“Live, Love, Laugh – inspirational wellness in the pink”!
3 great speakers, 7 groups, a big pot of tea, and oodles of freshly baked cakes – conference here we come!
With lots of homemade cake as usual and representatives from 7 different groups, from Morpeth, Northumberland down to Horbury and Ossett, West Yorkshire the Middlesborough Day Conference sounds like it was a roaring success!
Thank you, Andrea and the rest of the Middlesbrough organisers, for the great work you did as volunteers.
And thank you to our delegates for making the day a success. This conference is an amazing example of the NWR ethos – you get out tenfold what you put in!
“In the Pink” – Building a conference!
By Andréa Bowness-Etur – Local Organiser, Middlesborough
Where to start? Let’s start at the end – “In the Pink” was a wonderful day – with great speakers, thoroughly enjoyed by all the delegates (many of whom were dressed in pink!) who all left with great smiles on their faces! (You’ll find out why in a moment!)
Middlesbrough was a very small and new group when we held our first conference back in 2015. It was hard work and a huge learning curve, but it was also a roaring success. I was committed to doing another day conference as soon as we could! Fast forward to 2017…
I think we have all been affected by cancer in some way. Middlesborough NWR is no different and in one meeting in 2017 we discovered we had a member who had been diagnosed herself and another caring for a loved one with this awful disease. We felt it was time to start planning, and that a health and well-being theme was the way forward.
So, we thought, let’s hold it in October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We decided to include as many different aspects of health and wellbeing as possible, from physical to mental, in order to capture the interest of members and friends alike. I posted a request for speakers to The Inspire Network – a network for self-employed women in the North East. (Oh, the powers of social media!).
We are lucky to have an excellent comfortable venue which is easy to get to so everyone felt relaxed! – talk about “Location, Location, Location!”. We were positively inundated with ideas and eventually our group decided on three great, inspiring speakers each with a different take on health and wellbeing – from stress management, clean-eating, gut-health and nutrition – even laughter yoga!
So the day rolled round and 30 delegates from groups as far afield as Morpeth in the North, to Harrogate in the South arrived – much to our delight!
Before we introduced our speakers we held a fun quiz and raffle, with two top prizes provided by our speakers, raising all-important extra funds for future meetings, and our next conference!
And so to the main event – our amazing speakers – Liz Cairns, a holistic practitioner and self-management consultant; Claire Robinson, a clean-eating expert (whose mother is going through cancer treatment), and a Self-Discovery Coach for Women who told us all about self-care and self-esteem.
First up was Liz Cairns of Inspire Holistics who spoke about stress management and holistic health. She spoke about the stigma surrounding mental health issues and the importance of self-care and told us never to think you are being selfish by taking care of yourself. You can’t care for others properly unless you are fit and well yourself….
Claire Robinson spoke about gut health, amongst several other interesting and important points surrounding nutrition and toxic ingredients and products. (I’m not sure she’d have approved of our trestle table heaving with sugary cakes and treats!)
We finished the day with “Laughing Yoga” – led by the wonderful Jan Turner! It really ended the day on a natural high – our theme was, after all, “Live, Love, Laugh – inspirational wellness in the pink”!
Our speakers were all so different but very educational and their message was clear – look after yourself, you only have one body and prevention is better than cure.
Would you believe that we did not suffer any hiccups this time around! It’s always a bit worrying running up to an event – have we chosen the right speakers? Will they do a good job? Will they show up? LOL. It’s impossible to please all of the people, all of the time but we had a good go at it and received a lot of messages of thanks after the event. it’s very satisfying to know you have brought happiness and a fun filled day out to so many – and a nice big glass of wine was a wonderful treat in the evening! It’s a good feeling to have done something so positive! I look forward to the next conference!