Ten-year-old Sara Hinesley recently won a national handwriting contest. The third grader’s writing is much better than mine ever was. She won $500 for her efforts.
She also has no hands.
Sara holds a pencil between the ends of her arms to write. She told reporters that when her teacher first taught her how to write in cursive, Sara found she had a natural talent for it. She also likes to create art, ride her bike, read, and swim.
Sara’s family briefly considered obtaining prosthetic hands for her, but decided she is doing fine without them. “She is so amazing and functional without prosthetics that really there is not a need,” her mother said. “She can do just about anything—often times better than me or my husband.”
Have you cried at work?
Such hopeful stories are especially powerful in a time of great anxiety.
In fact, Gallup reports that Americans are among the most stressed people in the world. Our rates of stress and worry are higher than ever before. Remarkably, our negative emotions are even higher than during the Great Recession.
According to a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans say stress impacts their work negatively. Forty-eight percent have cried at work; 50 percent missed at least one day of work during the last year because of stress induced at the office.
However, we’ve been here before.
A hard year and an historic announcement
1961 was a difficult year for America. Despite the hope engendered by President John Kennedy’s inauguration, world and national events were deeply discouraging.
On January 3, the US severed diplomatic relations with Cuba. On January 9, British authorities announced the discovery of a huge Soviet spy ring.
On April 12, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space, signaling the Soviet Union’s growing superiority in the space race. On April 19, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba failed.
On May 14, civil rights protesters…
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