June 2021: Give Us Strength. Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA)

FA Stories of Recovery from Food Addiction

Finding Balance

June 2021 $2.50

June 2021

Columns Qualification: 612 Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 First 90 Days: Redefining “Honesty”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Frontier Focus: Flourishing on the Frontier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 No Matter What: A Day Off the Grid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Lighten Up: Reversal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Features Misplaced Responsibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Courage to Share. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Guided By a Higher Power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Subscribe Go to our website: w w w . f o o d a d d i c t s . o r g and have connection delivered to your home.

Credits

Share your story and your artwork If you have 90 days of continuous

Front Cover Art: Sharon C., MA Graphic Design: Tickled Plum

abstinence in FA, connection invites you to share your experience,

Copyright © 2021 Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous 400 W. Cummings Park, Suite 1700 Woburn, MA 01801-6572

co n n e cti on.food ad d i c ts.or g

strength, and hope with us.

Submit online at: connection.foodaddicts.org

Qualification

612 Days

T

oday marked my six hundred and twelfth day of abstinence, but who’s counting? I am! Every evening that I can write down my food for tomorrow—another day without flour and sugar—is a good one. Perhaps one day, I’ll stop counting. Perhaps I won’t. Every day that I say no to flour and sugar and yes to recovery is a gift from my higher power.

I can honestly say that I know what it means to be food neutral, that food doesn’t call out to me, beckon me, or tempt me.

Food is now fuel, flavor, and a time for fellowship; it isn’t an escape from reality, a way to numb the emotional pain that I never wanted to face or had the tools to confront.

Food is hardly my friend now, but it is no longer my temptress. I think of my addiction as a beast in a cage. It is still very strong (“cunning, baffling, powerful”), but so are my tools for abstinence! My calls to my sponsor challenge me to be my best self and to lay aside the “stinkin’ thinkin’” that was my default mechanism in life.

I’m grateful for all of the blessings I have amidst quarantine and pandemic. My virtual gatherings keep me connected to felconnection

lows in the same daily fight I’m in for abstinence and recovery. My quiet time grows more meaningful as I trust my higher power and myself.

Perfectionism is an old garment that doesn’t fit me anymore. Today, I wear “Do well and be satisfied.” When I criticize others or myself, I’m quick to correct myself, but not with shame or punitive talk. Today, I redirect my thinking to what will serve the world and myself for the better. At the onset of emotional upheaval or unrest, my mantra is no longer, “Grab your keys and get your food fix.” Now I choose phrases like, “Not my food” and “Welcome the emotions in and sit with them.” I now know that the sky won’t fall if I sit with my emotions, process them, and let them go.

Serenity? There’s no food that tastes as good as sweet peace of mind!

It wasn’t always this way. The first four months of Program were undoubtedly the most difficult for me. There was the matter of coming to terms with being a food addict. I’d known long before Program that I could never handle my food and eat “like a lady.” The matter of accepting my food addiction was like being sick for years and fi1

nally getting the right diagnosis and the right treatment. I’m thriving because I now have the cure to my disease: abstinence and recovery through the Twelve Steps.

and chewing was an ordeal, too. Gone were the quick meals on the run. To eat all of the roughage that we have, I needed time. I couldn’t shovel the food down

Another major transition at the beginning of Program was fitting three meetings into an already-busy schedule. “I can’t possibly fit three meetings into my life; I’ve got a full-time job, I’m a wife, a mom.” My sponsor, in all of her quiet wisdom, just asked me to be willing to try. I did and, lo and behold, I was able to shuffle and reorder my life for what had to be my priorities to abstinence and recovery.

Incorporating the shopping, chopping,

while driving. I needed to slow down and enjoy this natural, God-made food. Gradually, I shifted from processed to natural foods, and natural food can’t, and shouldn’t, be rushed.

My final hurdles in gaining abstinence were being rigorously honest and completely surrendering my life, my schedule, my food, and my emotions to FA. I hear fellows say incessantly, “One day at a time.”

Call me peculiar, but I really had to accept

MEREDITH M., ME

2

June 2021

Twelve Steps the long-term ramifications of abstinence, that it would be my new way of life, one day at a time, for the rest of my life. There would be no weekend off-the-wagon “cheat days.” (I’ve never had a cheat day that didn’t last for several days to weeks!) There would not be a temporary hiatus from Program. The thought of starting at day one again after several breaks was completely unappetizing to me. I had to make the decision for my life, for my well-being, for my mental and spiritual health, that I would choose abstinence day after day after day after day for the rest of my life. When I decided that abstinence was more gratifying than the flour and sugar, I began to have a mindset shift. And the days of abstinence began to grow, one beautiful abstinent day after another.

Therefore, today is day 612, over 20 months of choosing life, honesty, amends, the Twelve Steps, outreach calls, quiet time, virtual gatherings, and an AWOL (A Way of Life, a study of the Twelve Steps).

My life will never be the same because each and every day, I have chosen abstinence and recovery. Each day, sugar and flour are not viable options for me anymore; health, self-care, authenticity and serenity are my new delights. I am high on life, and each day that I choose abstinence is more satisfying than flour and sugar ever were.

Sheryn N., California, U.S. connection

1. We admitted we were powerless over food – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. 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.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to food addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Adapted with permission from Alcoholics Anonymous3

First 90 Days

Redefining “Honesty”

I

spell God with two Os. Before FA, I would have asserted I was an honest person. I’d have bet money on the fact that my honesty was superior to those around me. If I received too much change at the store, I gave it back. I never said anything behind someone’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face. Yup, I was honest.

After seven years in FA, a few AWOLs (A Way of Life, a study of the Twelve Steps) and other Twelve-Step work, I now see the brutality that went with that honesty. It is true, if someone gave me too much change at the store I would give it back, along with an honest appraisal of the store clerk’s intelligence. I may not have used the word “idiot,” but there was no doubt that was my message. I loved my husband enough to tell him all the things nobody else would say to his face, and was just as brutal and relentless as I had been with the store clerk because I was honest and he needed to know. He was not alone; I loved a lot of people enough to tell them, too!

I showed myself about the same amount of compassion and understanding. My internal critic was constantly being honest

4

with me. They don’t even like you. You’ll never get it right, why even try?

At my first FA meeting, for the first time in my life (I was 55 years old at that point), I was greeted by a group of men and women who I wanted to be with. It was novel. And I was stumped, because they seemed to like me even though they had never met me before. How could they like me?

It was a Sunday morning and many of them were dressed for church. The word God was everywhere. “Thank you God,” this and “Thank you God,” that and “If it is God’s will.” I felt like I wouldn’t fit in, because I just didn’t believe in God. The leader told her story. I really wasn’t listening too closely, but each time she said “God” I shrank back into myself. I had sat at the front of the room so that my scope of vision was limited to those in front of the room, a trick I learned to keep me from judging everyone by their appearance. I heard the words, “if you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it.” I decided the length I would go to would be to pretend to have a relationship with God, use the word, and June 2021

tell people I prayed. If they needed a God, that was their problem, but I would just pretend. Pretending isn’t dishonest, is it? I mean, it’s their fault if I have to lie just to fit in!

But then something amazing happened!

After the break, a woman got up in front of the room, and spoke about her challenge with the word God. She shared about how the words, “...of our understanding” helped her to deal with her challenge. This was just what I needed! I realized that if she could be open about it, then I could, too. What a relief! I knew that I could really join this group, honestly!

Yet so much of the literature and spoken words at the meeting were about this “God of my understanding.” A few months into Program, I had an epiphany in my morning meditation. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God, it was that I believed there was a God who loved everybody except me. After all, if there was a God, why had He allowed me to grow up with incest and parental neglect? Why had He determined that I should be fat and lonely?

Over the following days and, with my sponsor’s guidance, I came to believe that there was a power greater than me, and that that power had likely brought me to the doors of FA. In the seven years I have connection

been in FA, I have never heard about it through any public channel or from any other person. So how did I get to be here?

Some while later, a fellow shared his “God concept” with me, and this helped me with my dilemma even more. He said, “I spell God with two oes; God is good.” After talking it over with him, I now have a way to think about God that works for me. When I say “God, show me your will,” I understand that to mean “let me see what is the good way to go.” When I am at the height of my goodness, then I am “one with God.” Leastways, that is my understanding.

Today, I can see how honesty and goodness/God can go together for me. When I am honest with myself, I tell myself that I am doing the best I can. I no longer succumb to the internal critic, whose “honesty” is not good, but hurtful and narrow.

In addition, I offer feedback to others only when asked. And my recovery concept of feedback is very different from my pre-FA “honest feedback.” Nowadays, honest feedback feeds that person’s growth, in a way that brutal criticism never did.

I am abstinent, thank goodness. I have a developing spiritual life, thank goodness.

I feel like I belong, thank goodness.

Thank God. Wendy B., California, U.S. 5

Frontier Focus

Flourishing on the Frontier

W

hen I first started the program in July 2019, I really wasn’t sure whom I should ask to sponsor me. They said “find a sponsor who has what you want,” but there were over 10,000 fellows out there. How on earth was I supposed to find the right one?

How could I know if they truly had what I wanted if I had never met them?

I had been floating around Twelve-Step programs for a few years by this point, and it was my second time venturing into Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA).

Feeling lost and desperate, I prayed a lot on my knees. I asked my Higher Power (HP) to please guide me to the perfect sponsor for me and to open my mind and help me let go of any ideas that I had that were preventing me from being successful in recovery. It worked! After making many calls, I eventually found someone in a time zone that suited me, and my HP gave me a strong sense that I needed to surrender and accept her as my sponsor. It meant letting go of a lot of ideas about how I should be working the program. But in my heart of hearts, I knew. So we began working together and I haven’t looked back since.

6

The miracles in my life are beyond what I could have imagined. I have been transformed from an anxious, depressed food addict to someone who is peaceful and can live happily, one day at a time. In the beginning of our time working together, my sponsor recommended that I listen to three FA podcasts a week on the days when I wasn’t going to my meetings. She suggested that it would also be good for me to get on the frontier support call and a couple of other specific calls. At first, I felt a bit negative about this, because it seemed like too much. Surely, she was brainwashing me.

But an FA brainwashing was exactly what I needed, and soon I began to surrender to the idea that if I weighed and measured my food and put my program front and center, I would learn how to weigh and measure my life and it would all fall neatly into place.

At that time, my phone was practically glued to my ear. People were kind and warm and generous with their time. They gave me so much hope. I connected with and received strength from other strong fellows on the frontier in different parts of the world. I listened. I joined a phone AWOL (A Way of Life, a study of the June 2021

Twelve Steps) and followed my sponsor’s suggestion to connect with my AWOL leaders and share regularly on that gathering. Sharing was scary at first, as I was very self-conscious and cared a lot about what people thought, but as I contributed, put myself out there and received lots of calls back, I started to trust and feel filled up and part of a supportive community.

I attended two inperson Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings a week, one of which I shared with another dear FA fellow who also works the program on the frontier. In fact, she lives only a 20-minute walk away from my house! We have become very close since I came back into FA. Until the pandemic happened, we would take turns picking each other up and driving to our evening AA meeting. One practice we started was arriving about 20 minutes early and reading through the FA format together before going inside. On the drive home, we would connection

talk about the experience, strength and hope we got from the meeting. Sometimes I would get to feeling down, thinking the AA meetings weren’t good enough. I struggled listening to people who I labelled as food addicts, who I thought wouldn’t be able to share if they were in FA, and that therefore I shouldn’t listen to them.

In my head, there was a program hierarchy and FA was at the top. We work our program stronger than any of these AA people, I thought to myself. pridefully. I started to sizzle up quite a resentment about this. Wouldn’t it be better if my fellow and I just started a meeting, or sat together and read XANDRA G., CA the literature and listened to a qualification by ourselves? Perhaps it would be better if I just moved overseas!

I had a lot of bright ideas about how things should be better and different than they were. Funnily enough, all these ideas involved other people changing or some other kind of external solution. I was resist7

ant for a while to a lot of difficult suggestions, because I thought I knew better. “Stay where you are,” I was told. “Introduce yourself like this. Don’t try and start a meeting.

Don’t go to that other meeting. Stop questioning. Just practice showing up, stick with your fellow, be grateful, surrender and trust.”

They say that food addicts are allergic to flour, sugar and being told what to do, and I was terrified that maybe I was giving up my God-given thinking abilities by surrendering to a controlling cult. It came from fear. I was scared it wasn’t going to be enough. I was scared that somehow, this wasn’t going to work for me, even if I did all the right things. I thought I was “terminally unique” and worried that I would not get the recovery I so desperately desired. After praying for the right perspective, writing gratitude lists for a while, and reading the acceptance pages in the Big Book over and over, I realized my eyes were truly broken.

God was retraining my brain out of scarcity mode and teaching me how to look for the good. Just as it was with the food, I slowly learned how to be satisfied and trust that God works in any situation to bring good out of everything. As long as I worked a good strong program and focused on all the tools and disciplines utilizing every tool every day, the FA way, then it was enough.

8

When the pandemic hit, it brought with it many blessings. I realized how truly lucky I am to have such a beautiful fellow alongside me who lives nearby. Today we are very close, speak many times a week, and help one another whenever we can. How lucky we are to have the technology to connect us with the worldwide fellowship! We have been attending lots of gatherings, eating together and taking the opportunity to slow down and do extra quiet time.

Today, I feel very grateful to work FA on the frontier. I have been given everything I need to recover and develop a strong relationship with my God. Occasionally, I think about moving to another area where I am closer to a larger community, but I know that my HP will guide me there if and when the time is right. For now, I have more than enough. I stay in the day, work a strong program, and thank God daily for all the blessings I have and continue to receive, and for all the good that is unfolding.

I put in great effort to connect with my fellows in other parts of the world and cherish my relationship with my local fellow. I continue to thank God for my strong fellowship and flourishing community. I pray that I may be of service and do God’s will, whatever that may be. I remember that living on the frontier is a blessing because I want it to be; it’s all a matter of perspective.

Anonymous June 2021

Misplaced Responsibility

I

thought I was in control of myself. I was responsible to a fault. Later, I was to learn that it wasn’t my biggest virtue but my biggest fault! When others gave up, I got things done. As an Impossible Mission lady, I had a willful tenacity as well as a strong body that withstood four hours of sleep for 20 years, never getting sick. Believing that God gave me this strong will and body to get lots done, I tried to be a super woman and a perfectionist. I actually thought that perfection was expected of me in order to be a good person. I enjoyed a successful and varied career in teaching, starting out as a private school art teacher and later being invited to Asia as a foreign student department director. Suddenly, my husband and I became caregivers for 25 teenage students studying abroad. Over the next five years, our family grew as we home-birthed three babies. Of course, in my usual fashion, I never rested and was back on the job with a baby in my pack. I never thought to skip a beat with my dormitory or teaching duties. Depending largely on my self-reliance, I started to put on more weight and justified that it was the birthing years.

When we returned to the United States, connection

I was inspired to start a school for my own children, at which I directed and remained head teacher for 20 years.

Throughout those years, I never rested and was driven to work even harder, sleep less, and make it perfect.

As my weight accelerated, I thought that sheer will would take off the climbing weight. I even hired a famous fitness coach to work with me three times a week. She had written three books describing her clients’ huge weight loss victories. She monitored my food and I faithfully attended her aerobics kickboxing class, assured that I would be another success story. I was not. There was something more than calories in, calories out.

So I gave up and decided that I needed to accept my weight of 225 pounds (about 102 kilos) at 5-feet, 2-inches tall. That depressed me.

Next, we moved to Hawaii and with 40 years teaching experience, I became a private middle/high school director. It was just the kind of education I had dreamed of; a values-based education with an abundance of outdoor learning. It was a great finale to my career, or so I thought.

Sadly, the entrepreneur and visionary for the school died, funding abruptly ended, 9

SUSAN F., NY

and the school had to close after graduation. It felt like the world was falling out from under me. For a while, I was determined to save the school by promoting, fund-raising, and hiring experts to help us. Later, I would come to realize that it 10

was me that needed saving from myself. I was slowly overcome with despair and disappointment in myself that I couldn’t change the course, and what had started out as my own fairy tale come true.

Surely, with God at my side, the school June 2021

could continue. But it didn’t. I prayed and meditated and asked God for the key to my balance and I heard the words, misplaced responsibility.

That year, a prayer on New Year’s Eve brought me to my knees. In tears, I cried for God to bring balance into my life. I was over-worked, over-fatigued, and 100 pounds (about 45 kilos) over weight. Although I prayed throughout my life, I always thought it was my responsibility to make things happen. In my desperate prayer, I heard the words misplaced responsibility again. God answered my New Year’s Eve prayer 21 days later, when one of the parents of a student came to Kauai to visit me. She was a friend of over 25 years and I had always known her as a jolly lady with extra weight. But she stood at my door in her right-size body, 80 pounds (about 36 kilos) less than the woman I’d always known! She simply said to me, “Oh, Sharon, I can see that you are carrying such a heavy burden.” That was the truest and kindest thing anyone could have said to me. I knew at that moment that God had sent my friend as a messenger to give me the answer to my prayer.

She told me about FA, and without any further search, I asked her to become my sponsor that day. I thank God she agreed.

What changed after FA? I no longer depended on me. I gave over my misplaced responsibility and my problems to my connection

Higher Power. I gave over my weight problem, as well as other burdens of closing a school and stopped beating myself up as to what more I could I have done to keep the school open. Instead, the serenity prayer took hold of me and helped me to accept the things I could not change. I had courage to stand solid in the midst of unhappy, discouraged students, teachers, and parents. And with God’s help, not my own, I could close the school with a ceremony of grace and dignity. In those times of chaos, there was only one thing I could be in charge of with FA and my Higher Power’s help—my food.

That was the beginning of my journey of recovery of mind, spirit, and a 100pound (about 45 kilos) weight loss. I am always asking God to help me be the “original blueprint” of me as I was designed to be. I am slowly letting go of the thoughts that always overburdened, such as, I can do this myself, I won’t bother God about the small stuff, or I got this. I no longer expect perfection for myself; it was defeating and always resulted in depression.

I am now content with spiritual growth.

The only perfection that happens is in this very moment, which is the place where God dwells. So I am replacing misplaced responsibility with reliance on God. The burden has lifted and now my real work begins!

Sharon G., Tennessee, U.S. 11

The Courage to Share

I

sat in my chair. We were almost to the Finally, we got to the very last opportunity, 10-minute break in the meeting of and when the leader said, “We have time for Food Addicts in Recovery Anony- a short one,” I managed to get my hand up. mous (FA), and I was already thinking about Someone else got selected, and I breathed a whether I was going to be able to raise my sigh of relief. I had made it through a meethand after the break. How do I feel about it? ing and I did not have to get up to the front Do I have anything to say? It seemed like I said of the room to share. And I did, after all, get the same things over my hand up once. and over in meetings, But as the day went After that call, I decided to go and surely people on, my relief started were getting tired of to turn into a feeling back and take the advice I often hearing from me. of failure.

The break came gave to newcomers, “Just trust I also faced this and I was enjoying problem in my visiting and chatting God to do what needs to be AWOL (A Way of with different fellows.

Life, a study of the Afterwards, I sat in Twelve Steps). With done for the room.” my seat and hoped only 15 people in the that there would be someone who recently meetings, there was always time for every got their 90 days of abstinence who could one of us to speak, but I still struggled to get share so I could put off the decision about my hand up. I was so convinced that I didn’t whether my hand was going into the air, but have anything to say, or if I did say somenobody volunteered. If there was going to thing it wouldn’t come out right, or it wouldbe anyone sharing, someone in the room n’t be as good as what the other person said would need to put their hand up. I wasn’t just before me. And probably after I sat sure I wanted to, and as I sat there and down, someone else would get up and say it dithered about it, someone else got called better. to share. This dance continued time after How often had I exhorted newer people time. I was starting to feel defeated because in the program, “Oh, don’t think about what I was not getting my hand up. you’re going to say. Just get up and tell people 12

June 2021

how much weight you lost and how long you have been in the program. By the time you’ve done that, you’re already talking and the rest of the words will come out! God knows who’s in the room and what they need to hear. Just get up and trust God, and know that He’ll speak through you.” I realized that I was not practicing what I preached.

In an outreach call last week, I got to talking about this subject with a fellow who could relate to my struggle. We explored the subject honestly with each other and came to the conclusion that we were making an effort to be in control of the room. By not putting my hand up I was trying to manipulate the room so that somebody else would be called on to speak, not me. Now isn’t that a fine occupation for someone who’s trying to recover from being a control freak?

After that call, I decided to go back and take the advice I often gave to newcomers, “Just trust God to do what needs to be done for the room,” and at my meeting today, I managed to get my hand up each time there was an opportunity. Once I had been called on and had shared with the room, I got to sit down and enjoy the rest of the meeting and feel grateful, successful, and hopeful.

Tomorrow night, I will go to my AWOL, and with God’s help, I will put my hand up instead of sitting in my chair dithering about it.

Susan P., California, U.S. connection

Twelve Traditions 1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on FA unity.

2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

3. The only requirement for FA membership is a desire to stop eating addictively.

4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or FA as a whole.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the food addict who still suffers.

6. An FA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the FA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

7. Every FA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

8. Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

9. FA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

10. Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues, hence the FA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.

12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Adapted with permission from Alcoholics Anonymous13

Guided By a Higher Power

M

y first couple of months in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) were a challenge. I was in a fog most of the time. Tired and groggy from detoxing off of flour and sugar, I did my best to work my program and function at work. Taking my sponsor’s suggestions, I drove distances to attend meetings, made three calls a day to perfect strangers, weighed and measured my meals eating nothing in between, and got up at what I considered an ungodly hour of the morning to call my sponsor. To my way of thinking, I was going to any lengths to work my program.

Before FA, I had a basic understanding of Twelve-Step programs. I had been to many different programs prior to FA and I dallied with working the Twelve Steps in AA, but I wasn’t really serious about it. I didn’t understand, nor could I accept, the concept of something greater than me. I had great disdain for anything that smacked of religion of any kind, and I was convinced these were religious programs. I wanted no part of 14

them. I had no sense of spirituality or belonging. I was miserable and lost. That began to change once I came into the rooms of FA. After 90 days of abstinence, I was asked to qualify at a meeting. No problem. I spent a few nights thinking about what I would talk about and had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to say. My sponsor said not to plan, just to tell my story. She suggested that I let my higher power guide me.

Okay, I thought, like that would work. But when I stood in the LIZ B., UK front of the room to tell my story, something came out that was entirely different from my plan. I felt like I was being guided and just went with it. It was disquieting, but relief soon overrode the disquiet. The second step popped into my head. “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” That was my first miracle.

There have been many more since then, and each time I’m amazed, but not surprised.

Things work out when I let go and let my higher power guide me. Things turn out a lot better now than when I was in charge.

Ann L., California, U.S. June 2021

No Matter What

A Day Off the Grid

I

started my day doing my morning dis- I went to my cloud to find my phone and ciplines. I was feeling really good and low and behold, the phone was at home. serene. After I ate my breakfast, I was Thank you, God! But how did that hapabout to leave for work. Darn! I couldn’t pen? God said, “While you were in a rush find my keys. I looked on top and under my to find your keys, you looked under your bed and could not find them. I thought, bed and the phone fell out your pocket.

That’s okay. I have a spare key in my wallet, and You were going so fast that you didn’t notice I can enter the front it.” At least, I knew gate using my that my phone and I’m grateful to God phone. keys were at home.

So I set off to But since I didn’t have that He got me through work, pedaling my phone, I wouldn’t my bicycle, and be able to buzz myself all of the angst of that day. arrived at the through the front bike room to punch in from my phone. I gate. I hoped my building manager would checked the inside pocket of my blazer. Oh, be there to let me in or someone who had a no, where is my phone? No, no, no, no! I pan- key would be there to open it for me. icked. I said, “Oh, God, please help me.” I So now I had to go through my day at wondered if my phone had fallen out of my work without my phone, which meant no pocket while I was riding to work. Heaven phone connections with my fellows. I forbid, if someone picked it up, most likely couldn’t take my online course. I couldn’t sit they would get an early Christmas present in for my hourly online video training. All and I’d be out $1,000. things I was looking forward to doing. I am So I punched in manually at my job and I totally naked without my phone! Ugh! said, “God, help me, please.”

What do I do now? God said, “Let’s hang out At the time, I had my laptop but no Wi-Fi for eight hours, then.” Okay, but how? He at work. I asked my co-worker if she had a said, “You are not a boring person and you hotspot. She said yes and provided it for me. can always find things to do. Have you done

connection

15

LIZ B., UK

your Ninth-Step amends yet?” No. “So you don’t need a phone for that, right?” No. “So let’s get started.” I did my Ninth-Step amends and I felt great about it.

The dialog with my Higher Power continued. “Okay, so you love crossword puzzles, don’t you?” Yes. “So do some crosswords. It will get you out of your head and you can discover new words and how to use them. I have another idea. When is the last time you wrote for the Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) connection magazine?” It’s been a few years. “Since you can’t connect to fellows right now, why 16

don’t you get into service and write about this whole funny experience to share with your fellows?”

I’m grateful to God that He got me through all of the angst of that day, and I didn’t have thoughts of eating addictively.

And thank God I did not leave my abstinent food at home, as well.

Okay, so I feel a lesson coming out of this.

I came to realize that I need to be more mindful and organized and when life gives me curveballs, don’t panic! Pause, pray, and pivot to the next right action.

Carlos W., California, U.S. June 2021

Lighten Up!

Reversal

I

came to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) in 1998 at the age of 29. At 5-feet, 6-inches, I weighed about 177 pounds (about 80 kilos), which was down from my last known top weight of 190 pounds (about 86 kilos). I can’t say what size I wore because I had stopped wearing women’s clothes for the most part. Men’s clothes were far more comfortable.

I knew I was significantly overweight, but I told my first sponsor that I didn’t want to lose too much weight.

As I recall, my exact words were, “I don’t want to be one of those skinny, flimsy girls, because I’m a feminist.”

She wisely said, “Don’t worry about that now.

Just weigh and measure your food and work this program to the best of your ability.”

About three months in, I went to a store in the mall and tried on some clothes, just to see. connection

I grabbed a size 12; it was too big. I grabbed a size 10; it was too big. I grabbed a size 8; I could hardly believe that it fit. My incredulity turned to suspicion. I repeatedly asked a salesperson if the sizes ran big; was she really sure?

And just to be clear, by “asked” I mean “nearly assaulted.”

The look on her face suggested that she thought I was crazy.

What she didn’t know was that I hadn’t seen anything close to a size 8 in over a decade. Plus, I knew I still had some weight to lose, and that I would most likely end up wearing a size 6.

I didn’t have a cell SUSAN D., CA phone at that time, so I went home and called my sponsor the minute I got in the door. I don’t think I even bothered to say hello when she picked up. Instead, I blurted out, “I changed my mind. I want to be one of those skinny, flimsy girls!”

Angie R., New York, U.S. 17

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.