It's been awhile since I have talked about myself apart from my work
Usually I share a photo of my face when I share like this but I'm feeling like this risograph print is a fitting portrait of my brain, my values and what I'm about to share
I find it very difficult to share on social media this year because I came to the realization that none of us can ever fully capture the complexity of our lives here in this space. Part of my deepest need is to be understood and I cannot fully show up or share of myself in the ways I want to. Social media requires that we translate or simplify our beingness into tidbits and I don't think this truly captures or honors any essence of life, of grittiness, of real struggle.
I have recently discovered that part of my personal and perhaps life long struggle that I didn't recognize until recently is because I am on the autism spectrum ( thanks to parenting a child that we are finding is also on the autism spectrum)
Part of what makes this difficult is that my whole life my need to somehow fit in has meant that I sensor myself, constantly retranslate, always grasping for words that don't really convey the depth that honors me. I want to be seen. It's likely why making art is so necessary for me.
Each of us is a complex web of organisms, experiences and factors. We exist within constructs and systems that reinforce difference, comparison and competition and it doesn't suit any of us.
What if to truly feel like ourselves we have to treat all beings as tiny but also expansive universes, each of us unique balls of cells but connected in ways we cannot even fully comprehend. We know we, humans don't have the capacity to fully grasp a/ many universe(s) so it might just be we cannot fully understand each other. However we do know that beings( universes) may contain similar or different qualities , interests, opinions and exist together.
I am autistic, I contain multitudes and that's okay because we all do. Let's use that to build new ways of caring and supporting each other in the complicated ways befitting universes