“With possible-thinking, you can achieve the impossible.”
This is the message Jessica Cox has been sharing to the world! Born without two arms, this Filipino-American proved that everything is possible. Jessica Cox is the first licensed armless pilot in the world!
“To be certificated as the first armless pilot, it was definitely a journey of three years, numerous hours of training to finally be a certificated pilot,” Jessica said as she recalled her hard work. After 3 years of training, she earned her pilot’s certificate on October 10, 2008. She has been qualified to fly a light-sport aircraft to altitudes of 10,000 feet.
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It wasn’t an easy journey for Jessica. A lot of people has been criticizing her and has been tearing her down. But Jessica remains positive and highly determined. “I do everything you can think of doing with your hands, I do it with my feet.”
With her positivity and determination, she learned to do a lot of things that you can never imagine someone born without arms could do. She learned how to write, how to play the piano, and how to drive a car, all using her feet! Not just that but she’s a black belter in Taekwondo, she’s good at surfing and she’s been to more than 20 countries sharing her message. Many are inspired by her high dreams coming to reality and by the big victories that she had.
But Jessica emphasizes the joy of those things that many may have been taking for granted, the joy of those little victories that she had. “What was even more difficult than learning to fly an airplane was figuring out something that many people take for granted, the ability to put on my pants, to get dressed on my own. And those little victories are actually bigger celebrations…There are so many small victories I could think about. One of the things I can think of is probably the little victory of tying my own shoelaces…My toes are my fingers, my feet are my hands. Thinking outside the shoe is just addressing the challenge in a different way, with creativity and innovation, with resourcefulness and using whatever it takes to approach a challenge.”
Jessica’s story is a story of dreaming as high as you can despite the reality of your limitations. Every possibility that you could ever think of can become the reality if you decide in your mind to make it possible. There’s always a way to make the impossible possible, you just sometimes need to ‘think outside the shoe’.