Life Before Injury
For nineteen and a half years, my mother, Elena Bindas worked as a decorator for the union at McCormick Place in Chicago. She was good at it, and she was proud of it.
She was strong. She was outside whenever she could be. She danced in the kitchen with a wooden spoon and made me listen to whatever song had her that week — listen to this one, really listen. She hunted through thrift stores and estate sales for bowls, and she could look at one and see the hands that made it.
She was quick, and funny, and entirely herself.
Then, in May of 2017, a steel truss struck her head at work.
These are pictures of who she was.
The Catatonic Years
What eight and a half years of undiagnosed catatonia actually looks like — the movement that never stopped, the darkened rooms, the surgeries for symptoms nobody traced to a cause.
A New Chapter
After The Awakening
Witnessing the transformative Ativan test and the start of a long journey toward healing.
Paintings of Hope
During the years my mother was disappearing, I painted her. I painted her whole. I painted her healed. I painted her doing things she couldn't do anymore. I thought I was just trying to survive.
