No fear, no walls for armless Fil-Am

“DESIRE, persistence and fearlessness will help anyone accomplish anything,” says Jessica Cox, shown here after tying her shoelaces using her feet during her talk in Pasig City. ALEXIS CORPUZ

She decided to take off her prosthetic arms at age 14 and had since been “celebrating” life.

And that continuing celebration can now be divided into several chapters: She finished college, learned to play the piano and drive a car, earned a black belt in taekwondo, got into scuba diving, became a licensed pilot—and of course, before all that, learned to put on her own makeup.

With a life story that has inspired people worldwide, Filipino-American Jessica Cox was in town last week to deliver her message of hope to an audience mostly composed of people with disabilities (PWDs).

“Desire is 80 percent of success. Walls are only there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough,” the 31-year-old Cox said at a jam-packed hall in Frontera Verde, Pasig City.

“When we say ‘we can’t,’ we set up ourselves for failure. Before you say ‘I can’t,’ say ‘I’ll try,’” she added. “Desire, persistence and fearlessness will help anyone accomplish anything.”

Video excerpts from “Rightfooted,” a soon-to-be-finished documentary on her life, were flashed onscreen during her talk, showing how Cox not only overcame her limitations but surpassed people’s expectations of a person born without arms.

One clip captured her as a blooming newlywed using her foot to share the wedding cake with husband (and personal taekwondo instructor) Patrick Chamberlain during the reception. Others showed her using her feet to drive a car and write on a piece of paper.

Documentary

The documentary is directed by Emmy Award winner Nick Spark. Hopefully, the last segments of the project would be filmed in the Philippines, Chamberlain, who was there to cheer his wife on at the Pasig event, told the Inquirer.

A psychology graduate from the University of Arizona, Cox entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2011 for piloting an aircraft using her feet, on a license she earned in 2008 after three years of training. She is also a certified scuba diver.

Cox has toured about 18 countries as a motivational speaker, with the latest talk bringing her to her mother’s home country.

“I’m a fighter, she’s a fighter. She gave me that (trait),” she said of mom Inez, a native of Bonbon, Mercedes, Eastern Samar province. If there was anything she had inherited from Inez, it must be her “resilience,” Cox said.

The proud daughter admitted, however, that she was not that much of a fighter as a young girl. She used to have prosthetic arms to hide her condition.

Embrace possibilities

But when she turned 14, she decided take them off—and embrace the possibilities.

“I am most proud of maturing from someone who was angry and upset about being differently abled to someone able to celebrate that,” she once said in an interview with BBC.

The same statement was printed on a tarpaulin banner at the stage where she spoke on Feb. 25.

“We wanted people with disabilities to be inspired by the speaker…who successfully overcame being born without arms to achieve everything ‘normal’ people do,” said John Silva, executive director of Ortigas Foundation Inc., which organized the event.

About 700 people turned up to listen to Cox, including PWDs, Silva noted. Donations made during the program would go to PWD organizations and to the completion of the documentary, according to the foundation.