Mimi D. from California USA has gained and lost 100 pounds (45 kg)—twice. The first time was during her first 18 years in OA. Thinking she was “cured” was the beginning of a decade of relapse and a rapid 100-pound weight gain. Yet today, she is abstinent and says, “My soul like a watered garden.” Learn how she found her way back to OA and abstinence.
When Judy E. fell into relapse, she never stopped working her program. She used all the Tools and worked the Steps, but she just couldn’t stop herself in the moments leading up to that first compulsive bite. Then she heard a message from her Higher Power and set a goal to improve her awareness. Read on to find out how she did it.
Follow the recorded script from the OA Foot Step’s Daily Meditation Meeting called “On Awakening.” Start with a fifteen-minute reading period, followed by the “On Awakening” reading from Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 86-88. Finish by meditating for ten minutes and journaling for fifteen minutes.
“I though God had forgotten me in my relapse,” says Hafeze from Gilan, Iran. She later realized that God was simply waiting for her to ask for help. When she came back to OA, she was blessed with a better understanding of the disease and how to find recovery.
Mary was very excited about her trip to Italy, but she had also became very anxious about it’s world-famous food culture, a prime attraction for tourists. How to manage this? She found simple and powerful answers from her sponsor and OA-approved literature. Her sponsor’s reminder? “I’m pretty sure God is in Italy.”
After ten years in OA, Diane found a Power greater than herself, and eventually started writing letters to her HP. To her amazement, her Higher Power started writing back. “It was slow and thoughtful and always—I mean ALWAYS— exactly what I needed to hear.”
Linda, grateful compulsive overeater, and Beverly, compulsive overeater, host this workshop on 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.” Examples of prayer and meditation are discussed.
I am a very grateful compulsive overeater with thirty-six years of abstinence. That is amazing to me, but not to my Higher Power, who asks me only to be abstinent one day at a time. The adding up of days and weeks and years is in the hands of my Higher Power. My job is … Continued
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of working OA’s Twelve Steps, Steven recounts his discovery of how meditation in Step Eleven helped him untangle his emotional wounds and his compulsive overeating.
Today is it. I don’t have to do more than that. I’m grateful to my first sponsor for drumming into me the concept of “one day at a time.” When I worried about the future, she’d remind me to look down at my feet and say aloud 1) where I am standing, 2) what day it is, and 3) “That’s all there … Continued