...from before her life was turned upside down

Question

The picture showed a smiling Mary from before her life was turned upside down.

(from before she got sick)

• Is the sentence correct?

• Is "from before her life was turned upside down" a used expression in a context like this?

Answer 1

The preposition "from" requires a nominal object. If you believe that the subordinating conjunction "before" can introduce a nominal clause, then your sentence is fine as is.

However, some people maintain that "before" can only introduce an adverbial clause. In that case, "from" lacks a proper object. KB made the following suggestion (in a comment):

. . . from the time before her life was turned upside down.

Now "from" has a proper object ("the time"), but we still don't know what to do about the following adverbial clause. We could write something like:

. . . from the time before the time at which her life was turned upside down.

That is grammatically correct ("before" is now a preposition), but it is a mouthful, and almost everyone would shorten it to something like what you or KB wrote.

By the way, some people would omit "from" in your sentence (as Buzzyy points out). Doing so shortens the sentence a bit but introduces some ambiguity (does the adverbial clause modify the verb "showed"?), although common sense should make the intended meaning clear.

Answer 2

This sentence is grammatically correct. The expression is used commonly, just not necessarily with ‘from’