Claudia Fortunato-Napolitano is the Happiness Hero at John’s Crazy Socks. While still a young woman (Claudia is only 35), she suffered a major stroke in January 2017. Claudia is an essential team member at John’s Crazy socks working to spread happiness and show every day what is possible when you give a person a chance. Claudia is sharing her recovery in this blog, so others can learn off the challenges facing stroke recovery patients and people in recovery can take strength and inspiration from knowing they are not alone. I write this blog in the hope that my experiences, may offer hope and inspiration to others. Recovery is hard, really hard, and sharing the journey makes it a little less difficult. I know that my blog is connecting with people when I hear from other stroke survivors.
Claudia Fortunato-Napolitano is the Happiness Hero at John’s Crazy Socks. While still a young woman (Claudia is only 35), she suffered a major stroke in January 2017. Claudia is an essential team member at John’s Crazy socks working to spread happiness and show every day what is possible when you give a person a chance. Claudia is sharing her recovery in this blog, so others can learn off the challenges facing stroke recovery patients and people in recovery can take strength and inspiration from knowing they are not alone.
I have Aphasia. "Aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write.” Aphasia is always due to injury to the brain-most commonly from a stroke" (National Apraxia Association).
We love Camp Anchor which serves people with differing abilities ranging in age from 5 to 74 years young. This year, Camp Anchor celebrated their 50th anniversary and John’s Crazy Socks wanted to be part of the celebration. We worked with the Camp to create a 50th Anniversary Camp Anchor Sock and we used that sock to raise funds for the Camp.
John here. I walk around saying a lot of things. Now, I am taking my words and turning them into socks. Linda, our Happiness Imagineer, calls what I say, “John-isms,” so now we have socks called John-sim socks. And because I love the Special Olympics, $1 from every pair sold of the John-ism Socks goes to the Special Olympics. We’re spreading happiness and I hope these socks make you happy.
All organizations need to continually learn, to adapt to changing environments, to find ways to better serve our mission. To do so takes a commitment from each individual and the entire organization. We have instituted these Learning Initiatives so we can offer the support and resources for each person in this organization to grow and develop and that will help the organization grow and develop. The more we learn, the more happiness we can spread.
