Essay

When I came to OA the second time back in the mid 80's, I was only willing to do those things in program that were "comfortable" for me to do. Working Steps Four through Nine were in no way a comfortable thing for me to do. I knew the program was not working for me; I simply did not know the reason was that self-will and fear were holding me back from doing the IMPORTANT things in program. So I left OA and did not return until 2002.

This time I joined OA online, and somehow working program on the computer was easier for me than facing real, live people. (I lead a local step study now with actual real, live people.) RODAT (Recovering One Day At a Time) was an online OA group that was starting an extensive step study so I joined. I had to get a sponsor, which I did, and I attended that step study one hour a week for sixteen months. That is how long it took us to complete all Twelve Steps. That experience was invaluable to me! We took our questions from the OA Workbook, and that is how I did my Step Four and how I have done it twice more. Those questions were intrusive, thought provoking and a learning experience I never want to forget. Since I was doing the Step Four with a sponsor along with five other women, I wasn't so scared. We were all in this together. It is the first place that I began to understand that I was not a bad person doing bad things, but an unhealthy person acting out in a sick manner due to a progressive disease.

The kind of experiences I had had in life were uniquely mine, but they were also quite similar to what others had experienced in a life led by a disease of addiction. For 35 years of my adult life I had felt shame and guilt and remorse over many things I had done in life. I "used" those experiences and those feelings to convince myself that I was hopeless. It was the emotional and spiritual part of my disease that made me feel so completely and utterly unfit to be amongst humanity. I spent all my adult life shoveling food down my throat to cover the pain I felt from all that shame, guilt and remorse.

Step Four is difficult and quite painful, and I needed all the support I could get simply to make it through. The pain I had tried so hard to cover with food was now having to be faced. I took the hand of my sponsor and those wonderful five other women, and together we did what we could not do alone. I faced my pain and I faced who I am and what I did and I survived. It was the beginning of my emotional and spiritual healing. As I faced the person I had become, I began to let go of all that shame and all that guilt and all that remorse. In listening to the shares of the other women, I began to see that I really was not as unique as I had supposed. Some of their shares were worse than mine, some much better. It didn't really matter because we totally accepted each other for exactly who we were and not for what we had done.

Let your healing begin by facing the pain that causes you to continue to want food MORE than you want recovery.

Love in recovery,
Cindi L

The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
of Overeaters Anonymous: Page 104