OASVadmin
April 30, 2024
OASV Newsletter: April 2024
NEW: Thursday Morning In-Person Meeting in San Martin
Be sure to check out The Peacock Group – 11 AM to 12 PM, Thursday
Location:
San Martin Presbyterian Church
13200 Lincoln Ave.
San Martin, CA 95046
Day & Time:
Thursdays at 11:00 am to Noon (Pacific time)
This is an open, mixed, 1-hour literature meeting that reads from the Dignity of Choice pamphlet, but also emphasizes readings from The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition. with future literature selections up for review and discussion via group conscience. For details, call or email: Sandra D. (650) 271-0289, sandra_d_pleski@yahoo.com.
Note that parking is available on the gravel lot off of Lincoln Avenue. Please enter through the small grassy area courtyard and be sure to look for the “OA meeting” sign.
This meeting is named ‘The Peacock Group” because there are actual feral peacocks that wander the church grounds and surrounding neighborhood. These beautiful wild birds can often be found roosting in the trees, especially the big oak tree in front of the church. They have been such a delight to see when you come to this wonderful literature meeting, that the OA members who started this new meeting decided to name the meeting after these majestic birds.
Interestingly, not only is this regal bird eye-catching, but it turns out they have rich symbolism as well, communicating themes of beauty, self-expression, confidence, royalty, and spirituality, along with creativity and regrowth. According to various interpretations available on the worldwide web, the peacock is a powerful symbol of transformation or renewal and is associated with spiritual awakening and progress.
Wow! It’s no wonder these colorful birds are wandering the grounds near this new OA literature meeting! According to the chapter titled, “The Doctor’s Opinion” (page xxix) in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, our textbook for Twelve Step recovery, “…once a psychic change (or spiritual awakening) has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire.”
Happily, these rules are the principles and guidelines found in our Twelve Step recovery program. Upon working all 12 steps, we get to experience a psychic change or spiritual awakening sufficient to lift our food obsessions – and what a gift this abstinence from compulsive eating truly is!
And let’s not forget that wonderful slogan shared with us by our sponsors and fellows alike, “Progress, not perfection!” Clearly, these peacocks are a beautiful symbol and perfect reminder of all the gifts that working our program of recovery can bring into our lives.
Ultimately, “The Peacock Group” is such a TERRIFIC name for a brand new OA meeting that brings us together, in-person, and helps us find peace and serenity from our eating compulsions and food addictions. We extend a warm and welcoming open invitation for you to make the time to check it out and learn for yourself what a spiritual awakening and progress in OA has to offer you.
Last Chance Survey: Let Us know – Will You Attend an In-Person Meeting?
OASV Intergroup Wants to Know!
As shared with you in our first monthly newsletter (March 2024), the OASV Intergroup is interested in knowing if you prefer or would like to attend more in-person OA meetings in Santa Clara County, or if you are content to continue attending our various OASV meetings online. What would you prefer? Please take our survey (find the link below) to help us better meet your needs.
If you are not located in Santa Clara County, or unwilling to travel to this county for your in-person OA meetings, we ask that you not participate in this survey as that would invalidate or skew the final results. We would, however, like to encourage you to join us for our our online meetings and hope you will enjoy them as much as we do! We hope to get to know the needs of our local members so we may better serve them.
Thank you for your understanding. Click here to take the survey.
If you’re looking for inspiration and help with working your OA program, please be sure to check out any one of our past workshops by clicking here!
Are you a member who has struggled or fallen into relapse? Then be sure to check out, Preventing and Recovering from OA Relapse.
If you are abstinent and in recovery from compulsive eating, and would like to avoid relapse, then listen to our workshop podcast titled, Preventing and Recovering from Relapse – it has helped many of us remain on the path of healthy recovery!
Looking for Recovery Inspiration – Check out the Latest OASV Blog!
If you’re looking for recovery inspiration or wanting to learn more about OA members and their unique experiences, strength, and hope (ESH), then make a point to check out our most recent blogs on the OASV home page (to view them, scroll down towards the bottom of the home page) or link directly through to the blog archive (known as The Chronicle) and search for the topic of your greatest interest.
Below you’ll find some quick links to our most recent blogs for your reading pleasure. Please be sure to share these new blogs, as well as this April 2024 Newsletter, with anyone who may need some support, encouragement, and inspiration!
What does it mean to be Rigorously Honest?
In Twelve Step recovery programs, the message isn’t to be occasionally honest, or to try to be honest, but to practice “rigorous honesty.” But what does this actually mean?
If you’ve never fully understood the term “rigorous honesty” then this is the blog to read:
Have you ever Struggled with Feelings of Failure and Not Being Enough?
Some of us in OA have suffered with feeling of being “not enough.” Feelings of inadequacy, being a failure or a disappointment, and ruminating thoughts of being ‘broken’ or ‘a mistake’ – all of this is the kind of ‘head junk’ that repeats itself between our ears.
If you can relate, then this blog written by one of our older members is sure to bring you hope to light the way to something far better – a life happy, joyous, and free!
Is Unprocessed Grief Spurring your Compulsive Eating and Food Addiction?
For untold years, this OA member had kept all the events, losses, and adverse experiences of her personal life locked deep within her. Her greatest fear was that if she even attempted to speak about those heinous or devastating moments of her life that her dam of grief would burst and she’d fall into uncontrollable shaking and a sea of tears that would simply never end!
But OA helped her find a way out of her grief, out of her food obsession, and back into a life that has proven well-worth living!
Attend the Annual Overeaters Anonymous World Service Business Conference:
WHEN:
May 7-11, 2024
WHERE:
Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North
5151 San Francisco Road NE
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87109 USA
(No virtual attendance. In-person only!)
If you are interested in reviewing the 2023 World Service Business Conference (WSBC) Wrap-Up Report, please visit our Delegate Role web page for complete details.
If you have any questions about this report or would be interested in serving as a Delegate for OASV, please send email to: wsbcdelegate@oasv.org.
To view or download this year’s WSBC report on the group conscience voting results by the 125 Intergroups regarding proposed new OA Motions and Bylaws that will be discussed at the upcoming WSBC in May 2024, please click here.
To gain a better understanding of OA Service and By-Laws, we urge you to take a few minutes to watch this informative and creative video titled, OA Service and Bylaws: Keeping It Simple.
Don’t miss the R2 OA Convention July 12-15, 2024, in Sacramento, CA!
Looking to meet other OA members and to add a valuable boost to your recovery? Then be sure to sign up for the R2 OA Convention taking place on July 12-14, 2024 in Sacramento, California – there are both virtual and in-person options to select from!
For further details, click here. To download a flyer with active links for your personal use or for sharing with others at your in-person meetings, click here.
OA World Service Asks Its Member to Take the Recovery Survey TODAY!
Please make certain to complete a recent survey put out by our World Service Organization (WSO) entitled, “What Works for You?”
The Board Approved Literature (BAL) Committee is revising a piece of literature on the topic of what recovery actions are most helpful to our members. Your answers to this survey will provide invaluable insights for this express purpose!
Remember that OA honors anonymity, so feel free to openly share your experience of what works for you and how you work the OA program. Individual responses will be kept anonymous. The survey responses will be reviewed in the aggregate with a plan for the survey findings to be shared at the World Service Business Conference in May of 2024. Take the survey here.
While this survey is in English, WSO encourages local service bodies to help non-English-speaking members with translation to complete the survey. If you are bilingual, please be sure to offer to help a non-English speaking member complete this survey, today!
IMPORTANT NOTE: This survey will remain open to take your responses until June 15, 2024. Thank you for sharing your recovery experiences with the OA World Service Organization. Your openness and honesty is greatly appreciated!
OASV Intergroup Aims to Carry the Message to the Still Suffering Compulsive Eater
What is OA’s primary purpose? Our primary purpose is to abstain from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors and to carry the message of recovery through the Twelve Steps of OA to those who still suffer.
To help the still suffering compulsive eater, the OASV Intergroup has invested in the development and maintenance of a robust website that is continually being updated as well this, our monthly Newsletter. We hope you will share the following links with anyone who has interest, but especially those individuals who might find value in learning more about our Twelve Step program of recovery from compulsive eating, poor body image, and all manner of food addictions – OA has a design for living that really works!
For non-English speakers, OASV offers the language translation of your choice – look for the language options icon in the lower left corner of the website and click on your preferred language!
- How to Get Started in Overeaters Anonymous
- Are you a Compulsive Eater?
- Get Inspired! (Stories – Poetry – Art – Humor)
- Listen to a Podcast
- Attend a Recorded Workshop
- Check out Our OASV Blogs
- Get into Service – Open Positions
- Are you Concerned About a Compulsive Eater?
- Introduce OA to a Professional – be sure to share link this with your physician, therapist, dentist, or faith leader!
- Looking for a Meeting?
- News & Science
Healthy Eating: Blogs Posts Featuring Food Plans and Recipes
In March of 2024, OASV Intergroup launched a brand new section of its website, titled Healthy Eating, intended to be reflective of our members various plans of eating. It will come to contain and reflect various plans of eating together with a collection of member shared recipes.
We want to grow this section of our website so we invite you to submit some of your favorite abstinent recipes to webmaster@oasv.org, along with a brief description of your plan of eating (and/or a bit about how you came to join OA) so that other members can come to appreciate the diversity and growing options for abstinent eating.
Be sure to share your most delicious and nutritious, whole and healthy abstinent recipes with us so that all may know that living as an abstinent member of OA doesn’t mean starving yourself, following a restrictive or bland diet, counting calories, or making separate food for others in your household or when any ‘normies’ (non-OA members or ‘normal eaters’) come to visit.
Given we each determine our own particular plan of eating with the aid of our sponsors and the guidance provided by the Higher Power of our own choosing, some of these recipes may not meet your unique needs or reflect your personal “nonalcoholic” or “greenlight” foods. They are, however, provided here as examples of what abstinent members are preparing, eating, and sharing with their families and friends as a daily part of their OA Twelve Step recovery.
- How An OA Member Came to Enjoy Cooking Healthy – Creamy Pesto Chicken, Tomatoes, and Spinach
- OA Member Recipe: Yummy Good-4-U Spinach Parmigiano Chicken Rollatini
Help OASV Make this Newsletter a MUST READ – Share Your Thoughts and Suggestions with Us!
We hope to make this newsletter something you will want to read regularly for its useful OA recovery information and insightful content. OA is a ‘WE’ program, so we are asking you to help us make this newsletter the best of the best in OA.
Would you like to contribute to a future OASV newsletter – recovery art, poetry, an OA story, a slogan, a favorite recipe with a bit of your story, or something special shared with you by a fellow OA member or your sponsor? If yes, then please be sure to send an email with your proposed content to info@OASV.org by 4pm the last Monday of the month. Don’t worry about any needed editing or grammar issues – our Newsletter editor is happy to help polish up your contribution and send it back to you for your review and final approval.
Your feedback regarding our Newsletters, and any suggestions, special contributions, or unique ideas for future issues (or the OASV website), is greatly appreciated!
OASV Intergroup is Making the Most of RSS
If you’ve ever wanted to find a way to be able to easily gather and view everything you might need or want to know about OA, recovery from compulsive eating, or the Silicon Valley Intergroup, then you’re going to love this! Rather than wander all over the internet trying to get the latest OA recovery news and events from all of your favorite websites, blogs, or podcasts, you can automatically enjoy this OASV Newsletter thanks to its RSS feed capabilities.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It refers to files easily read by a computer called XML files that automatically update information. To learn more about RSS and why RSS is so useful, please click here.
This Newsletter is RSS enabled. What that means is more people all around the world who use RSS to find information about compulsive eating, how to stop binge eating or restricting, and what to do about food cravings and food obsession, will come to discover this newsletter automatically within their RSS news feed.
To get your own RSS feed for any internet-enabled mobile device or for your home computer, please click here.
Gentle Reminder: Please Contribute to the Seventh Tradition!
If you are able to contribute, please be sure to send your monthly meeting contribution to Intergroup via mail or you may contribute via PayPal located on the OASV website home page.
Recurring contributions are especially welcome and encouraged to ensure our continued financial wellness, allow OASV to offer expanded numbers of meetings, events, and web content, and so our Intergroup may contribute its fair share to Region 2 as well as to the World Service Organization (WSO) to carry our message of hope to the still suffering compulsive eater.
Please mail any checks made out to “OASV Intergroup” and address them as follows:
OASV Intergroup
P.O. Box 5603 San Jose,
CA 95150 (USA)
Your generous contributions are greatly appreciated as they help us better serve our current members and also reach out to the still suffering compulsive eater!
Never forget: WE GET BETTER TOGETHER!
