Luundu Mwanakasale, a Zambian woman who was left paralysed after a tragic road accident in December 2014, has shared how her life changed dramatically just days before her planned wedding.

At the time, Luundu was a 24-year-old teaching student engaged to be married and was on her way to Livingstone, Zambia to try on her wedding dress when the accident happened.

Her fiancé was the one driving the vehicle, and as they reached Monze, the car overturned, resulting in a serious crash.

While her fiancé escaped the accident unscathed, Luundu sustained a severe spinal injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down and led to the loss of her five-month pregnancy.

Doctors informed her that she would never walk again, and she was confined to a wheelchair—a devastating blow that came just a month before her wedding day.

Luundu spent nearly three months in the hospital, during which her fiancé remained in contact and pretended to support her through the ordeal.

Though they continued dating for three more years after the accident, she was unaware that he had found another woman and was secretly planning a wedding.

Just four days before his wedding, Luundu learnt through a friend that her fiancé was about to marry someone else simply because she could no longer walk.

Heartbroken and betrayed, she tried calling him for answers, but he ignored her calls and only contacted her three weeks after his wedding—only to ask about her bank account so he could send money for her medical bills.

The emotional shock pushed Luundu into a deep depression, and she dropped out of college during her second year, unsure of her future and overwhelmed by grief.

To cope, she turned to baking as a therapeutic outlet, slowly regaining her strength and beginning the journey toward emotional healing.

In 2021, determined not to let her disability or heartbreak define her, Luundu re-enrolled in college at Chreso University, where she pursued and completed a bachelor’s degree in education with distinction.

Now 35 years old, Luundu is happily engaged again—to a man who truly values her for who she is, and who, as she says, “saw beyond the wheelchair.”