Oh, God of my understanding, Higher Power of my fathers,Understand my cries tonight. Hear my call to you for help.This is the first and greatest of my defects. My characterSuffers so from independence. It was once a necessaryEvil, but today I must put away the shards of glass that myChrysalis has become. It is my […]
Category Archives: 12-Step-program
Living Life in the Solution
I’m a compulsive overeater; what some might consider a “garden variety” overeater. In my disease, when I start eating, I cannot stop. I would graze constantly throughout the day, take multiple servings of food at mealtimes, and nibble on leftovers during clean up. Of course, my day wasn’t complete without something sweet before bed. I’m […]
Rebirth
Do butterflies recall caterpillar days: Green bloated bodies chewing leaves into lace, spinning themselves into shrouds of blessed invisibility? Do swans relive ugly-duckling beginnings, avoiding their own reflections in barnyard mirrors, forced into shame by the jeers of the cuter species? Frozen by familial terms of cruel endearment, a cowardly bookworm devouring fantasy stories of […]
A New Year – A Renewed Commitment to Recovery
More and more, with each passing year, I count the many blessings that have come from working the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous. Today, deep in my heart, I can really FEEL the experience of “my cup runneth over.” This feeling doesn’t come from an overflow of food (as once was the case), but from […]
Attraction Not Promotion – We Maintain Anonymity
Tradition Eleven: Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television and other public media of communication. “When we maintain our Tradition of anonymity, we ensure that Overeaters Anonymous remains a spiritual Fellowship, supporting all of us in our […]
Tool of Sponsorship
“We ask a sponsor to help us through all three levels of our program of recovery: physical, emotional, and spiritual.” – Tools of Recovery Pamphlet The first time I heard about OA, I said, “Is that a group thing? Groups don’t work for me.” I thought I had all the answers and believed that self-reliance […]
Improving My Relationship with My HP
Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. “Our Higher Power is the only source of help that is always available to us, always strong enough to lift us […]
Growth is Taking Responsibility and Being Self-supporting
Tradition Seven: Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. “Taking responsibility is a meaningful sign of spiritual and emotional growth.” — Voices of Recovery, September 8. When a basket gets passed at a meeting or the meeting treasurer posts a donation link in the chat window, it reminds me that this […]
The Deadly Disease No One wants to Discuss – Compulsive Eating
To sustain life, every living thing must eat – and, typically, human beings must eat several times a day from a wide variety of food groups. And yet, each of us will come to develop a relationship with food that can either lead to a happy and balanced way of being, or it can result […]
A Desire to Stop Eating Compulsively
Tradition Three – The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively. The doors of Overeaters Anonymous are open to everyone who wants to seek this way of life. There are no bars to entry, no boxes to check to make us worthy of membership. There is just one requirement: a […]
Sharing the worst of myself led to the best things
Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. “We find we can cope with both good times and bad, learning and growing spiritually from each experience, as our Higher Power intended us to do all along.” — OA Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions page 49 […]
Understanding Autonomy Through Tradition Four
Tradition Four: Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole. “All of us need the balance implicit in the Principle of autonomy to be the unique OA groups and individuals we are meant to be.” — OA Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions page 118 I was raised […]