Frida Kahlo was a bright young woman who had no intentions of being the famous artist that she would become. At first, her dream was to attend medical school and become a famous doctor. However, on September 17,1925 on her way home from school, she was involved in a tragic bus accident that had a serious impact on her life.

Kahlo was found by her boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias with a section on the hand rail pierced deeply in her slender body. Doctors believed that there was no chance of saving Kahlo and they "tended to other less seriously injured victims". However Gómez pleaded for them to help Kahlo until she was finally rushed to emergency surgery. Still, no one believed that Kahlo would survive.

When Kahlo awoke she "found herself encased in a coffin like plaster cast with only her head exposed." Obviously, no one had any faith for the strong hearted Frida. She felt the unbearable pain in her abdomen in addition a fractured pelvis, a dislocated shoulder, and a spine that was fractured in three places. She did not think about the pain. She only wanted to contact her sweetheart, Gómez, who hadn't visited since the accident.

When Frida was able to move one of her arms, she wrote letters to Gómez, telling him about the pain she suffered and how much she missed him. She pleaded for him to return to her as she realized her love for him. In her letters, she had expressed in detail her feelings: 

"The fact is now no one wants to be my friend because I have lost my reputation. I will never forget you, whom I loved as I loved myself or more, saw me as Nahui [one of Diego Rivera's models, considered promiscuous by the Preparatoria students]. Every time you tell me that you don't want to talk to me anymore, you've done it as if you wanted to take weight off yourself. I am being driven crazy."

- Garza, Hedda , Frida Kahlo 

However Gómez did not return her letters. Kahlo was pain struck and by the summer of 1926, she suffered a serious relapse. Kahlo and become "lonely, immobile, and in pain" . With nothing to do, Kahlo had begged her father to allow her to use her paints. Kahlo never studied art, and started by teaching herself to paint by studying the works of the Italian Renaissance. She began to "paint for visitors and relatives who were willing to pose for her". She eventually decided to give her paintings away as gifts.