I’m not an artist, I am not a human. I am a being playing a role here, I am a pin, a turning point, on a node in a great program. I am placed along people’s paths for a reason, just like other Autistics and sensitive people.

I am placed here in this family of mine to analyze and rearrange the grid for others to learn and grow. I am called to teach others like me who feel lost that they are whole, that they have a lot to offer to themselves and the greater collective.

I am called to teach others how to resist the powers that control and oppress us all. I encourage others who want to follow a liberatory path to place their hand over their heart and acknowledge how fragile they are.

I encourage these people to say over and over, “I am strong, I am fragile.” Feel your heart beating, feel your human body, feel the spirit that resonates within and all around this human body. You are not merely an artist, you are not only a human, you are here for a reason. Awaken your heart. She is scared, but she is ready.

I met a being when I was 19 years old while visiting the Philippines. This was around 2006.

I had experienced a particularly painful moment with my adoptive family. My mother’s side of the family rejected me in a very public, loud manner that shocked me. No one in my family knew that I was disabled because my mother was so ashamed. She allowed people to think that I was just demanding, entitled. I was very sensitive, cried easily because people didn’t understand me. Most of my life I was selective about who I spoke to and how much I spoke. I was nonverbal or delayed in my speech and it took a tremendous amount of skill and fine motor development to speak my mind well. When I cried because they were going to slaughter a pig that I was playing with they interpreted this as selfish, dramatic, entitled, white-washed. I was intuitively connected with the animal and felt shocked, couldn’t hide it as an Autistic person. I was not ignorant about Philippines customs. Later, after the family yelled at me and left me to cry alone, they had a food fight with the dead, cooked pig (lechon). Pig parts were flung around the rest house and I sat in one place, out of place, falling apart inside as I watched my family ignore me for the rest of the time. I felt alone and wished I had my birth family with me. As I cried out for my family, I was initiated.

This moth appeared and died in front of me. It wasn’t simply a sign, it was an initiation, an introduction to a being who had witnessed my pain. The being was feminine, associated with the mind and visions, mourning. I don’t know her actual name— I don’t think the gods have true names. I chose to depict her as Dalikmata (Dalikamata, Daligmata) because of her ties to my motherland and where my birth parents are from. Ever since that time when I was a teenager, moths show up during major changes in my life, landing and dying in front of me. These have been consistent messages, transmissions, that I have received for many years. It is a precious part of my everyday reality. A being also visits to send me messages as I develop my mind, but I believe this is a totally different entity. More on that later.