Jenn is a psychotherapist with a practice in Falls Church, Virginia.  She started her private practice in 2009 as a solo practitioner and expanded to a group practice, Seven Corners Psychotherapy, in 2020.  In 2021, she realized that she is Autistic and that many of her clients over the years have been Autistic.  The path to this realization was one of unlearning and relearning about Autism, about herself, and about the world.  As someone with an already established career as a psychotherapist and play therapist, she shared her journey publicly and began to help other therapists do the necessary unlearning and relearning so that they could support their Autistic clients appropriately.

As Jenn was doing this work, she recognized a missing piece for her clients, her family, and herself.  It was all well and good to use individual therapy to know and understand oneself and feel confidence in being who one is, but then each client returns to a harsh world that still expects conformity.  Even group therapy, while incredibly helpful, is still a closed world.  She began to think about what a wider community might look like. At the same time, she “met” the flightless cormorant - a bird only found in the Galapagos who is cousin to the cormorant, a bird long loved by Jenn.  In her original email to like minded folks who she thought might be interested in helping create the idea that was beginning to form in her mind, she wrote this:

The Flightless Cormorant is a bird found only in the Galapagos. It is related to the Cormorant, a bird found in many places, that is an excellent swimmer partly due to its feathers - which are not waterproof. This means that it needs to sit in the sun and dry its wings after swimming for food, but before being able to fly. For many years I’ve held this bird as an important symbol for me – to remember to rest. Meeting the Flightless Cormorant has created an important shift in me. The Flightless Cormorant still spreads its wings and dries and rests in the sun after swimming, but not in order to fly, but rather just because it feels good. The Flightless Cormorant has found an environment that meets its needs. It no longer has to meet the needs of its environment in order to survive. I think of the Flightless Cormorant in the Galapagos when I think of the community we could create and the people who would be a part of it. 

The email led to a meeting on May 19, 2023 and WING was officially born.  The founding members, present at that meeting, were Jennifer Glacel, Julia Cantone, Tisha Moon, Korrin Saunders, Heather Kirby, Kaitlyn Tiplady, and Cathy Robertson. Each was passionate about being neurodiversity and gender affirming in their own work and the meeting led to an expansive list of community needs.  Over the following months, Jenn, Julia and Tisha worked to create the initial mission, goals, and website that would be the first steps in creating a community in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area that centered neurodivergent folks and provided resources, education and advocacy.  WING was officially created as a business on September 29, 2023 and the website and initial resources launched on 11/15/23.

WING has four core tenets of its work: education, resources, support and community.  WING hopes to meet these in the following ways:

• EDUCATION - trainings for professionals (therapists, doctors, teachers) and family on neurodivergence in general, types of specific neurodivergence (autism, adhd, etc), and being anti-ableist

• RESOURCES - connecting people with neurodiversity affirming professionals and connecting people with neurodiversity affirming and anti-ableist information such as books, articles, trainings offered by others

• COMMUNITY - connecting people with each other through resources, social media, and events such as non-therapeutic book groups

• ADVOCACY - working with businesses and other groups on being neurodiversity affirming and anti-ableist

WING is a local organization for the neurodivergent communities in the Washington DC metro area and hope to partner with other local organizations in other communities as well as national organizations in order to further the work of supporting and centering neurodivergent individuals to help them to thrive.