A Woman Was Born With No Arms, but She’s Learned How to Use Her Feet Instead to Take Care of Her Daughter and Enjoy Life
Artist Sarah Talbi from Brussels, Belgium, was born with no arms. But over the years, she’s learned to live without anyone’s help, doing all necessary tasks with her feet. In 2018, Sarah had her daughter, Lilia, and soon afterwards, she began to post social media videos showing how she was taking care of her daughter. Her story won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world because it proved that nothing in life is impossible to overcome.
Sarah Talbi was born without arms. She’s learned how to use her feet instead to get dressed or brush her hair. Actually, she never really suffered from the lack of her arms.
“Some other children asked why I didn’t have arms, but for me, it was totally normal. I could do everything a toddler the same age could do, just with my feet,” Talbi said. With age, she learned to perform other everyday tasks — cutting vegetables, cooking, taking a shower, applying makeup, doing pedicures, using a keyboard, swimming, and many other things — with her feet. Sarah confessed that she struggled with writing, but eventually she learned how to do that too.
When Sarah was a teenager, she studied English and Spanish translation at an institute in Brussels, and later moved in with friends. “I just had an experience like anyone would have done and I did that without struggling,” she says.
As a hobby, Sarah began to draw with her feet, and she got quite good at it. She even opened a Youtube channel where she posted videos of how she was drawing pictures.
Later, Sarah married, and she and her husband had a daughter named Lilia in September 2018. Before she was born, Sarah just demonstrated her drawing skills on YouTube. But when her followers found out that Sarah had become a mother, they asked her to post videos about how she was taking care of her newborn daughter.
This was when she started her videoblog about her everyday life with her daughter.
At first, Sarah was afraid to hurt her little daughter. “The challenges were bigger during the first three months when a baby is disconcertingly fragile,” she shared. “I was very scared of hurting my baby, so her dad took over a lot.”
In general, she can do everything any other mother can do. But she learned some new tricks too. For example, to get her daughter out of her crib, Sarah taught Lilia to put her arms around her neck, and she uses her core strength to lift her out and place her on the floor. However, when the girl was still very little, Sarah’s husband would take her out of the crib. But Sarah quickly learned to change diapers.
Sarah speaks about all these things in her YouTube videos. For example, when Sarah and Lilia go for a walk in the park, the daughter is usually holding her mother by the sleeve. “It’s unbelievable, she’s holding it like a hand. It’s funny because sometimes she’ll want to run off and touch something in the street and she asks and tugs my sleeve,” Sarah says.
And if Lilia wants to go on the park’s swings, Sarah is able to push her lightly with her knee.
4-year-old Lilia knows that her mother is special. Sarah says that she’s surprised with how natural her daughter is about her disability. “She says, ’Mum doesn’t have arms, but she has feet,’ or ’Some people have arms and some don’t.’ ”
It’s worth mentioning that at the time of writing this article, the Belgian artists had more than 600,000 followers (YouTube, TikTok and Instagram combined). Sarah says it’s crazy that so many people want to follow her life. “Today I find it interesting that disability is showcased and de-dramatized,” she says.
Recently, the press and television got interested in Sarah. “I like to share, and show that my life is as normal as anyone else’s. I think my followers understand that, all-in-all, my life and theirs are not so different,” she added. When her story appeared on the pages of different magazines, many people started calling her a “supermom.”
Currently, 40-year-old Sarah Talbi is still into drawing, and can’t wait to take part in new art exhibitions. Her main source of inspiration is nature, which is why she likes to draw landscapes. “I love nature and travelling and I really miss it.” She adds, “I have adapted entirely myself and I can do everything I want. I don’t let it hold me back.”
Sarah is a real wonder woman who proved that you can be a caring mother and live a happy life even if you don’t have arms. Sarah says, “Being different is not a problem, and we can all live the life we’ve decided to build for ourselves.”