Courtney Waldon was enjoying a picnic outside with her husband of two months while he cooked a BBQ of tuna steaks and asparagus and she mentioned she was cold.
The 27-year-old looked up from her phone just in time to see her new husband throw gasoline on the campfire. She was blinded by light and intense heat and suddenly she was submerged in flames and her skin was melting.
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Her husband smothered his wife in blankets desperately trying to extinguish the flames.
She was rushed to hospital and put in a coma, undergoing multiple surgeries to try and salvage her body which was ravaged by fourth-degree and third-degree burns.
When she went home, her family had to remove all of the mirrors from her house.
“I was disgusted. I was disgusted at myself. I was about to have a panic attack, because I was overwhelmed with how I look… and what is everybody going to think of me now?” she told 11 Alive.
“I sat there, and was like, why would someone want to be with me? No one is ever going to want to be seen with me.”
Although her daughter from a previous marriage, Caroline, didn’t recognise her at first, Courtney was comforted by the fact she at least had her family.
That was until her husband left her.
“I was devastated,” Courtney, 27, tells PEOPLE.
“I begged for him to come back, but then I realized, after about three weeks of him putting me off, that he wasn’t coming back.”
She felt like she had lost everything she ever had, including her “dignity, my looks and the person I thought was the love of my life.”
Courtney and her husband.
“I was sitting there going through my mind, how am I going to take care of my daughter now?” she told 11 Alive.
“How? Because I had no idea how I was going to make her food. I couldn’t even open a bag of chips, string cheese, a coke can – you name it.”
Thankfully, she had Caroline’s endless love as well as support from the rest of her family to get through.
Her mother Karen created a GoFundMe page for her daughter, who will likely never be able to hold down a regular job again.
But Courtney isn’t deterred by her circumstance.
“I might look different, but I’m really the same person,” she says. “I want to be a public speaker and help others who have been through traumatic situations. I want them to know they’re going to be okay.”
