me based on how well I follow the tick of a clock, whilst my brain acts like a slippery tightrope walker?

How can I fully show up as myself, Axelle, the neurodivergent, and Axelle, the entrepreneur, without my reality being dismissed?

Reparenting the Part of Me That Meant No Harm

People don’t always vocalise or think such things about me, but enough have in the past for it to become a form of complex trauma. But trauma creates deeply ingrained patterns, narratives in our minds that are tough to change.

I don’t want to keep apologizing for things I didn’t mean to miss.

I don’t want to keep masking or overexplaining because someone thinks I'm lazy or flaky.

This post isn’t about making excuses, it’s about naming what's true.

Because for every meeting I miss, there are dozens I do show up to.

And heck! Sometimes, breathless, sweating, and joining at the last second, but I made it, time and time again.

Until we get to a more neuroinclusive and accommodating world, I will continue to reparent the child in me who didn’t know she had a brain that functions atypically for 28 years, the child who wasn’t believed when she said “I didn’t mean to be late,” or “I promise, I don’t know how this happened, again”.

And I will rewrite the harmful narratives I accumulated about myself, with more self-compassion and kindness.

If this resonates with you or someone you love with a brain like mine, I hope this post brings a little relief.

A little recognition.

A little less shame.

See it as your reminder that we are doing the best we can.

And on most days, that’s a whole lot more than people give us credit for.

Netflix's Adolescence isn't just a crime drama. It's a searing lens on toxic masculinity, male rage, and how patriarchy hurts everyone. Here's why we must save boys to save us all.

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t go further if you haven’t watched Adolescence yet. If you don’t care to be spoiled, be my guest and scroll away, but make sure you watch it.

It wasn’t Adolescence alone that punched me in the gut — it was the patriarchal violence beneath it that shook me to my core.

While the Netflix buzz caught my attention, this post isn’t a review of the British crime drama, where 13-year-old Jamie is arrested for his classmate’s murder. Instead of fueling counter-rage against toxic masculinity, I found myself wondering about its roots — and how we might save boys and men from the system that harms them too.

There’s no direct link between the plot of Adolescence and my personal life. Yet watching it forced me to confront my own survival of gender-based violence, both public and private. Like many women and others vulnerable to toxic masculinity, I’ve witnessed its destructiveness firsthand — and been marked by the misogyny and violence it breeds.

Having lived with trauma since childhood, I often turn to bibliotherapy — using books to make sense of what harmed me and to reclaim my power. Just weeks before Adolescence aired, recent experiences with domestic violence had already led me to dust off The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks, from my shelves.

Hooks’ powerful critique of how patriarchy traps men in pain made Adolescence resonate even more deeply. It helped me unravel the patriarchal mechanisms that could drive a young boy to kill his classmate — and gave me hope that collective healing is still within reach.

What makes a man, a man?

It is impossible to truly understand Adolescence without unpacking how gender is constructed, and what would push an adolescent boy to murder Katie, an adolescent girl.

The Making of a Man: How Patriarchy Scripts Boyhood

PSYCHOLOGIST: I also wrote down that I wanted to talk to you about what being a man feel like.

JAMIE: You want a cock and balls, do ya?

PSYCHOLOGIST: I'm interested in what being a man feels like for you.

JAMIE: I dunno.

PSYCHOLOGIST: It's too big a question for you, right? And the fight is too small a question.

- “Episode 3”, Adolescence, Netflix (2025)

In my favorite episode of Adolescence, the woman psychologist interviews Jamie, challenging him to define what being a man means. Jamie can recite the biological markers of manhood (literally, "a cock and balls") with a certain arrogance — but when it comes to expressing what manhood feels like, he recoils, as if the question exposes a vulnerability he has no language for.

Yet throughout the series, fragments reveal Jamie’s patriarchal understanding of boyhood: his frustration over his limited sports skills, his swift rejection of homosexuality, his affirmation of heteronormative desire, and, most tellingly, how he exerts power over girls and even grown women — using masculinity both as entitlement and social currency.

Boys and men are not inherently different from the rest of us; they are also products of their environments.

Like many boys, Jamie forged his identity by observing, internalizing, and replicating the behaviors of his in-group — the men he identified with — while seeing women as an out-group. This socialization was further deepened by exposure to inceldom and the manosphere, spaces that glorify domination over women and weaker men.

What divides us are the gendered norms and social conditions that shape beliefs and allow toxic masculinity to fester.

How we make sense of gender — and how we perceive others, and are perceived in return — becomes a compass that governs belonging and exclusion.

It was precisely because Jamie saw himself in the manosphere’s beliefs about the opposite sex — and sought belonging there — that he reinforced the adoption of toxic masculinity.

Masculinity, Belonging, and the Weaponization of Power

To be a "real man" and reclaim his manhood, Jamie had to assert dominance over the classmate who rejected his manosphere-infused advances — a public humiliation he couldn't tolerate. Her refusal to be a passive, docile damsel in distress ultimately made her a target in a culture that already slut-shamed her. For that, she paid the ultimate price.

Because how dare a woman claim ownership of her body? How dare she put a man in his place and hold him accountable for his actions?

In The Will to Change, bell hooks articulates a reality I have seen and felt too clearly:

That patriarchal masculinity conditions men to equate power with dominance and intimacy with weakness. Boys are taught that real men dominate — they do not feel. They are socialized to fear vulnerability, mask pain with anger or silence, struggle to express love and care, and seek validation, especially from their male in-group, through control, sex, or violence.

Jamie’s sensemaking of manhood reflected this conditioning: any defiance from a "lesser" gender — women — had to be corrected or tamed. Dominance and violence became his tools, both to assert belonging and to restore his fragile status after Katie’s rejection.

In this logic, Katie’s rejection and Jade’s resistance were met not with understanding, but with punishment — a reflection of how patriarchy teaches boys that a woman’s autonomy is an attack on their worth.

For Jamie and many boys raised in similar misogynistic ecosystems, inceldom offered a distorted sense of belonging. Framing themselves as victims, young boys and incel men are taught that masculinity must be earned — not through emotional integrity, but by overpowering others (hooks, 2004).

The Cost of Defiance: Girlhood Under Patriarchy

As someone raised as a girl, I became acutely aware, from a young age, of how differently boys and girls are socialized — and how those differences shape our sense of self, belonging, and the way the world treats us.

Boys are taught to assert, lead, and dominate. Girls are expected to obey, nurture, and shrink. Not to excuse harm, as Jamie committed, but to name the root: a patriarchal ethos that rewards dominance in boys and punishes resistance in girls. Like many others, I learned the cost of defying these expectations early.

From childhood, I was a girl who refused to play by patriarchal rules. I was constantly punished for what I saw as hypocrisy: boys like Bob and Tom were praised or ignored for the same behavior I was shamed for.

I unintentionally became a social pariah, a threat not only to men but also to women and girls who enforced patriarchal norms. My existence was a loud, unwavering no to the command: "sois femme et tais-toi" ("be a woman and stay silent.") Like Katie, I refused to adhere to it.

During adolescence, boys sometimes assaulted or fought me simply because I refused to shrink, bow, or play small.

Boys were allowed to be angry, blunt, competitive, and assertive—but not me. Boys were expected to play football, but when I outplayed most of them, I bruised too many egos and was labeled a tomboy or "too masculine." Boys could challenge, refuse passivity, and push boundaries; when I did the same, I was called difficult, confrontational, and even aggressive.

At fifteen, a female classmate once told me that the reason I didn’t have a boyfriend was because I was “too muscular for a girl,” criticizing my athletic body and warning that men would "fear" me.

And yet, I could just as easily cry like a girl, dress like a girl, sing in the choir, and love Barbie playdates like the other girls.

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I fully understood how deeply gender shaped my place in the world — and how my androgynous defiance carried a heavy cost.

I came to understand how rigid gender rules had systematically ostracized me for refusing to fall in line.

As a 32-year-old woman, I still face these double standards.

Black Girls Were Never Allowed to Be Children

As I began to explore the deeper layers of my identity, especially through the lens of misogyny against Black women and girls, it became clear why the world seemed intent on choking my gender expression.

I was not just seen as an indocile girl; I was perceived as a more significant threat: the Angry Black Woman.

Tellingly, in Adolescence, it was hard to ignore that, unlike Jade—Katie's best friend—the other women characters were portrayed as nonviolent, passive, and subservient.

Jade, by contrast, was depicted as emotionally reactive. Her anger was scrutinized, her grief dismissed. She was framed as the archetypal Angry Black Girl: accused of acting out, questioned for being "so aggressive," and expected to reason calmly, even in the face of trauma.

While someone needed to challenge this toxic masculinity head-on, it was painful that the only woman who exerted physical violence was a Black girl.

This portrayal exposes how patriarchal and racist biases compound the burden on Black women and girls, forcing us into isolation, strength, and self-reliance, because no one else will dare challenge injustice on our behalf.

Jade’s adultification and isolation mirrored my own: how my Black girlhood was misread as more masculine or hardened, and how often patriarchal thinking dismissed my pain, silenced my experiences, and attempted to discredit my power, leadership, and sense of self.

Male Rage and the Price of Emotional Suppression

Let this be clear:

We should all be alarmed that a 13-year-old boy would resort to murder to express his shame, pain, or anger.

Adolescence exposes toxic masculinity by showing how characters either express — or more often, suppress — their emotions.

Emotions, whether joyful or painful, are natural responses to experience: from smiling with happiness to flipping a chair in frustration.

But while everyone feels, not everyone is taught how to handle emotions.

From an early age, boys and girls are socialized differently, leading to profoundly divergent emotional outcomes.

When Boys Are Taught to Numb, Not Feel

bell hooks argues that even "the most passive, kind, quiet man" can be driven to violence if the seeds of patriarchal thinking are planted early, beginning in childhood, when boys are taught that violence defines a "real man."

Patriarchal culture devalues boys' emotional development from the very start.

From early on, patriarchal culture teaches boys that vulnerability is weakness. Boys are praised for stoicism, women mocked for feeling, and in the process, boys lose touch with their own humanity.

Emotional shutdown doesn’t just damage men's ability to connect — it disconnects them from their humanity.

Over time, emotional incompetence hardens into a fragile, volatile form of masculinity — one that pushes boys and men toward violence against anyone perceived as "other": women, queer folk, or even other men.

It’s a pattern that extends far beyond the incel forums or the manosphere. It plays out in politics, workplaces, homes, and relationships across every layer of society.

Ultimately, the emotional neglect boys endure leaves them searching for belonging in broken places — spaces where dominance is rewarded, and violence becomes a misguided way to reclaim their sense of self.

When Boys Are Taught to Break Themselves First

FATHER: Did I give him that?

MOTHER: No. But I think sometimes we should have stopped it. Seen it and stopped it.

FATHER: […] It’s not ourselves. We cannot blame ourselves.

MOTHER: But we made him, didn’t we?

FATHER: When I was his age my dad used to fucking batter me. Sometimes he'd take the belt at me and he’d fucking whack me and he’d whack me. And I promised myself, I said “ When I have my own kids, I’d never do that.” I'd never do that to my kids. And I didn’t, did I? I just wanted to be better. But am I? Am I better?

MOTHER: You tried to be.

FATHER: I took him to footy, didn’t I? ‘Cause I thought it'd toughen him up. No but he was crap. So they just stuck him in goal. And I just stood there on the side of the pitch while all the other dads were laughing at him. And I could feel him looking at me. And I couldn't look at him, Mand. I couldn't look at me own boy.

MOTHER: He idolised you.

“Episode 4” - Adolescence

What becomes painfully evident throughout Adolescence is that young boys are not only groomed into emotional incompetence — this wound deepens and hardens with age.

Nearly every adult male character in the series bears the scars of emotional deprivation so visibly that it corrodes their ability to nurture, connect, or even protect their children.

It showed up in Jamie’s father, who mistook "toughening up" for preparing his son for the world, only to pass down the very wounds he swore he'd never inflict.

It showed up in the lead detective, who responded to his own son’s distress not with care, but avoidance — or worse, by slamming him against a wall, unable to recognize his son’s need for connection under the guise of "helping" solve Katie’s murder.

It showed up when Jamie’s father, humiliated after discovering vandalism on his car, hurled a boy off his bicycle and splattered black paint in a public tantrum. At the same time, his wife and daughter froze silently beside him.

It showed up in the emotionally absent history teacher.

In the adults who shouted at children instead of listening.

In everyday moments, anger was met with more anger, and care was nowhere to be found.

Every one of these moments — each act of numbness, violence, and emotional shutdown — is the offspring of patriarchal conditioning.

Patriarchy doesn't just rob boys of their emotions — it robs them of their capacity to be whole.

I’ve seen this ritual of emotional erasure up close — in the boys silenced on playgrounds, the men exploding in boardrooms, and the boys-turned-men who carried rage like an inheritance.

Over time, the mandate to suppress vulnerability calcifies into a brittle masculinity that can only survive by exerting power over others.

It tells them that dominance is dignity.

That anger is the only acceptable expression of hurt.

That needing love makes them weak.

And when that fragile masculinity inevitably cracks — under the unbearable weight of rejection, shame, humiliation, or grief — violence rushes in to fill the void.

If boys are socialized to numb rather than navigate their emotions, if they are praised for cruelty and punished for softness, the violence we see in Jamie isn't a tragic anomaly — it’s the logical outcome of a system engineered to break them from the inside out.

It’s not enough to raise boys who don’t kill.

We must raise boys who can survive their own hearts without harming others.

We must dare to build a world where masculinity is no longer a wound, but a bridge back to our shared humanity.

Male Rage as a Man-Made Prison

CAMERA ROOM GUY: People hide so much. I know I don't need to tell you this, but… they hide so much. Maybe they tell the truth with their bodies, you know?
— Episode 3, Adolescence (Netflix, 2025)

As unsettling as the camera room creep was, he made a striking observation:

Our bodies—and our emotions—always tell a story.

Learning to read that story, instead of suppressing it, is a crucial step toward healing.

If we want to understand male rage truly, we must stop treating it as random or senseless.

Male rage is not spontaneous — it is by design. It is engineered.

It is the product of years of emotional suppression, cultural reward for dominance, and social shame around vulnerability. It is a man-made prison, with no exits unless deliberately constructed.

If you're interested in the psychology of emotions, as I am, you’ll know that anger is a protective emotion. It signals to the body that a boundary has been crossed—that harm, injustice, or unmet needs are present.

Anger itself isn't destructive.

But when it becomes the only acceptable outlet, it mutates.

When boys are taught that sadness, fear, tenderness, and longing are off-limits, they are left with only anger and numbness as survival tools. And anger that festers without understanding doesn't sit quietly — it explodes.

This isn’t to say that only men struggle with distorted emotional expression. I know from experience. Growing up in a home marked by physical discipline and intergenerational trauma, anger was often my default before I was taught another way — before I learned emotions aren’t the enemy, but the road map back to ourselves.

Anger became my armor, especially when fighting to assert boundaries that were constantly threatened, as a woman and as someone living at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities.

Similarly, when left unattended, male rage can become both an act of survival and destruction.

Looking through the cracks in the mask of male rage, I feel a deep sadness. What often masquerades as power is unprocessed pain screaming for an exit.

As bell hooks powerfully illustrates, an idea I’ve witnessed firsthand and portrayed in Adolescence, that no one cares about the seed of rage planted in boys, as long as it remains contained. We abandon boys because their emotional numbing becomes a weaponized resource. Left unchecked, this manufactured anger grows into an exploitable force, one harnessed to uphold “imperialism, hatred, and the oppression of both men and women around the world” (hooks, 2004). She further notes that this makes men "ready-to-use soldiers," willing to fight wars “without demanding that other ways of solving conflict be found” — showing just how far the festering of male anger can reach.

In this light, Adolescence becomes an invitation to view men as co-prisoners of the patriarchal system that chains us all. We must prevent more boys from falling into this trap — and encourage adult men to become actors in the change we urgently need, rather than reduce them to the problem.

Who Will Save Men, If Not Themselves?

In a time when the Gisèle Pelicots among us and global movements like #MeToo and Mexico’s #UnDíaSinNosotras are forcing long-overdue reckonings, it’s easy for patriarchal men to frame women’s empowerment as an attack.

They don't perceive the call for justice as collective liberation, but as a zero-sum game: if women win, men must lose.

And how do many respond?

With more violence.

More hatred.

More desperate clinging to a broken system.

It’s not because women are too loud. It’s not because women are more powerful.

It’s because men are losing unearned power, and realizing that the promises patriarchal masculinity made to them were empty all along, exposing its fragility.

As bell hooks argues, even the fiercest upholders of patriarchy eventually realize that the promises of toxic masculinity—power, dominion, superiority— are impossible to fulfill truly. Worse, they don't satisfy.

And so they act out.

From the Donald Trumps and Andrew Tates who embody toxic masculinity at its climax, to the everyday men who rush to defend themselves with “Not all men,” to which we answer:

Maybe not all men.
But far, far too many men.

Patriarchal masculinity is a cruel ouroboros — a snake devouring itself, a system that eats its children.

It promises boys power, and leaves them emotionally starved.

It promises men respect, and leaves them isolated.

It promises control, and delivers only ruin.

By the time many men realize this, they are in too deep.

They are socially inept, emotionally adrift, unable to regain the childlike joy and emotional innocence they once abandoned.

As hooks so powerfully put it, the path to freedom demands breaking with patriarchal masculinity, an act so identity-shattering that most men would rather suffer in silence than leap into the unknown with courage.

But some do leap.

We must fight to create a world in which that leap is not so rare, in which boys are shown alternatives early enough to save them, and in which vulnerability is no longer a death sentence for their sense of manhood.

Because if we don't show them another way, if we don't model it, name it, and fight for it — who will?

Modelling Vulnerability Or The Courage to Raise Good Men

FATHER: I'm sorry son, I should have done better.

—“Episode 4”, Adolescence, Netflix (2025)

The most beautiful scene in the series is when Jamie’s father enters his son's room and finally lets himself sit with his emotions and cry, crying out the grief, the shame, and the sadness caused by generational trauma and toxic masculinity that helped raise a killer.

Current and future generations of men need better role models — ones who show that emotional vulnerability does not weaken them, and that expanding their emotional spectrum beyond rage makes them more fully human.

Parental figures, educators, and media representations must model an alternative masculinity — one that embraces vulnerability, not rejects it. If boys see that it is safe to feel, to cry, and to be themselves, they can imagine different futures beyond what patriarchy demands of them.

Without the essential contribution of men role-modeling healthy behavior toward themselves and others, the reproduction of toxic masculinity will continue to harm everyone.

We need more examples of men showing boys that feeling is acceptable, a source of strength, and a deeper, more rewarding way to connect with others than they were ever taught.

This task doesn’t fall solely on men. It belongs to all of us who raise, teach, mentor, and love boys and men, women included.

Haven’t women already given enough?

I understand why so many women and feminists, exhausted and enraged, are stepping back — de-centering men entirely and leaving the work of healing to them.

Not all men. But enough to hurt us.

Enough to kill us — even as boys.

It’s unsafe for women out here, and I understand why so many of us are sick and tired of men.

Like the women in the show, I have lived through it too — from sexual violence at work to psychological and emotional abuse at home, trapped by a man imploding from the inside out. I learned to monitor their emotions to keep myself safe.

My body kept score: the moments I was screamed at, inches from my face; the intimidation tactics; the flashes of male rage masking unprocessed fear, pain, and shame.

I recognized myself in the reactions of the psychologist and Jamie’s mother. Both constantly read the emotional volatility of the men around them to survive.

Certain scenes were as fascinating as they were triggering, revealing men's patriarchal entitlement to women's emotional labor — their expectation that we must regulate their feelings to stay safe.

During one interview with Jamie, I froze watching the psychologist’s body language: tightly clasped hands, rigid self-control, refusing to flinch as Jamie raged. She knew any wrong move could escalate him further.

I saw it, too, in Jamie’s mother—her ability to calm her husband's outbursts through practiced silence and submission, despite the fear in her eyes. And her daughter, sitting beside her, had already learned the same survival tactic.

Like them, I emptied my cup to fill someone else's emotional void, believing that offering love and compassion could save them.

Survival demanded constant adaptation — from fighting to fawning.

But it cost me.

It cost me my health.

It cost me my sanity.

It cost me my sense of self.

Most importantly, it taught me the rule of thumb:

You cannot save someone who doesn't want to be saved.

You cannot save a grown man who refuses to do the work to heal.

And still, I do not believe in forsaking men.

Nor can I accept leaving the younger ones behind.

We must find a way to rally more people — if not all of us — into this mission to save future generations so that they can show up for one another in healthier, more altruistic, community-driven ways.

As the proverb says, if it takes a village, we must all gather under the baobab tree — because collective healing will require collective effort.

But healing requires us to see the whole picture, including how boys, too, have been casualties of patriarchal violence.

bell hooks points out that feminist theory and practice have historically failed to consider boyhood, often identifying males as the enemy, and thereby alienating boys from any chance of rescue from patriarchal chains.

Why?

Because women, including feminists, often unconsciously reproduce patriarchal thinking themselves.

hooks argues that many feminist theorists, even by the early 2000s when The Will to Change was published, hesitated to name patriarchy itself as the true enemy, fearing being labelled too political.

She highlights how many feminist mothers struggled to challenge their sons' adoption of patriarchal values, not out of complicity, but often from a lack of time, resources, or emotional energy to carve alternative models of masculinity.

By blaming men rather than the system, we risk replicating the very patriarchy we seek to dismantle, swallowing its venom and perpetuating its logic, even as it poisons us all.

After all, patriarchy rewards women, too. Just far less than it rewards men.

Why Dismantling Patriarchy Can’t Wait

The limited series has sparked a social debate that has already reached UK politics. It could lead to real change or, more somberly, become yet another cycle of performative action.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, after watching Adolescence with his teenage children, voiced concern about the “abhorrent […] growing problem” of violence against girls. In response, the UK plans to update Relationships, Health, and Sex Education (RHSE) guidance by the end of the school year.

Still, we must proceed carefully: labeling boys as "potential incels" risks fueling fresh waves of stigma and violence, particularly against marginalized groups.

And we must ask: why did it take a fictional series to ignite political action, when the brutal murder of Elianne Andam by 17-year-old Hassan Sentamu, and so many other real tragedies, failed to stir public consciousness to the same degree?

As long as we continue to misunderstand patriarchy as anti-maleness and hesitate to name patriarchy itself as the true root of toxic masculinity, no amount of educating boys or fostering better role models will be enough.

The significance of Adolescence must not end with media thinkpieces or one-off modules for schoolchildren. We must fight the continuum of toxic masculinity wherever it festers — and wherever patriarchal, capitalist, fascist, and genocidal violence continues to destroy innocent lives.

Dismantling patriarchy is not a favor to women.

It’s a rescue mission for humanity.

And it starts now.

So, let’s get to work.

References:

BBC News. (2025, March 13). Teenager jailed for life for Elianne Andam murder. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg8ly1wr8ro

Epstein, R., Blake, J. J., & González, T. (2017). Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood. Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality.

hooks, b. (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York, NY: Atria Books.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

“When will we move past performative initiatives that conveniently align with the corporate events calendar?” - I sigh.

One might call me negative or perceive that I expect too much from individuals, advocates, and decision-makers to create more neuroinclusive workplaces and society. But, through the lens of my lived experiences, I am filled with immense grief, knowing that this content avalanche will soon settle down - just in time for the next hot date on the calendar. And neurodivergent people like me? We will be sent to the back of the room, left to deal with ableism, exclusion, and systemic neglect once again.

The Problem with “Celebration”

The word “celebration” comes from the Latin celebrare, meaning “to honor, to observe, to perform with solemn rites.” Over time, the concept has evolved to encompass joyful gatherings, commemorations, and rituals—in both religious and secular contexts.

But here’s the thing: what are we celebrating, exactly?

Perhaps it’s my autistic tendency to analyze words deeply. Or the inner burn I feel when people don’t call a cat, a cat. Still, I can’t help but question the alienating nature of the word “celebration” for many neurodivergent people. How can we celebrate neurodiversity when the day-to-day reality for many neurodivergent people is anything but celebratory?

I sometimes fear that Neurodiversity Celebration Week eerily resembles International Women’s Day. This feel-good marketing joy allows organizations to pat themselves on the back without committing to real change. In their defense, the eponymous organization behind this annual initiative, held in March, states that its goal is to “challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about neurological differences,” recognize the talent of neurodivergent individuals, and transform how neurodivergent folk are perceived and supported in education, workplaces, and beyond.

Whilst celebration is essential in measuring the impact of social progress, it does not feed us, employ us, or protect us from discrimination. In other words, our good intentions are not enough.

Beyond Celebration: The Reality of Neurodivergent Struggle

No matter how far the conversation around neurodivergence and neurodiversity has reached in the past years, primarily since the wave of late ADHD and Autism diagnoses post-COVID, my neurodivergence remains a disability in a world that continues to disempower me.

One of the many reasons I became more involved in my social justice advocacy in 2020 was because, through the lens of my Black womanhood, I felt the weight of performative actions and exclusionary practices—at work, in social circles, and in everyday interactions. Far too many obstacles stood in my way, shaping how I navigated education, employment, and community spaces.

Then came my C-PTSD and AuDHD late diagnoses—which only compounded these struggles and further propelled me into my life’s mission.

To be completely transparent, for the past months, my neurodivergence has not felt like something to celebrate. Instead, it has been a stinging reminder of the constant sense of failure in an invisible contest where my brain is not built for the rules of the game—a game designed for conformity that I was never meant to play.

But beyond that, it has also been a reminder of the co-occurring conditions that make existing in a neuronormative world an ongoing struggle:

• Depression and masking—an endless battle to adjust, shrink, or suppress parts of myself to fit neuronormative expectations and be deemed “professional” or “socially acceptable.”

• Chronic fatigue while building a business—the seemingly impossible balancing act of entrepreneurship and building LAUDACE, managing my mental health, prioritizing self-care, and maintaining a social life. All while constantly proving my worth in a system that undervalues or profits from neurodivergent labor.

Not to shock you, but from being systematically misunderstood in social interactions to repeatedly feeling disempowered by autistic burnout, the weight of my neurodivergence often makes me want to scream my guts out.

Yes, long, visceral screams. Screams that could pierce the void of the inadequate support, accommodations, allyship, and community we so urgently require.

Because what is a celebration when the structures around me demand that I mask, shrink, and suffer to survive?

Celebration That Ignores Systemic Barriers

How can I celebrate when neurodivergent people continue to face discrimination in employment, healthcare, and education?

• When companies post about neurodivergent strengths while refusing to hire, promote, or accommodate us?

• When doctors gaslight, misdiagnose, or ignore our medical concerns?

• When access to mental healthcare is a privilege, not a right, and getting a diagnosis is a costly, lengthy bureaucratic battle?

Neurodivergent people remain economically vulnerable, disproportionately underpaid, unemployed, and unsupported in the workplace and healthcare. Celebration is meaningless if we cannot survive or thrive in the systems built without us in mind.

Where Do Black Neurodivergent Women Fit?

How can I celebrate when my Black womanhood is repeatedly erased from the neurodiversity conversation?

• When neurodivergent advocacy centers white, middle-class experiences, ignoring how race, gender, and class shape our realities?

• When Black Autistic women are underdiagnosed, dismissed as “difficult,” and forced to mask to survive?

• When misogynoir, classism, and racism amplify the challenges of being neurodivergent, yet intersectional experiences remain an afterthought?

For many of us, neurodivergence is not just a cognitive difference—it is a battleground where multiple forms of oppression collide.

When Mental Health Is a Commodity

How can I celebrate when mental healthcare itself is an industrial complex rooted in capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy?

• When therapy, medication, and accommodations remain out of reach for those who cannot afford them?

• When late-diagnosed adults are left to navigate their neurodivergence alone, without adequate support?

• When capitalist work culture continues to punish neurodivergent traits—treating sensory sensitivity, time blindness, skill regression, and executive dysfunction as personal failings rather than evidence of an inaccessible system?

Our material realities must change to celebrate neurodiversity fully.

A Saneist, Marketable Version of Neurodivergence

How can I celebrate when neurodivergence is made palatable only when it benefits the status quo?

• When Autism is acceptable only when it fits the “quirky genius” stereotype?

• When ADHD is repackaged as fun, spontaneous energy rather than the debilitating executive dysfunction it often entails?

• When the very real struggles of alarming suicide rates, burnout, and economic marginalization are conveniently erased from corporate neurodiversity narratives?

Unfortunately, the dominant neurodiversity narrative is too often inequitable, whitewashed, sanitized, and commodified—ignoring those who do not fit the marketable mold.

Empowerment, Not Just Celebration

None of the above is to say that there is nothing to celebrate about the incredible diversity of brain wiring, ways of thinking, communicating, and being in this world, nor that there is nothing to celebrate about being neurodivergent. I have had moments of deep joy and pride in discovering my own neurodivergence—embracing my creativity, nonlinear way of thinking, incredible stamina on the good days, and the neurokinship I’ve built with others like me.

But true empowerment goes beyond celebration.

• Empowering neurodiversity means actively dismantling ableist, neuronormative systems—systems that tell us who is valuable and who is not.

• Empowering neurodivergent people means creating real policies, legal protections, and systemic reforms that allow us to thrive.

• Empowerment is intersectional. It demands that we create space not only for the “acceptable” neurodivergent voices but also for those who are erased—non-white neurodivergents, those with conditions like BPD, Tourette’s, NPD, and other lesser-sensationalized neurotypes.

Because what is a celebration without actionable change?

Final Thoughts: A Call to Be More Critical

Neurodiversity celebration without intersectional, non-performative empowerment will always be a definite nay for me.

However, a revolution takes many paths. I acknowledge that some individuals, educators, and changemakers are trying to create change in their unique ways. I commend them because isn’t that the power of our neurodiversity itself?

As a challenge, the next time you see an organisation or community posting about Neurodiversity Celebration Week and if it is safe for you to do so, I encourage you to ask them:

• What policies have you changed to support neurodivergent folk year-round?

• What steps have you taken to ensure marginalized neurodivergent voices are heard?

• Are you just celebrating—or are you actively dismantling the systems that oppress us?

Until we have tangible answers to these questions, celebration alone is not enough.

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Hi, I’m Axelle Ahanhanzo, an ex-corporate rebel turned Social Impact and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Changemaker. Behind the Scenes of Belonging is a shared space where I make sense of the world—the one I live in, the one I am forced to navigate, and the one I am trying to change. Exploring identity, justice, and lived experiences, I write about the value of belonging through raw storytelling, social critique, and an unapologetic lens.

Why this, why now?

Over the past few years, I’ve wrestled with the weight of my mosaic of identities—as a millennial, middle-class Black woman, a neurodivergent entrepreneur, and a forever immigrant navigating spaces never built for me. I’ve faced chronic burnout, discrimination, gender-based violence, medical gaslighting, corporate politics, and systemic barriers that made me question the very meaning of belonging. All this led me to May 2023, when I launched my Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agency, LAUDACE, to help create a future-proof society where everyone belongs.

Since then, I have used my lived experiences and expertise to empower communities and global organizations like Google, WeTransfer, L’Oréal, and Coalition PLUS by providing strategic guidance, impactful workshops, and thought-provoking keynotes. I frequently host open-to-all listening circles through the Courageous Conversations Series in Amsterdam, creating space for accessible, critical, and reflective dialogue on social issues. I also creatively directed the LAUDACE Flip The Neuro-tive Series, an interview project that reframes the narrative on neurodivergence, amplifying underrepresented voices and lived experiences. In 2024, I was listed in the Financial Times as one of the 50 Women of The Future global Rising Stars in ESG, a testament to my commitment to driving systemic change.

I created this newsletter to get more personal and to go beyond surface-level conversations on identity, social justice, neurodiversity, culture, gender, race, and more. Too often, these discussions feel like preaching to the choir, but what happens when we can expand them far beyond that?

Using my voice, I want to inspire positive change and self-reflection for the people of Planet Earth so that we can genuinely welcome each other home with more open arms. I am intensely interested in and driven by intersectional feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, anti-ableist, and anti-ageist practices and beliefs.

Apart from this, I am a polycurious individual with a gigantic appetite for pondering about human behavior, the Arts, culture, and history. My brain buzzes from learning from others' knowledge, traveling, culture, and everyday human interaction. This leads me to make exciting connections between topics you might not have considered and observe how this shapes our lives.

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This is not just a newsletter. It’s a space for unfiltered reflections, critical thought, and personal storytelling on themes that shape my life. This space is deeply personal but never just about me. It’s about all of us, especially those who live at the margins of belonging. I’m not just writing—I seek to provoke impactful conversations. If these themes resonate with you, I’d love for you to subscribe.

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