THE room full of businessmen and corporate professionals listened intently to the speaker on stage. They all came to learn from the conference and that day, a petite, young Filipino-American was introducing herself. Jessica Cox admitted to the group, "I haven’t any hands-on experience doing anything." Upon hearing that admission, most people would naturally wonder what business Jessica has in being a motivational speaker if she had no hands-on work experience. But instead, the whole room broke out in laughter at Jessica’s play on words. You see, Jessica has no fingers, hands, elbows. She was born without arms and yet she has achieved far more than what people born with two arms have done in their lifetimes.
Jessica fl ies airplanes, drives cars, and otherwise lives a normal life using her feet as others use their hands. She holds the title of the fi rst person without arms in the American Tae Kwon-Do Association to get a black belt and the fi rst woman pilot in aviation history to fl y with her feet. Jessica has been featured in the popular afternoon program Ellen, hosted by Ellen Degeneres, Inside Edition, and TV networks like CNN and Fox News. Videos showing her flying a plane, demonstrating martial arts stunts and replays of her television and public speaking appearances are proliferating in YouTube and the Internet. Many of the videos and inspiring emails are posted by Filipinos who are proud of her extraordinary accomplishments.
Now an in demand motivational speaker before various groups such as students, teachers, and corporate audiences, Jessica is changing lives as she digs deep into her experiences living armless in a two-handed world. She believes that by combining creativity, persistence, and fearlessness, nothing is impossible. She shows how these three qualities helped her disarm the impossible.
"Desire is 80 percent of success. Persistence means never give up. Never allow your fear to stand in the way of your opportunity," Cox said as she challenges people to turn their "impossible into accomplishment". The courageous young woman who inspires people to reach beyond their perceived limitations explains, "I was a hard worker my whole life and nothing has been handed to me."
Being armless has not limited Jessica from attaining her highest potential. Pushing her limitations aside and simply putting her best put forward, she is an amazing achiever who is touching many lives with her moving story of strength, courage, and sheer determination.
The second of three children, Jessica said her parents and her older brother Jason and younger sister Jackie have always been supportive of her. Her father, William Cox, is a retired music teacher; her mother, the former Inez Macabare, of Bobon, Samar is a nurse.
From birth, Jessica learned to use her feet to become her hands—feeding herself, playing with toys, combing her hair, writing with a pencil. By the time she was 3, Cox was enrolled in gymnastics classes. At 6 years old, she was swimming and attending dance class. By 10, she started taking taekwondo lessons to further develop her self-confidence and continued until she earned her black belt when she was in the seventh grade.
In her website, Jessica admitted that she overcame shyness as a little girl when she danced before an audience for the first time. "I used to feel shy about being different. I remember the first time I was on stage. It was my very first at our dance studio presentation," Jessica said. "I was so scared that I asked my dance teacher to put me in the back row. She told me there was no back row." To her great relief, the audience enthusiastically clapped and cheered. "I couldn’t wait to go out for a second time and perform. I danced for 12 years after that," she added.
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