~ FOUNDERS CORNER ~

Dear Recovery Friends,

Over the past year in Serendipity, I have written about how the Twelve Traditions are implemented in the Recovery Group. These traditions are the guidelines of TRG and the more we learn about them and honor them, the better community we will have.

An organization such as ours will only work if those who are members live our mission and carry our message. You have noticed that we don't have signs hanging out all over the place advertising The Recovery Group and our Trusted Servants don't march up and down Main Street carrying placards. The Recovery Administrators don't go on TV talk shows identifying themselves and our members don't write books and magazine articles about their loops and meetings. Why is this .... don't we want people to know about us? Of course we do; however, our name is The Recovery Group ~ Compulsive Eaters Anonymous. Anonymous! And even for recruitment purposes our anonymity in the public forum is far more important than recruiting.

The Eleventh Tradition says: "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." We have found that each member here can attract another member just by living a Twelve-Step oriented life and by honoring the traditions of our beloved fellowship.

Happy February to all.

@-}-}-}------
Love in recovery,
Mari

~ RELAPSE AND RECOVERY ~

Tell the Secrets

About six years ago, I went through a three- to four-year relapse. The main lesson I learned from the experience was how important it is to stay connected with others in the Fellowship when we're in trouble. I didn't do that. I continued to go to meetings, talk there and even do service. But I was not "rigorously honest" about what was going on inside me. I was not sharing the real me with others, in or out of the Fellowship. I didn't make many phone calls, and I didn't talk about my food with anyone. I was hiding. The slogan "we are as sick as our secrets" has always been meaningful for me. This is what was going on with me in my relapse; I was living with my secrets.

This is how our disease works, telling us we're okay when we're not. Denial is a powerful element in keeping us stuck. The solution: tell the secrets and let someone know about your feelings, your pain and your food. Shine the light on your dark corners. The light is God, coming through safe, supportive and loving people. Then the healing can begin.

If you are in relapse or haven't become abstinent, tell someone one of your secrets. Be as honest as you can with at least one other person, whether it's your sponsor or another supportive and safe recovering person. Just take that first baby step and you'll be on your way to healing, abstinence and recovery.

May God be with us as together we "trudge the Road of Happy Destiny" ("Big Book," page 164).

Reprinted from Lifeline, October 2001, Volume 29, No. 10 (edited and reprinted from The Butterflyer newsletter, Chicago Western Intergroup, November 1998)

Dear God,

Good morning and broad smiles from me this morning. The sun shines through my window as does the light You bring to me through my fellows. As I had my morning coffee (first mug) and read the early posts, two things popped up and smacked me in the kisser. One was that being on a high from being surrounded by the fellowship can and sometimes is dangerous to our abstinence. However the answer to this dilemma is merely clinging all the more to both the fellowship and You by allowing all of us to share that burden. The other was seeing several of my fellows going on with their lives through much change and upheaval all while being spiritually fit.

I have seen such bravery these past few days, and am happy to say my own bout with compulsive madness has passed, and You have relieved me of that bondage, thanks. We all too often hear only of the struggle and not enough of the victories in our world. Many feel as though their victory is fragile or speaking of it would seem arrogant or a boast, while neither is true, because the victory comes from You and should be shouted from the rooftops of our hearts.

Yes, I am being rather poetic this morning, and it feels good. All of the things I offered to You, those things I could do nothing about, have been resolved without me, thanks. The woman You sent to run my life lies sleeping in our bed, safe and peaceful, secure in her surroundings, knowing her protector is here. Me too.

Send whomever or whatever You will to me today, along with the wisdom and power to do Your will not mine. Watch over my family, friends, fellow loopies, those who still diet, and the people I just don't like.

AND WHY NOT......Danny

~ FROM THE RECOVERY GROUP MEMBERS ~

I wish I knew why, after all these years in program, I'm still not always able to get my food right, and how I could have put on some of the weight that I had lost. Why is it that I still struggle with abstinence when others have years of back to back abstinence? I guess the truth is that my journey has been different from others, and one of my very worst character defects is perfectionism, so it becomes the easiest thing for me to compare myself to others, or have these unrealistic expectations of myself and my recovery, which I am never able to meet up with.

In the last year, especially, when I have had a great deal of chronic back pain and subsequent depression, I almost went into relapse, and isolated a lot. I hardly phoned OA friends and was on the pity pot a great deal of the time. But one of the things that really helped me was that I always kept coming back. I still went to my f2f meeting; I still read loop mail and sometimes even shared. But I felt that my life was a mess and the sloppier my abstinence, when I had it, became, the more I would beat up on myself for not getting it right once again!

Somehow or other, the willingness has slowly come back to try and take some shaky steps back to the freedom I always have when my abstinence is back intact. I found two new sponsors - one online and one f2f - and it was through these two special people that some of the answers have come. All the time that I had been angry at myself for my failures, I had actually failed to see the progress I had made. Only in speaking to another person, could I see that even when I had had slips, I still hadn't crossed that line and eaten certain trigger foods that I hadn't eaten in a long time. It was as though I had recoiled from them as if it were a hot flame, as it says in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Surely that was progress! Even when I felt very angry and resentful at my ex husband when my grandson was born, and perhaps my body language showed that, I was able to be civil to him for my son's sake, which I had never been able to do before. My relationships are definitely better, although not perfect, and I don't always have to be right. I am able to tell my children that I love them, something that I had never been able to do before program. No matter how dishonest I have felt my food become, I am still able to tell another person that I am struggling, rather than being in denial and living in shame and guilt over what I ate, as I used to do before program.

Rewards of Abstinence

• Confidence instead of desperation.
• Assurance versus hopelessness.
• Fortitude instead of trepidation.
• Tranquility versus chaos.
• Self-respect instead of self-loathing.
• Simple human dignity versus pity and contempt of all associates.
• Self-assurance instead of bewilderment.
• The ability to face self versus a guilt-loaded mind.
• True friends instead of desperate loneliness.
• A clean pattern of living versus an aimless existence.
• Ability to choose not to overeat instead of the need to eat.
• A home and happy family life versus a house and a desperate family.
  
  

Happy, Joyous and Free

It is early morning . . . I sit here gazing at the snow covered landscape that God has provided and smile at chubby squirrels who frolic on the branches. I am content. Warm, comfortable in my little apartment. It is the perfect time for reflexion and gratitude.

Hello everyone, I am Danielle and I am a compulsive overeater. Today's musings have taken me back over the almost 50 years of my life.... The last half of my life has been interesting to say the least and I am mostly pleased with what I see, thanks to this program and the wisdom it has afforded me. I have tried to be the best Danielle I can be, and to always do the "next right thing"....

I remember waking and being full of hatred and resentment mostly for myself frequently for the people who surrounded me. As I would ponder the days miracle diet and how by "next summer, winter, fall, spring" I would be thin, I would already be a failure in my mind. Hating the "fat clothes" hanging in my closet, and hating the fat person who would be wearing them. I raged against the unfairness of my life, the cheating husband, the poverty, the fact that the "whole world had it better than I." I lived on my pity pot. I loved that pity pot and wore the victin cloak convincingly. Every morning would be greeted with anxiety and depression. I was close personal friends with, amongst many others, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and a gosh awful protein diet where I would pour what can only be described as "barf in a cup" as I forced it down my throat in my search for happiness. Easier to deal with than what was really going on. Of course I failed, never was thin, and hated myself all the more.

Suicidal ideation became my hobby. How and when. What people would say at my funeral - I would show them.... I had even decided on what should be written on my tombstone..... "See I told you I was sick" .... Bitter to the end. I would shed tears at the sheer poignancy of the scene. My, how I took myself seriously.

I was convinced that God was a judgemental, stern man, who was disgusted with me, and had far better things to do with his time than look after some worthless creature such as I.

And then I walked in through these doors. What a bunch of kooks you all seemed to be. Hugging and talking about some mysterious Higher Power. Accepting everyone no matter what size. In my intellectual superiority it was clear to me that I coudn't possibly be one of you. And there was no diet! How the heck was I supposed to lose weight without a diet?????

Luckily God believed in me at a time when I didn't believe in Him. So, thanks to a comedy of errors, and in spite of myself, I stayed.

I listened a lot but heard nothing, the inner voice was laughing at you. I had never belonged anywhere and felt that I certainly didn't belong here.

So I did what people said I should do, played the game and yes lost the weight. I was a star. A popular speaker and a well-liked sponsor. I revelled in the notoriety and basked in the glow of your admiration. And I went to bed believing I was the worse fraud ever. I had become an expert in justification, and called this "acting as if."

One particularly difficult day (we all have them), I announced that I was going to take shower. This proclamation was met with . . . nothing. The dog had thrown up, one of the children was teething, the other had a stomach virus with all that entails, and the eldest, well she was a teenager and I had been ducking hormones all day. I had dropped a plant, slipped and landed on my butt, and was in a particularly frenzied state.

So off to the shower to hide. As I disrobed, the middle child started knocking on the door. "Mama I want you!" Couldn't my #@# husband even do this one thing right??????

I verrrrrry dramatically raised my hands to the sky and said "Ok God, if you're so hot. . . you take this 'cause I can't do it anymore."

That's when the miracle occured. A calm came over me, as if I was being enveloped in a warm soothing oil. I can't describe it any other way, it was warm, it was soft and it poured over me from my head to my toes. God had somehow annointed me. All of the stress of the day, all of the anxiety of a lifetime had left. I felt a calm which had been unparalleled in my life. I took my shower and came out of that bathroom a different person.

And the hard work began. I started attending meetings in earnest. I read the books, studied them, and applied the principles to my life. When the feelings became too much to bear, I started seeing a therapist. It took almost a decade to get to the bottom of things.

I was thin, healthy psychologically, heck I was cured . . . and no longer needed the Program. LOL. I guess I hadn't dealt with that whole EGO thing yet.

I walked out of the rooms and now know that I was basically signing my own death warrant. We, the children and I, survived years of hard times. We got through by the skin of our teeth. God first threw little pebbles at me . . . you know, losing the house and having to move . . . I could handle that . . . who needed God?

Then the boulders began hitting. My daughter's best friend was murdered violently while she slept. My child was broken and turned to drugs and alcohol, which of course led to violence. And it was all I had to hold her together - us together. I was layed off, we lost our house, my father died, etc. etc. But we survived!

Recently I was sitting here, feeling very depressed. All of my weight and then some had come back (I weighed well over 300 lbs! and even at 5'9" I could no longer "carry it well." I was isolating and had gone back to suicidal fantasies. The children are grown and living on their own, my family is sober (for the most part) and combined have more than 30 years of sobriety and service in the Program.

Rather than let my thoughts get the better of me, I asked myself when was the last time I had felt good about me and my life? I realised that I needed a meeting. Hadn't been to one in more than 5 years. But knew that I needed one now!!!!

Thank God for the Internet. I wanted to find out when and where. What I found was you. I jumped in with both feet. Attended an on-line meeting right then and there, and became abstinent. Struggled with my definition, since I had aged and changed, become an insulin dependent diabetic, but worked the bugs out, and fell in love with OA again.

So here I am, happy to be alive, seeing the beauty in my life and appreciating every single one of you. So grateful to be here that I - who is rarely at a loss for words - can't find the words to express it adequately.

I am abstinent and have already shed a lot of weight, safely and happily, I have a wonderful sponsor, have made some wonderful new friends and am back to greeting the world with a smile when I awaken.

Life is good, one day at a time . . . thanks to OA and all of you.

With love and appreciation,

Danielle

H.O.W.

My name is Linda Lu, I live in Soldotna, Alaska. On October 29, 2001 I started the H.O.W. food plan. It has been an adventure ... that I pray I will continue for the rest of my life. One of the first things I noticed was less joint pain. The next was clearer thinking. And then at the end of thirty days, I noticed I lost 20 pounds. [tears of joy]

Well, it is almost 90 days now, and it is just getting better. I have started using the cook book, and as service work I cook recipes from it and give them as gifts (like the muffins on page 6, yummm! I use stevia as the sweetener). But I could not do this alone. Without my higher power working in my life I would not have made it through Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Chirstmas without one bite of a refined carb. I am now 35 pounds lighter and 150% happier!!! I thank spirit for the people who brought this plan into my life.