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What If Your Identity Was the Blueprint, Not the Barrier?
Reclaiming intersectionality as design wisdom, not disruption.
Jarell Bempong
June 04, 2025
“They called it ‘too much.’
Turns out—it was power.”
We are taught to flatten ourselves to fit into systems.
Forms, filters, labels, and gatekeepers tell us:
“You don’t belong unless you simplify.”
But this week, we’re flipping the script.
Because the very identities they tried to edit out of us—
Are the same ones that can rearchitect the world.
🌀 From Bias Detection to Identity Power
Last week, we spiral-audited our systems for bias. We learned how “neutral” language can weaponise exclusion. We named how decision points—hidden deep in HR flows or onboarding forms—can quietly siphon away agency.
But what happens after you spot the bias?
You reclaim your blueprint.
Because what systems try to erase in you…
…is often where your Intersectional Superpowers™ live.
✨ Meet the Tool: Intersectional Power Mapping™
Later in this issue, you’ll be invited to download a spiral-mapping tool.
It doesn’t just name your identities—it charts how they interact with power, risk, visibility, and brilliance.
This is not a personality quiz. It’s a reclamation device.
Designed from the 14D Matrix™ of Identity, this tool helps you surface:
The layers of yourself that are over-exposed, and those that are invisibilised
The access you gain and the insights you carry from your lived intersections
The superpowers you’ve inherited not despite your identity—but because of it
But first—let’s break this all the way open.
🧬 The 14-Dimensional Matrix of You
You’re not just your job title or cultural label.
You are a living network of experiences, risks, thresholds, and resilience codes.
Here are the 14 dimensions you’ll explore in this framework:
Race / Ethnicity
Gender Identity
Sexuality
Age / Generation
Disability / Neurodivergence
Mental Health
Faith / Spiritual Identity
Nationality / Citizenship
Class / Economic Background
Language / Communication Style
Body / Size / Appearance
Family Structure / Parenting Status
Education / Cognitive Style
Political / Social Location
Every one of these holds a signal.
Some offer access. Others carry penalties. All reveal where you’ve had to learn to navigate systems in ways others never have to.
🧠 What Is “System-Sight”?
Let’s define a term I often use: system-sight.
System-sight is the ability to intuitively detect how structures shape experience. It’s a form of perceptual intelligence gained not through theory—but survival.
If you’re trans and constantly navigating misgendering…
If you’re working class in elite spaces…
If you’re neurodivergent and had to decode social nuance just to survive meetings...
You have system-sight.
It’s not paranoia. It’s perception.
And it’s time we name it as a skillset—not a trauma symptom.
🧠 What Is Spiral Thinking?
Another concept I invoke often is spiral thinking.
Unlike linear thought—spiral thinking allows us to:
Revisit the same theme from multiple angles
Hold contradictions (e.g. I’m both brilliant and exhausted)
Integrate identity layers rather than segment them
For neurodivergent, queer, culturally hybrid, or multiply-marginalised people, spiral thinking is often the default—but pathologised.
In reality, it’s how we hold complexity without collapsing.
My Story: From Shame to Spiral Strength
I used to think my dyslexia and SpLD made me broken.
In school, I was the “bright but scattered” one—the student who got the right answer but never showed their working “properly.” The child who asked too many questions. The one whose voice, when heard, felt too passionate, too precise, too poetic—for the rigid boxes it was meant to fit.
But that pattern didn’t end in childhood.
In clinical training, I’d be told:
“You’re very articulate… but just tone it down.”
“Try to be more objective in your analysis.”
And once again, I’d see how “neutrality” was code for “perform whiteness.”
How “professionalism” was code for “disown your brilliance.”
It took decades—and spiral work—to realise:
My dyslexia wasn’t a disorder.
It was a portal.
It let me see patterns others missed.
It taught me how language can both liberate and limit.
It trained me to build therapeutic, spiritual, and systemic models that honour complexity—without collapsing into over-simplification.
This isn’t a disclosure.
It’s a declaration.
💎 Intersectionality Is a Power Source
Too often, intersectionality is framed as a burden. A buzzword. A lens for policy, but not for power.
But here’s what I want you to remember:
Intersectionality is not your liability. It is your leverage.
If you’ve ever:
Had to navigate safety in a room not built for you
Learned to read tone and subtext because words weren’t safe
Translated your culture, body, or truth into “acceptable” formats
Turned erasure into empathy
Transformed scrutiny into storytelling
…then you already hold the technology of Intersectional Power.
🔍 Why We Built the Tool
The Intersectional Power Mapping™ tool was born out of a single question:
What if your identity was your curriculum?
Not the thing you survive—but the thing that taught you:
How to sense structural power
How to read a room
How to design for people like you
This tool invites you to name—not flatten—your identity intersections.
Because what systems bury, you are now called to unearth.
🌿 Your Spiral Prompt (Reflection)
“When has your intersectional identity been your superpower?”
Maybe it was:
Navigating a workplace where you were the only one
Holding space for someone because you’d lived it too
Reframing a crisis using both your logic and your lineage
Refusing to code-switch in a boardroom
Leading from a place the data hadn’t caught up with
Reply to this email. Share your spiral. Your voice is the system redesign.
🌀 Reclaiming the Blueprint – Your Spiral Invitation
When I finally stopped asking “What’s wrong with me?” and started asking “What systems made this feel like a flaw?”, something shifted.
I stopped translating myself into the dominant dialect of acceptability.
I started designing my own lexicon.
And that’s what Intersectional Power Mapping™ invites you to do.
Not just to name your identities.
But to see them as coordinates in a multidimensional grid—one that reveals where you’ve been gaslit and where you’ve been gifted.
Let’s map it out.
🧭 The Intersectional Power Mapping™ Framework
Step 1: Enter the 14-Dimensional Matrix of You
These are the 14 identity fields that make up the Intersectional Majority™. They’re not boxes—they’re portals. They shift, overlap, and ripple through context.
The 14 Dimensions:
Race | Gender | Class | Sexuality | Disability | Neurotype | Age | Faith | Education | Accent | Citizenship | Body Size | Employment Status | Family History
Reflect on each. Then ask:
Which dimensions feel hyper-visible? (i.e. constantly surveilled, judged, or exoticised)
Which feel invisible? (i.e. erased, misread, or assumed)
Which grant conditional access? (i.e. I’m safe as long as I don’t… speak up, dress differently, disclose this…)
Step 2: Layer Systemic Touchpoints
Each identity dimension intersects with systems of power: education, healthcare, housing, employment, justice, and more.
Ask yourself:
Where does my identity collide with institutional barriers?
Where has it granted me insights no textbook could teach?
Where have I been mistaken, underestimated, or over-explained?
Where have I translated for two worlds—and done so unpaid?
Step 3: Plot Your Spiral Strength Points
These are the moments when your identity intersection produced system-sight, cultural fluency, resilience beyond reason, or unseen leadership.
Use these reflection prompts:
When did your “difference” protect someone else?
When did you navigate a system faster, clearer, or more empathetically than those who designed it?
When did you know something others couldn’t feel?
📍 Tip: What the world calls “soft skills” are often superpowers built through systemic friction.
🔄 My Personal Mapping Moment: From SpLD to System Design
As someone with dyslexia and SpLD, I spent most of my academic life battling the assumption that I was slow, messy, or inconsistent.
But dyslexia didn’t just rewire how I saw words—it restructured how I saw systems.
I didn’t think in straight lines.
I thought in spirals.
While others read procedures, I decoded patterns of exclusion.
While others absorbed bias unconsciously, I felt it land viscerally—in how feedback was given, in which voices were heard first, in which “neutral” language codes became silent gatekeepers.
When I created the Bias Detection Tool™, it wasn’t a product of clinical distance.
It was born of lived proximity.
Because if your brain is coded differently…
You see where the code fails others too.
Neurodivergence, for me, has always been a lens of liberation—not a defect to hide.
🌿 From Naming to Ritualising: Spiral Practices for Identity Reclamation
Once you've mapped your identity intersections and system touchpoints, the next step is integration. Here are three ritual tools you can begin using today.
1. The Mirror Rewrite Ritual
Each morning for 7 days, write one sentence that starts with:
“The part of me they called too much is actually…”
Example:
“The part of me they called disorganised is actually a nonlinear pattern tracker.”
Post it near your workspace. Let your truth interrupt your self-surveillance.
2. The Spiral Witnessing Circle
Gather 2–3 trusted people with different intersectional lenses. Share one moment when your identity was used against you—and one moment when it gave you super-sight.
Bear witness. Validate each other’s maps.
This isn't therapy. It’s ritual witnessing.
3. The Power Mapping Wall
Create a physical or digital map of your 14 dimensions. Use symbols or colours to mark:
Red = high risk (historically erased or penalised)
Gold = high brilliance (when it’s fuelled your leadership or clarity)
Blue = misunderstood/misread by systems
You now have your Intersectional Blueprint for Design.
This map doesn’t just tell you who you are.
It tells you what to protect—and where you build from.
📥 Download the Tool
Includes:
14D Identity Matrix Scan™
Systemic Touchpoint Tracker™
Spiral Superpower Journaling Prompts™
Redesign Activation Canvas™
Use it monthly. Use it with teams. Use it in therapy.
Use it when a system tries to shrink you.
Because mapping is a refusal to disappear.
💬 Community Spiral Prompt
When was a time your intersectional identity became your strength?
Was it in the boardroom, the classroom, a family rupture, or your own recovery?
📧 Hit reply and share it.
I’ll feature anonymised stories in next week’s Spiral Community Roundup.
Now that you’ve seen the blueprint—next week, we build the scaffolding.
We ask:
What rituals keep our power from leaking?
What system designs honour our spiral time, sensory needs, and sovereignty?
What infrastructure does resilience actually require?
We move from mapping our power to building rituals that protect it.
I’m Jarell Bempong—intersectional therapist, system designer, and creator of the Spiral Liberation Systems™ suite.
I live with dyslexia and SpLD. And for years, I thought that meant I needed to over-perform, hide, or prove something.
Now I know that my brain’s spiral logic is not a barrier to strategy.
It is the strategy.
The work you’re reading—these tools, maps, and frameworks—are not hypotheticals. They are born from lived thresholds, clinical trenches, AI dialogues, and ancestral memory.
This is not just content. It’s architecture.
If this resonated, let’s connect:
🌀 Because when you spiral your story—you don’t just rewrite it.
You rescript the system it lives in.
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