Annette Gabbedy is a business ownerand expert designer andgoldsmith. She was also born without fingers, a disposition many might consider a “disability,” particularly in her line of work.

Yet, as you’ll see in the following video, having created and traded her wares for 23 years, Gabbedy sees no reason for this to inhibit her creativity and contribution to society.

As Gabbedy explains:

I tend to really look at people with fingers and think: Well, how can you manage with fingers, because they must get in the way? It’s just your own perceptive of how you look at yourself, and for me, I was born like it, so I’ve never known any different. I’m quite normal. I’m not disabled at all.

Gabbedy’s story is yet anotherexample of the ways human creativity and determination so often surprise us, transcending and exceeding what turn out to be rather limited assumptions and expectations.

We all have “disabilities,” of course, each varying in extremity and difficulty, and capacity. But let us never forget that each person has something to contribute, and far too often, what weassume to be an impediment to service turns out to be quite the opposite.