Bio

Current update 2025

My name is Michelle Drummy and I am a person trying to figure out what’s going on. Other than that, I am a mom of a 3.5 year old toddler who’s been wearing a spiderman costume since Halloween 6 months ago. I am a soon to be ex-wife and coparent of a head chef. I was an art teacher for 15 years, 10 of which I spent with high school boys. I am an artist and use whatever medium suits my mood and goals at the time. I am neurodivergent and what that means is that I’ve been living my whole life with disabilities that affect my ability to be an adult in society’s eyes, but I didn’t know until I received my diagnosis of ADHD at age 21 and Autism at age 34. Despite holding the title of overachiever and being good at school, nothing has been easy for me as I imagine it’s been for most of those like me. After reaching an intense state of autistic burnout in 2024 (building since my son was born), I needed to take drastic action to recover. So I quit my job after separating from my husband and took a couple trips to find myself.

During those trips, I stayed at several airbnbs and hotels that needed to have the requirements to take care of me. I was in a scary state of survival mode, chronic pain that doctors could not determine a cause for and anxiety that had my mind constantly oscillating between paralysis and panic. I decided to use my retirement fund to cover costs as the money I had saved previously was spent paying for the mortgage of our home we could not afford (even when we bought it), the bills and living expenses. Spending my retirement money was terrifying, but something had to give and why not my hard earned money. The first trip I took was with my son and elderly weiner dog, Penny who doesn’t trust anyone.

It was during this period that I realized the importance of having access to what we needed. Needs were something I never learned about beyond income. My definitions for these things began to shift from food, to food that my toddler would eat, to food that both my toddler and I would eat, to food that we’d both eat that was available when we needed it, not when I remembered that grocery stores close at 9pm and it was midnight.

I started to learn how to take care of myself in ways I never had and I earned the title high-maintenance, a curse word for women in my world growing up. Motherhood meant sacrifice and I had to challenge this every single day that I stayed in a hotel that had a bathtub or an airbnb that had a hot tub because I needed to be able to warm my body frequently. Convenience costs and what we as a society have termed luxury is a privilege that I am incredibly fortunate to have access to for the time being because of my parents diligent hard work in saving growing up.

After 3 weeks with my kids, I was able to spend a month on my own, making decisions to extend my stay day by day, my anxiety being the main critic in my head judging me. Once I made the brave decision to try longer periods of time, I found more relief and to my surprise, I found some long sought after habits. The airbnbs I stayed in were incredibly well curated. These owners thought about everything and had rules for staying there, rules which offended me at first. But, I followed them and as I healed, I learned how to appreciate them, sometimes spending entire days carefully crafting routines that made me feel like a big girl. As someone with ADHD, picking up after myself and keeping track of belongings was a painful experience of repeated failures, a disability that could be attributed to my lack of executive functioning skills. The sad part was that I so badly wanted to be clean, tidy and unwrinkled in my appearance.

A miracle was taking place, I was learning that my mom was right. While she had many points worth taking, I was unable to access this lifestyle due to my disability that I was unaware of. It wasn’t until I was on my own, not needed by anyone but me, that I started to make connections to why self-care is done the way it is. I started to become something I never had been before, consistent. And then the fun part: I started to personalize these habits to make them suit me and the life I wanted, even if that life was unclear. I became Belle and allowed my imagination to personify the homes that took care of me, feeling so proud of myself when I discovered functions to objects that I never would have guessed. It became a game- well actually it became the Olympic Games and I was leading the scoreboards in multiple house chore related events. The toughest of which, folding and putting away laundry, required constant training and a running dialogue in my mind of the commentators who couldn’t believe the move Drummy just made, putting the socks in a laundry wash bag before putting it into the wash to make sorting easier afterwards. “Bob, we haven’t seen athleticism like this since the 90s when she received allowance for her chores. Truly inspirational the kind of perseverance we are witnessing, Joe. “

While I was entertaining the crowds in my mind by rinsing the dishes before loading the dishwasher, another part of my life was changing. I was learning how to break my people pleasing ways to ask for help in ways that were terrifying. Recovering from autistic burnout meant I was nonstop overstimulated and taking care of an autistic toddler who needed nonstop action while it was raining outside our Portland hotel meant I had to get over my shit, and let him enjoy the space we took up in the lobby of our very cool hotel. My dog was not happy about it either and when the front desk attendants, the valet guys who had no cars to worry about on a Tuesday afternoon, started to play with my son and watch him as he sat in my car parked in the front, driving to who knows where, I was able to stay with Penny as she napped. The gratitude I felt and still feel as I write this is immense and I can’t even put it into words the way their kindness gave me relief. It didn’t stop there, as I needed to overcome one of my greatest fears, a major cause of my eating disorder, grocery shopping with him, the Trader Joe’s of the Pacific Northwest showed me that I was not only allowed to be in their stores, but I was welcome and they enjoyed his silliness.

The more I traveled, the more I encountered people every step of the way who showed me that I deserved compassion and understanding without needing to explain the details of the horrific experiences I had just been through in the year before. The hospitality of airbnb owners, who I overcame my fears of engagement to connect with time and time again offered me words of solidarity, extra accomodations, stories of their own. The front desk attendants that were no doubt baffled by my request to extend my stay one more night for the 3rd time, treated me like a friend, something I was not used to since I lost a majority of my friendships once I left my job, separated from my husband and went no contact with my parents. The waiters and waitresses at the restaurants made me laugh and forget that I was alone, or rather, reminded me that I was in fact, not alone.

I’m working on finding a way to share my whole story as there is much to share. I’ll keep you updated and if you’d like to support, you can find me on Venmo.