Monday 23 September 2013

Oh!!! Wow!! My human's in the newspaper ...


Oh!!!

Wow!!

My human's famous!

I was looking through a newspaper she'd left lying around this morning and I found this!

As a build up to the North East Skinny Dip 2013, she was apparently interviewed by a reporter from local North East paper, the 'Sunday Sun.'  I heard her talking on the phone on Friday night about this, but I didn't realise she was talking to the press! Wow!!

The article appeared in yesterday's paper (see photos below) ... this is the article as written by the reporter, Brian Daniel and published in the Sunday Sun, 22.09.13

I know you can't read the words in the photo of the article, so I've typed them all out for you below; being careful to give credit to the reporter who wrote it.  I've learned about copyright, plagiarism, and quoting authors correctly from my human and her PhD thingy.  I hope I've done it right because I don't want to get anyone into trouble. 

 Especially not me.




"A NORTH woman will today notch up an important milestone in her recovery from eating disorders when she gets her kit off at a mass skinny dip.

Sharon Cox, 40, from North Shields, is taking part in the North East Skinny Dip 2013 at Druridge Bay Country Park in Northumberland.

The event, successfully held for the first time in 2012 and arranged to coincide with the autumn equinox, will see hundreds of men and women bare all and take a sunrise dip in the cold North Sea.

Participants will be raising money for the Mind mental health charity as well as event supporters, the National Trust, and could play their part in breaking the world record for the world's biggest skinny dip.

But for Sharon, [of North Shields], the event will be a key moment in her life - world record or not.

At the age of 15 she developed anorexia, a disorder she suffered from until she was 17.

"I probably got down to around 7 stone which, probably for my height at that age, was about two stone underweight."

Sharon then began to suffer from bulimia, a disorder which would plague her until she reached 30.

"Some periods I would be bingeing and vomitting quite often."

Sharon's weight would vary from to to 11-and-a-half stone.

In 1999, at the age of 27, Sharon began training to be become a counsellor, having attended counselling for her bulimia.

She eventually opened her own private practice, helping people principally with eating disorders and working at GP surgeries with those suffering from other mental health problems.

For the last six years, she has been studying a PhD at York St John University part time on the therapist's experiences of working with people with eating disorders.

The counsellor training and practice and the work she has done for the PhD, have helped Sharon - a steady 10 stone for the last few years - put her disorders behind her.

And today, enjoying life and her body unlike so many years when she did not, she will get her kit off at the skinny dip, the first time she - like most of us - will have done such a thing in public.

She said, "In the last 10 years I have not felt especially confident in my body.

It is only through my PhD that I have found a way to accept my own body and to feel that sense of body acceptance which allow me to do the skinny dip.

I would never have dreamed of doing it even a couple of years ago!

This is the pinnacle both of recovery and of my PhD - it feels a real high point in both of those."

Sharon is dreading feelings the icy water against her skin though, saying, "I am more worried about the cold than the nakedness!"

She is hoping to raise hundreds of pounds for Mind."


Can I be famous next please ... ?


Sunday 22 September 2013

I think I can see her! Can you ... ?!



This is me looking at a photo of the Skinny Dip my human took part in this morning.




I think I can see her! Can you ... ?!

I didn’t have to spend 6 years doing a PhD thingy to learn my body was beautiful ...

Me luxuriating in my body, snuggled into my human's arm

I had no idea what was going on this morning when the alarm went off at 4.30am and my human jumped out of bed.  I mean, what time is that to be getting up on a Sunday morning?  She dashed around, putting on warm clothes & putting a towel, a flask, and yet more clothes into a bag, before running out of the house and leaving me.

I had no idea what mad thing she was up to.  But I just went back to bed and forgot about it.

It wasn’t until she got back home about 4 hours later that I learned what she’d been up to.  Now as you know, my human does some silly things, but this one seemed particularly stupid.

For some reason, which I can’t work out, she’d driven miles away to a beach where she took all her clothes off and ran into the sea.  Why would anyone do that?

Now, I've never been to a beach before, and I've never been to the sea, but I've seen them on TV and the computer … and I don’t understand why anyone would want to go there.  Why would anyone want to do that?  Wouldn't you just get wet and cold?  And especially you humans without fur.  Stupid.  I certainly don’t want to get sand in my paws or my fur or inbetween my toes.  Or heaven forbid, in my mouth … yuck!


But anyway, that’s what she did.  That’s what she woke me up at 4.30am for!?


It was apparently some organised event; something called the ‘North East Skinny Dip 2013.’  And it was apparently a big thing for my human.  Something to do with celebrating what she’s learnt during her PhD about the importance of you humans appreciating your own bodies.

Why do you human need to learn to do that?  It comes so naturally to us cats; as it should to you.  You just watch us.  We love to lie as comfortably as we possibly can, snuggled up or stretched out to suit ourselves and our bodies.  We love to stretch and feel our muscles and joints stretching and opening up.  We know that we’re all gorgeous and all look beautiful.
  


I didn’t have to spend 6 years doing a PhD thingy to know that my body is beautiful…