"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every new wave, and find your eternity in each moment."
    . . . Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes in our quest to tackle life's challenges we can get so wrapped up in our goals that we can forget to pause and enjoy the little things in life. Setting goals and achieving them is important, particularly our recovery goals. But there's always the danger that we can become human "doings" instead of human "beings." We need to take time out periodically to just "be." Enjoying a beautiful sunrise or sunset, a baby's smile, birds singing, a gentle breeze, sand in our toes, a twinkle in the eye of a loved one - these are all ways of taking us temporarily out of the rat race mentality and reminding us of the beauty and simplicity of our Higher Power. We only have to pause and reflect a moment to realize it and appreciate the precious gift that we've been given. All that we need is already available to us - here and now - in abundance.

ONE DAY AT A TIME ...
I will choose to live in the serenity of the present moment.

FOUNDER'S CORNER ~ LOYALTY ~

Not too far behind love, which is the topic most will be writing about this month, is loyalty. I'd like to write about that in this issue because I've been thinking a lot about loyalty and disloyalty, and why they're so important to me.

An anonymous child, age 12 wrote this poem. It resonated with me.

LOYALTY

"I feel the pain - it burns like a scar,
As people stare at me from where they are,
They whisper about me behind my back,
But it's okay ... because you are loyal to me.

I will come when everyone has gone,
And I will shield you when you are attacked;
I will comfort you when you are treated unjustly.
I will applaud you when others "boo."

If those you trusted turn their back on you,
They will have to turn their back on me.
That is just the way I am;
That is just the way it is.

This is respect.
This is friendship.
This is trust.
This is loyalty."

. . . . . Anonymous

I know from my own experience, and the countless thousands of times I have heard it from others, that getting "into action" works.

I was floundering and so - reverted to what I know to do: trust God, clean house and work with others - put the directions of the program into action. WOW! It worked immediately. Within one day I was feeling better and my relationships were improving, I felt more comfortable with food and the obsession was lessening. Within three days I was treating myself with a wonderful respect and feeling like I was pumping on all cylinders.

"Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life can bring the much- desired result." P. 40, AA 12&12

After so many years, I am still blown away by the power of the program!

I love the 12 steps. They have saved me time and time again from myself.

Love,
Lanaya

Some of you have received mail from one or more of the adminstrators. There are two of us in the office - Nancy and Dodee.

What do the administrators do? Well, we watch over all of TRG -- the meetings, the loops, the special services. We get up to 250 emails a day. Each time someone addresses an email with owner in the title, it is forwarded to TRGAdm. We also check all the Yahoo and Hotmail addresses that TRG uses.

We answer questions about every phase of TRG from subscribing and unsubscribing, to how to post to a loop, and even what the meaning of OA acronyms such as ODAT and ESH are. We live in different US time zones so one of us is usually checking things out to make sure the loops and meetings are available for all that need them from early morning until late at night.

We check to see that announcements are received by each list and are always here for the coordinators and division heads if they need us.

If you haven't seen us around, I promise you will at some time.

In loving service to all,
Dodee, Nancy and Audrey, Administrators

The Recovery Loops Division is made up of TRG's Twelve-step general sharing support groups. Our common mission is to provide a safe and supportive space for anyone who wants to recover from the disease of compulsive eating where COE's can share their experience, strength, and hope with others. In addition, some of these loops also have a special focus. The loops that make up this Division are: Anorexia and Bulimia, The Big Book, 200 Plus, Journey to Recovery, Meditations, OA Friends, OA Newcomers, OA Recovery, Relapse, Sponsor-Sponsee-Talk, Working the Steps ("WTS"), and WTS Weekly.

As you may know, a new group of OA Newcomers graduated the general sharing loops in December where they will continue their recovery journey. The First Quarter Orientation of 2006 has begun. This is a Speaker Program with 12 "old-timers" sending shares to the newcomers weekly.

WTS and Newcomers will begin new Study's March 1.

Several of the Recovery Group Loops are in need of coordinators. I know that giving service by being a coordinator of a loop has added a lot to my own recovery and hope that you will consider this opportunity to give service. If you are interested in becoming a coordinator, please contact me at the address given below.

Respectfully submitted,

CherylS, Chair
The Recovery Group Loops Division

Hello, everyone.

For many of us the opposite of hope brought us into program. At step one, or pre-step one, we felt hopeless, dejected, defeated; for many of us program seemd a last resort, a final flickering ray of hope thrown out to us across a dark sea of the drowning and the lost.

For many of us, the New Year, just by being a New Year, offers hope - hope of a new beginning. We may enter program as we once started another diet. This time, this time, it'll work. Sometimes it does. The New Year's resolution to enter fully into program does keep us going, until it becomes a habit. And, as habits have a way of doing, our participation becomes a natural and wonderful thing.

But not all of us have this experience. Some of us quit, convinced program can't work for us. We don't see the immediate changes we hoped for. Or it takes longer to lose weight this time, or none comes off. Or our character defects seem insurmountable, or we can't possibly make amends to some of the people on our list.

Funny thing, though, about this strong and resilient program -- we can begin again, at any moment. No bit of recovery, however small, is lost. And no one gets more than 24 hours at a time. There is always hope, hope that in the next minute we can decide, again, to be abstinent, or pick up the 'phone for the first time and call another OA member, or ask some one f-t-f or online to be our sponsor. We don't have to wait 'til next Monday or next month, or the next New Year, to adopt a food plan, to begin an inventory or do a daily inventory, to make an amend, to talk with and listen to G-d as we understand G-d.

Hope never leaves the stage of our lives. The rooms, whether cyber or otherwise, brim over with hope -- in what we share. It is, after all, experience, strength, and hope (ESH) we are to share with one another. What a profound gift our ESH is! I see it everyday on these loops, in meetings, hear it on the phone, sense it in our hearts.

Like a brilliant beam of light in that dark sea of despair, hope calls us home, in program, one day, one hour, one minute at a time. We are never alone. The light of hope forever shines.

Everyone is invited to check out the Discovery Division. If you haven't visited, there are loops on exercise, archives of recipes, an abstinent kitchen, a loop for kids to share, and a loop for parents and other friends and relatives of kids with food issues. And there's the yellow brick road ..........come and find out by going to the web page address, below:

In love and gratitude for hope,

Athena
Discovery Division Chair

People often ask about the role of a sponsor in their recovery. The OA website states it so clearly in the tools when it says:

"Sponsors are OA members who are living the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions to the best of their ability. They arewilling to share their recovery with other members of the Fellowship and are committed to abstinence."

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THE RECOVERY GROUP TELEPHONE ANGELS PROGRAM

Dear Friend in Recovery,

There is an opportunity available for you all to give back what you have been given by carrying the message through the use of the telephone. By just being willing to accept phone calls from fellow members of TRG when you are available, you can impact so many and possibly help keep someone from that first compulsive bite.

Our program can be very simple. Just by a member of a loop reaching out and making a phone call from a list available to them, lives can be changed. So many times I have been going through a tough time and picked up the phone and with the kind words spoken on the other end I was able to express my pain - thus preserving my abstinence one more day.

And sometimes just the act of dialing the phone and releasing the negative energy is enough - so even if the person is not home - the negativity or obsession has begun to be lifted and another tool can then be utilized.

On the other side there have been so many times when I received a call and just the right thing was said. I know a lot of times I would thank the person for keeping me abstinent one more day. Simply listening to them got me out of my own head and kept me out of the fridge.

So please consider being a Telephone Angel. It is such an amazing way to give back and serve at the same time. I always love what Rozanne said in her promise: "I put my hand in yours and together we can do what we never could do alone......" We all share a common bond and need each other. Sometimes online email is enough and sometimes we need more like a telphone connection.

To join our list of telephone angels and share your recovery with others through this service please contact: Telephoneangels@yahoo.com. In your email please include the following information so that you may be properly listed in th directory:

• Your name
• Email address
• Publish your email address? (Yes or No)
• What State you live in (this way people can find someone closer to them)
• Your phone number ~ area code and number
• Your time zone (like Eastern Standard)
• Best times to call?
• Should folks leave a message or not?
• And, any other info you want callers to know

~ MEET Elizabeth W.~

Elizabeth is the mother of 2 (ages 3 and 7), and comes to us from St. Paul, Minn.

"This year I knew I needed to find a different approach to controlling my weight. I had been on several diets over the years, but found that my weight still continued to climb despite my efforts."

"A friend of mine who is in AA told me about there being a 12 step program for people with eating disorders, and so I came online to learn more about it. That is how I found the Recovery Group."

"I was very intrigued by my first meeting. It was as if the people in the meeting had been reading my diary. I also found myself wanting to learn a lot more about how my thinking was tied in with my overeating. Before, I just thought of myself as a hog with no willpower."

"I found the shares of people in the meeting to be shocking in their honesty. I had never had the courage to speak frankly about how far out of control my eating gets sometimes, and I so related to those who felt ashamed afterwards."

In what ways, Elizabeth, do you feel that this program has had an impact on your recovery?

"I know that I am just getting started, but I am already beginning to feel differently... I now have peers that I can talk to who know the struggle of being obsessed with food. I am more forgiving of myself and learning to set smaller goals, rather than thinking about how my life will start once I am thin. I am concentrating on getting healthy, happy, and finding peace, rather than concentrating on weight."

"My family is very supportive, but does not really understand what the steps and meetings are all about if they are not about dieting and exchanging recipes. At this point I am still a little reluctant to say too much to them about the program, but that is ok, I am doing this just for me."

Like a lot of COE's, I have my good days and bad days... even when my plan is going well, and even though I am abstinent.

What I have become aware of most recently is that my mind has different levels of "stinking thinking". It is in "disease mode" that I find myself where my mind should not dwell. Self-pity is a good example of that.

From self-pity it is just a little hop over to my mental theater, where I replay old mental movies of how someone or something did me wrong. I well-up with resentment, and I start to have "insane" thoughts that contradict everything that I have been hoping and working to achieve. I start to lose focus of things going on around me, lose strength, lose energy, lose confidence, and just wallow in those old thoughts and emotions.

If allowed to go unchecked, I can find my emotions rise up, grow, and I am past resentment and well on my way to anger. I breathe differently. My willfulness increases, my mind races,and I find that I want to head for the fridge out of a need to lash out... only instead of lashing out at someone or something, I curb those feelings of violence and stuff it down... as though the physical violence of stuffing myself is the only outlet for me to react physically to my emotions.

When I immersed myself in the program, I began to experience a very strong anti-binge dialogue going on in my head.

This is what allows me to maintain my abstinence. Still, with practice and working on my relationship with my HP, things continue to get better... and my relationship with food has totally changed.

I still find, however, that unless I interrupt the negative thought process, my mind wants to escalate to the next level. I have begun to see these levels as red flags in which I know I need to take action and head negative thinking off at the pass. For example, I remind myself that there is no such thing as a right to self-pity, and that if I continue to wallow in it, I will become an emotional addict, becoming stuck, and losing my recovery.

Love in recovery,
Marilyn (TRGMarils)