Julie Cox: No longer a maid in Manhattan
Her story has too often been likened to a fairy tale. But it’s not. Even Cinderella did not live in a garbage dump, and Belle was never molested by the beast. Princess Aurora was pricked by one needle; Snow White was surrounded by adoring dwarves. Julie Cox, on the other hand, was raped twice and spent two years scavenging scrap metal at the former Subic Naval Base with a sickly infant son. At 15, she was a guinea pig for medical students as she battled leukemia, hepatitis, hemorrhagic fever and other infections. When she finally left her small town in Quezon to become an undocumented maid in the United States, she had no friends and had to give up her son for adoption. And yet, she made her own happy-ever-after. “If you can see through your suffering, you will realize that it is also your opportunity for great joy. We are not born to be miserable,” Cox writes in her book, I Ordered My Future Yesterday. The 9th of 12 children, Cox had to quit …
Pursuit of Perspective 