About Vinnie

Vinnie is a white queer Autistic / ADHD PDA

vision impaired, hard of hearing

survivor, storyteller, coach

who creates spaces for

Positive Autistic / Neurodivergent Identity

&

Liberatory Processing.

Her first day of classes in a BFA program at NYU was 9/11.

Subsequently, she was misdiagnosed, drugged in the mental health industry for having an unrecognized, misunderstood disability, highly sensitive neuroception and beautiful life-energy.

After 20 years being “treated” often 4x per week by

therapists, psychiatrists,

in/out of the hospital systems for being different,

a theatre friend identified Vinnie’s Autistic relationship with the world.

A ‘formal’ Autism ‘

‘diagnosis’ followed.

So, too, did life-threatening medical & mental health industry abuse and discrimination.

(Note: Barriers for Autistic identification and working through medical & mental health systems in the US are of significant consequence.

Self-Neurodivergent Identification is welcome here.)

…

Vinnie made their professional theatre debut at age 10

and continued in the Theatre Industry for 30 years

as an unidentified, masked disabled person “trying to make it on Broadway”.

(Like many, trying to regulate their nervous system on a military-like show-schedule).

Her one-person show, Yeah No: Spiritual Recovery for Broadway Chronic-Compulsives, debuts in New York City next year:

A musical-healing experience featuring victims of Autism Industry & Broadway Industry abuse.

…

When families began being formally separated at the US Border,

Vinnie started Team TLC NYC,

a nonprofit that organizes supplies

and coordinates legal & medical support

for asylum-seeking families in New York City.

This work was written about in the book Once I was You by Pulitzer Prize winner Maria Hinojosa;

And the organization continues today.

…

Vinnie was an advocate with The Harriet Tubman Effect Institute, an

Independent Consultant & Advocate

for Broadway’s

How to Dance in Ohio navigating unconscious bias & neurodiverse communication differences, and is an affiliate of

The Alliance Against Seclusion & Restraint.

…

Vinnie is a somatic healer (Siwa Murti).

And in recovery, developed what one teen coined “a laugh you can only come into.”

She lives in New York with her husband, also Autistic, much cooler than she,

and

engages with a hyperfocus on the important — like how your pet is doing.

(Detailed version path to Autism here.)