Facing Myself
I
n 2012, I had been in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) for almost three years. I was on my fourth round of back-to-back abstinence, having reached 90 days three different previous times. When my eldest daughter and her husband left after a rare visit with me to attend a wedding in the vineyards of Monterey County in California, a dairy product I had purchased for my son-inlaw’s morning coffee was left in my refrigerator. Two days later, between my breakfast and lunch, I splashed some of the liquid from the shiny carton into my cup of decaf coffee, murmuring to myself, “I am not going to tell my sponsor about this.” The following night at my regular FA meeting, a fellow shared that although she had eight years in FA, the last two had been painful and everything had become a struggle. She shared that she was struggling with her abstinence when the subject of rigorous honesty came up in one of her recent conversations. It suddenly occurred to her that her struggles might be related to the fact that she had withheld a little fact from her sponsor about what she was putting into her decaf. I connection
gasped to myself and thought, Are you kidding me? The next morning, I told my sponsor about the splash into my decaf. A couple of days later found me back to day one, ready to face the start of my fifth round of abstinence. Just as in my previous first 90 days, I believed that, with my Higher Power, something good would land in my lap, something I could not have humanly predicted. At that time, I was grieving the loss of a job I’d had at a company I loved. Through my grief, the only silver lining had been the anticipation of the visit from my daughter and her husband. Now that the visit was over, I had to face myself. It was time for me to bond with my Higher Power. I put that first, front, and center. One outreach call at a time brought me to take charge of my finances. I called two financial consultants regarding stock from the grants I’d been so generously and unexpectedly given by my employer. I called the IRS to make some arrangements. I went to a tax advisor who looked at my stock transactions and asked me, “Is this what you are crying about?” So my finances were not so bad. Then an old friend offered to let me pay $500 a month 5
