I am twenty years old and I live in Colorado. I am autistic, and I cannot speak. Writing is my voice.

My body is nicely formed and able to move. My brain is nicely formed, and I can see and hear properly. But my body is unhooked from the brain. It is a constant fight between brain and body.

The special trick I have for living in my body is not doing anything that will upset him. Like being in a cave with a sleeping bear. The slightest noise will awake him and you are doomed. That is how I feel inside my body.

Please imagine for a moment living inside a body that is not truly yours.

My writing is a voice amid a life in silence. My reality is a life without the spoken word. Please don’t feel pity.

I built back after the fire of autism burned everything to the ground, putting in the most important words, one by one. It took me ten years of writing every day to get here.

When I write about myself, I often say ‘we”. I mean myself and my body. We are two. Maybe this way of talking about the body seems strange to you, but it is because you have total control of your body, to the point that you no longer feel the separation between body and self. Good for you.

I write about the human soul, about the urgency of compassion, and about our responsibility to care for the earth and for one another. My message is not of doom but opportunity; it is not despair but empowerment.

We are here to learn and to help others. By receiving help, we become human; by helping others, we become masters. My words are the way I help others in their journey.

This space is not only for reading. It is an invitation to reflect, to respond, to walk together a shared journey of survival, transformation and hope.

We are together not by chance, but by choice.