Mineral Wells Area News

By Lori Garcia / Special Contributor / Mineral Wells Area News

There are two types of people in life. Some suffer and make the world pay the price of their pain. Others, because of the pain they’ve endured, turn their scars into a love letter for others who are hurting. Shauntay Edwards is the latter.

Known to friends as Tay, Edwards is soft-spoken, humble, and quick to smile. Yet beneath her gentle demeanor lies a story of resilience that has tested every fiber of her being. She moved from California to Mineral Wells in 2005. Since then, while raising her family, she has grown deep roots in the community. Her story is not only one of survival, but of the determination to transform tragedy into purpose.

On July 13, 2024, life shifted in an instant. Tay had spent the day shopping with her teenage daughter. They laughed, took pictures, and enjoyed what she remembers as an ordinary summer Saturday. Pulling into the driveway, she asked her daughter to unlock the door while she grabbed the shopping bags. Their family dog bounded outside to greet her. Tay bent down to keep the dog out of the street. Suddenly, everything went dark.

“I felt the force in my back and the heat on my legs,” she recalls. “The next thing I knew, I was thrust forward, and when I turned my head, my daughter was screaming.”

A truck had pinned her, the driver pressing the gas in panic. In the chaos, her daughter tried desperately to push the truck back, screaming for him to stop. “I remember saying, ‘Baby, get help. I think I got hit by a car.”

The moments that followed blur into fragments of pain, flashing lights, voices urging her to hold on. She remembers thinking she might not survive. But when she later opened her eyes in the hospital, she realized something important. She was supposed to still be here.

Doctors tried to save her leg, but the threat of infection and irreparable damage left no choice. Her left leg was amputated; her right leg was rebuilt with rods and plates. For months, Tay could use only her arms to move. What followed was not just physical recovery, but a battle for dignity.

She describes her grief with blunt honesty. “Even if I’m having the best day in the world, at night when I shower, I have to sit while everyone else stands. That’s the reality of the rest of my life.”

Yet from the very start, Edwards refused to accept limits. Against all odds, she taught herself to drive again within weeks of returning home. “I would lay my seat back, fold up the wheelchair, and throw it into the passenger seat. I fell once trying, but I kept going. I asked myself what I needed to do to put myself in a situation where I wasn’t going to have to depend on anyone else.”

What makes Edwards’ story harder to bear is the lack of accountability. Tay says the driver who struck her was never sobriety-tested, despite what she called a history of drug arrests. “It was like I was just another accident—another car hit. That’s how I was treated,” she says. “Nobody ever followed up with me. Nobody ever told me what happened or if he ever went to court.” She continues to wrestle with the feeling of injustice stacked on top of her injury.

Because the driver was not charged in the incident, she was denied assistance through Texas’ victims of violent crime program. Instead, she leaned on the support of her employer, Clear Sky Rehabilitation in Weatherford. There, colleagues raised money to cover her bills, created a new role when she couldn’t return to her former work, and provided daily therapy. “If I’d worked anywhere else, I don’t know what I would have done,” Edwards says.

For months, grief threatened to consume her. But she kept asking herself: what now? She had always lived to help others. That purpose, she realized, hadn’t been taken from her—it had only changed form.

That’s when she founded Pretend Foot, a grassroots support group for amputees and people living with physical impairments. The name, born from a moment of dark humor during her early recovery, now represents hope. “At first, nobody came,” she says. “But I kept showing up. Now, little by little, people are finding their way.”

Through T-shirts, meetups, and an online presence, Edwards offers more than resources. She offers presence, understanding, and proof that life after loss is not the end.

Nearly every day is still a battle. She struggles with phantom pain. Weather-related discomfort adds to the challenge. She also fears being hit again in crowded parking lots. But Edwards refuses to let those realities define her.

“I don’t believe in limits,” she says firmly. “The only limits I have are the ones I put on myself. Either you can lay down and accept things, or you can keep fighting. I choose to fight.”

She has fought hard. She works full-time and raises her daughters. She also lifts others who face the same dark road she once did.

Edwards is the person who turns suffering into strength not only for herself, but for others. Her scars are not a mark of defeat, but of defiance. She has chosen to build a life of courage and compassion in the shadow of injustice.

Still, Tay maintains a vulnerability and honesty about the struggles that come with adjusting to such a change. People often tell her she’s an inspiration, but she pushes back gently: “I’m still human,” she admits. “And it’s one thing when people are there with you, cheering you on. But then you go home, and it’s just you. And you’ve got to face things on your own.”

She speaks openly about moving through grief- not only grieving the loss of her leg, but the person she was before the accident and the life she once lived. She strives to be the voice she longed to hear in those moments; one that says it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to feel the weight of loss, but you cannot stay there.

That conviction has become the heartbeat of Pretend Foot, the support group Edwards founded for amputees and others living with sudden physical impairments. Her hope is to grow it into an established nonprofit. It aims to provide a safe place for people to gather. Additionally, it raises funds to help those caught in unforeseen adversity with real, practical relief.

For her, the mission is simple. She wants to step into the suffering of others walking the same dark road she has traveled. She lets them know they aren’t alone.

“I’m still grateful to be alive,” she says quietly. “Tomorrow will be another day, and I’ll get up and fight the fight all over again.”

For the community she’s building, that fight means hope. For anyone who has ever felt life shatter beneath them, it proves that survival can be transformed into something far greater. It becomes a legacy of resilience.