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Undeterred by traumatic brain injury

Art therapist and alumna Sonja Boodajee reconciles past and present by helping others
March 8, 2016
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By Katelyn Spidle


Doctors never predicted that Sonja Boodajee, BFA 98, MA 05, would come so far.

In September 1994, a near-fatal car crash left her with a traumatic brain injury in her right hemisphere. She also had 22 bone fractures, severe blood loss and a diminished mental agility.

The extent of her injuries led doctors to believe that she would never again walk, work or go to school.

Sonja Boodajee Sonja Boodajee, BFA 98, MA 05, has enjoyed a long career as a Quebec art therapist after surviving a horrific car accident two decades ago. | Photo courtesy of Sonja Boodajee

Yet today, Boodajee owns a condo, has a master’s degree and works as a creative arts therapist. She believes that her artistic ability — which was miraculously left intact — helped her heal.

“I woke up from my coma at the Montreal General Hospital, looked up and saw the curtain rods,” she says. “I got a sketch pad and a pen, and I drew them.”

Before the accident, the energetic 22-year-old was taking four classes, working two part-time jobs, volunteering in two places and training three times per week. She was involved in a wide variety of arts: dance, drama, photography, painting, drawing and piano. At the time, she had completed two years of her undergraduate degree program.

Now 21 years into her “new life,” Boodajee has worked hard to reconcile her past and present self. Despite her poor prognosis, she was committed to realizing her personal and professional goals.

After working closely with a speech therapist, neuropsychologist and learning specialist, she slowly recovered her working memory, organizational capacity and bubbly personality. She also had to relearn basic skills like reading and writing.

“We think we have control of our lives — and we do to an extent — but I think what makes us who we are is our free will and choice,” she says.

Just one year after the accident, in September 1995, Boodajee went back to school.

“I had to record my classes and listen and re-listen to them,” she says. “I had to read a page five times before I could understand it.”

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Describing her world as “very two-dimensional,” Boodajee’s brain injury had caused her to become quite literal and automatic. Mourning her old self and learning to accept her new self were particularly frustrating aspects of her recovery.

“I was so much about recovery — going to school, learning, learning how to learn — and just being [okay] with that and not judging that.”

In 1998, she earned her BFA in art education at Concordia and began teaching at the Centre d’apprentissage parallèle de Montréal (CAP) the following year. In 2001, she started an MA in art therapy also at Concordia, completing her degree in 2005.

Currently a member of the Association des art-thérapeutes du Québec and the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, Boodajee provides her services to two community-based organizations of CAP as well as the Association Québécoise des traumatisés crâniens.

At the Massachusetts Brain Injury Conference in March, Boodajee will deliver a presentation about a creative arts therapies workshop she helped run last summer.

Boodajee helps her clients use art to explore their thoughts and feelings. Technique and talent are of little importance, she explains. The purpose is that clients develop alternative means of self-expression.

“We’re so programmed to judge ourselves and seek perfection, but it’s in the mess that we find ourselves.”

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