Artist Submissions – Alexia Pepper De Caires

I long for the time to come; the time we are re-forging as we look closely to each other and the land and the water and all the glorious beings on this planetary atomic mass. The time where neurodiversity and neuroexpansion are reclaimed as essential to our living systems; the time where we are loved and revered for the divine spirits we are. I know there will be a time for us to be embraced again and given space to channel our magical energies.

The strides to this liberated life are long; we are kept company along the way by bursts of colourful connection that gift us beauty, lightness, belonging. I find myself in so many autistic and neurodivergent people’s words, their perspectives ringing truer than my own heartbeat. The heartbeat I only distantly detect in my interoceptive deficit. We ND family often find each other before we find the Western words formulated for us, which are both a blessing and a curse.

My way of being is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) twice, but my being is not disordered or disorderly. I am natural, whole. I am love.

And the words we have yet to write excite me. The flow in how we neurodivergent creatures connect and create fills me with wiggly-fingered joy. We build new spaces because we must. Autistic, ADHD and other boxy containers transform in our mouths to neuroexpansive. Neuroqueer. Neurally diverse.

There is so much love in all of us, as we fight to breathe and thrive. Our liberation is the world’s liberation because we can never truly perform for the chaoses of capitalism. Listen for us… we are already where we all need to be.