Marilyn's 2016 Swims: Sashbear

Welcome to my 2016 swim website. For those of you who don't know me, I swam Lake Ontario the easy way in 1983 and the hard way in 1984. I “came out of retirement" to swim the English Channel (oldest Canadian woman) in 2011. In 2013, I was the oldest Canadian to swim the Catalina strait in California. After swimming around Manhattan Island (oldest Canadian) in 2014, I became the first Canadian to complete the Triple Crown of open water swimming (English Channel, Catalina Strait and Manhattan.) Last year I was the first to swim between three provinces: from Nova Scotia north to New Brunswick and across the Northumberland Strait to Prince Edward Island (34 kms). This year on March 18, I became the first Canadian and the oldest woman ever to swim the icy and turbulent Cook Strait between the south and north islands in New Zealand. (See links below for more detail.)

On August 11, 2016, I hope to become the first Canadian to swim from Plymouth to Provincetown, Massachusetts, across Cape Cod Bay. This “P2P” swim has only been accomplished by 6 people (all American), although the swim has been attempted numerous times since 1915. The swim from Manomet Beach in Plymouth to Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown is about 32 kilometers. The biggest challenge is the current which circulates in a counter-clockwise direction around the relatively shallow bay. The water temperature is expected to be between 16 and 21 degrees Celsius. The swim is officiated by the Massachusetts Open Water Swimming Association (MOWSA), whose rules are based on the English Channel rules. https://massopenwaterswimming.com/

I am pleased to be able to use this opportunity to raise money for Sashbear, an organization founded by Lynn Courey, whose daughter, Sasha, a swimmer with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), died by suicide in 2011. Sashbear funds education programs for therapists, families and in schools. I have dedicated my psychiatric career to the treatment and research of BPD, which has a suicide rate of 10%. More treatment programs and support for families are desperately needed in Canada. Please support my swim by donating to Sashbear. Thank you. http://sashbear.org/en/

Saturday 23 January 2016

Sashbear

I am so excited that Sashbear is now a registered charity. I first worked with Lynn in 2012 when she invited me to speak about swimming and mental health at a swim meet she had organized. Since then I have watched Sashbear grow and do great things. This October, I spoke with Lynn at the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ISSPD) in Montreal. Lynn chaired the first ISSPD Family Day. She told me that Sashbear has been doing a lot of speaking to students in schools about BPD and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), the best treatment for BPD. She was excited that Sashbear was able to help Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto expand DBT services by providing training for 75 therapists! From Montreal, Lynn was selflessly driving straight to Toronto to train 50 therapists and family members to be leaders in the Family Connections program. This is a program based in DBT that helps family members support their loved one who is struggling with BPD.
The board of Sashbear is currently busy planning how to use my Cook Strait swim to raise awareness about BPD and suicide and to fundraise. Please support me and help Sashbear train more therapists and family members. http://sashbear.org/en

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