Elizabeth Mikotowicz: Female Prison Artist Shares Dark Story
“I based my worth on how much I could take. When I finally started processing these things and going to therapy, it was like breaking a dam open.”
Elizabeth Mikotowicz found me through LinkedIn, which was a first for this show. Her story is one of the most harrowing I’ve heard—not because of the crime that sent her to federal prison, but because of what came before. The domestic violence. The system that failed her. The battered women’s shelter that turned her away with two beds open.
And then the way she survived: drug dealers protected her when no one else would.
An Abuser Who Changed Like a Light Switch
Elizabeth was adopted at two weeks old and grew up in Maine. Her parents divorced when she was five or six. She was later diagnosed as high-functioning autistic, but for years doctors misdiagnosed her with bipolar, depression, ADHD—putting her on medications that sent her into psychosis.
Her first serious relationship was with someone seven years older when she was 15. That one was toxic but manageable. The second one nearly killed her.
“He literally got drunk one night and it was like a different personality,” Elizabeth told me. “His eyes changed. The way he held himself changed. It was absolutely terrifying.”
The first time he hit her, he kicked her across the room. She bashed the back of her head on a radiator. Blood was sprayed on the walls. A month later, he threw a wooden dowel at her face that hit right above her eye. You could see her skull. She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.
At the hospital, they gave her opioids. When she tried to refuse them, the pain clinic told her that declining medication while pregnant would result in a call to CPS for refusing medical care. She had no choice.
When the Shelter Said No
The abuse got worse. He would trap her in the bathroom and torture her for hours—strangle her with her own curling iron cord, burn her with cigarettes, take knives and act like he was going to stab her. She would start begging for her life and end begging him to kill her.
Eventually he crushed her windpipe so badly that for years afterward, if she moved wrong or hiccupped, it would collapse and cut off her oxygen. She’d have to chug water just to breathe, sometimes for an hour at a time.
After the final assault—which included a high-speed chase, him coming after her with a shotgun, and a sexual assault that only stopped because their son was screaming in the next room—he went to prison for three years.
Elizabeth went to Spruce Run, the battered women’s shelter in Maine. They turned her away.
“They said your situation is too severe and it puts the other women in the shelter in danger,” Elizabeth recalled. “Your injuries are so expensive we can’t protect you. They had two beds open.”
When she didn’t leave, they threatened to call the cops on her.
Drug Dealers Gave Her Shelter
Elizabeth signed temporary guardianship of her children to her father—the only way to protect them if her abuser got out and showed up with cops. But signing that paperwork meant losing her medical care, her financial aid, her housing vouchers. Everything.
“Drug dealers protected me,” she said. “They gave me places to hide. Work. Drugs to sell. I was tough enough from all that abuse and traumatized enough that I wasn’t scared to die and I wasn’t backing down from anybody.”
She developed a reputation quickly. She had rules—she wouldn’t sleep with dealers, wouldn’t be anyone’s property, ran her own operation. Men hated that she was a better hustler than them. She had to fight her way out of situations regularly.
When bath salts hit Bangor, Maine, and flooded the streets while still technically legal, Elizabeth saw an opportunity. She thought she wouldn’t go to jail for something legal.
She was wrong.
37 Months in Federal Prison
Elizabeth did seven months in state prison in 2011. In 2013, the feds picked up the case—14 codefendants total. At first, she was facing 10 to 13 years because a snitch said she was a “general.” Her lawyer got that thrown out.
She ended up with 37 months. At Danbury, she signed up for every class she could and exercised every day. She was just happy to be out of county jail, where she’d spent 15 months unable to go outside.
The prison let her paint. She asked for blue, black, white, and silver. They told her to paint whatever she wanted as long as it was beautiful. She painted the entire hallway—a Phoenix rising, hands reaching toward a bird, inspirational quotes. The murals are still there.
She also painted for other inmates. Coffee cups. Personal items. She was giving people something they couldn’t get in a place that strips you of identity.
“They raid me,” Elizabeth laughed, “and the ladies walked by and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you some more.’ They came back with way more than I even had. Silver and gold and metallic colors.”
The Hardest Part Was Getting Out
The halfway house was worse than prison. Elizabeth’s probation officer had to intervene when a registered sex offender was being allowed to look at her children through windows. She went back to jail for 60 days just to get out of there.
When she finally got out on probation, the adjustment was brutal. She was having panic attacks every time she left the house. Going to Walmart was overwhelming. Driving felt like they were going 100 miles per hour when it was actually 40.
“Your brain literally slows down from the lack of stimulation in solitary,” Elizabeth explained. “Normal stimulation is completely overwhelming. It sends you into panic mode and shuts off your empathy and other human emotions.”
It took her years to turn her empathy back on, to undo all the damage.
From Prison Artist to Business Owner
Today Elizabeth runs a successful art and clothing business. Her paintings are sold in stores in Bangor. She creates designs—like her lucky koi fish with gold scales—that go on dresses, bags, headbands, and more. She works with plus sizes. Her website is leggalleries.com.
She’s also an advocate. She helped get a law passed in Maine mandating that jails provide free tampons and pads. She’s working with Bangor City Council on a pilot program to help people who’ve overdosed get into treatment instead of just reversing it with Narcan and watching them use again.
Her dream is to get her clothing line into a major department store. After everything she’s survived, I wouldn’t bet against her.
When I asked Elizabeth for her biggest takeaway from everything she’d been through, she paused.
“For a lot of years, I gaslighted myself and told myself I’d been through worse. I based my worth on how much I could take. When I finally started processing these things and going to therapy and dealing with all this trauma, it was like breaking a dam open.”
She’s angry—about the empty housing units while people sleep on streets, about mass shootings, about a system that’s supposed to work for people but serves corporations instead. But that anger drives her. She wants to be happy. She’s trying to find ways of doing that instead of just surviving.
You can find Elizabeth’s art and clothing at leggalleries.com.