My name is Catherine Cook and I am from Athens, Georgia. I lived in Atlanta for the first seven years of my life.

When I was five years old I went into the woods with my brother and his four friends to "run away". It became dark, very fast and we realized we did not want to run away anymore but when we looked around we did not know where we had ended up. We were lost for hours until my brother’s friend Ty realized that in order to get home we had to cross a shallow river. All the boys had crossed and I refused because I did not want to get my dress dirty. They left me after giving me five chances to cross and I sat alone, crying for what felt like hours, until three police officers came and rescued me. They carried me across the river and took me home where I saw three police cars in my driveway and furious parents waiting to punish me.

Years later when I was fifteen, I had jaw surgery, which made me look completely different in just six hours. They cut five millimeters of bone across the top of my mouth off and rotated my entire jaw forward causing my chin to move forward, my cheeks more prominent, my nose wider, and my gums not show when I smile. Along with rotating my jaw forward they implanted my top lip to match my new face. I looked completely different after the surgery; many people did not recognize my “new” face after the three month recovery.