As an addict, I always lived in “tomorrow”. Now, living in recovery, all I have is “today”. And for today, I choose to go to my Higher Power – all through the day – to ask for help! I can remember two specific times in my life when my Higher Power spoke to me. One was 30 years ago and one was 8 months ago after I had a break following 6 years of abstinence. Thirty years ago, at a time of my life when I was completely obsessed with food, in an attempt to fix me and help me raise my two children and be the “perfect housewife” the God of my understanding “spoke” to me! God said, with great clarity and with a knowing that remains with me today, four short words “I AM YOUR FRIEND”. To this day, I can re-surface that “knowing” whenever I need help... Continue Reading
“Uncle Matt died.” I knew when my mother called me at 7 in the morning it would not be good news. Uncle Matt is one-half of my parents’ best friends, both of whom have known me since the day I was born. He and my father met on the first day of law school and formed an incredible bond that extended to their wives, each of them becoming the sister that neither had. They raised their children together and Matt and Judy’s three sons were surrogate cousins to me. The depth of my love for this entire family is profound, and the past week has shown that to me in remarkable ways. With those three words, my world was rocked. I knew he had been very ill, with heart and kidney failure, and his short-term memory was shot. But no one expected his death so suddenly. There was no question... Continue Reading
“Am I allowed a different type of my breakfast food?,” I asked my sponsor a couple of weeks after joining FA. (I had eaten it that morning.) “You have 50 pounds to lose,” she said. “Just have the regular kind.” She paused and said, “Why? Have you eaten it already? “No,” I said. I was surprised that the lie had slipped out of my mouth before I had time to even consider a response. That was the first time I realized it was more important to me to appear to be doing well rather than to actually be doing well. It didn’t matter how awful I felt as long as people thought, “She’s got great recovery.” I believed that would make people like me better, which would make me like myself better. So I continued on my quest to hit the magic number of 90 days of abstinence, but it... Continue Reading
Most of my life, I’ve not been athletic. The only reason I exercised was to lose weight or to counteract my most recent binge. It was all about burning calories or toning, and I didn’t really enjoy the effort or experience. When I came into FA I was 52 years old, 200 pounds, depressed, and beginning what I thought was to be a lifetime of worsening arthritis. My joints and the high arches of my feet were hurting, and I resigned myself to a steady decline. I didn’t think there was another choice until I was lead, by the grace of God, to FA. I lost my weight in 11 months and settled on 123 lbs on my 5’4″ frame. It was nothing short of a miracle that all my arthritis pain disappeared completely. I was at my goal weight for a few months when an older, overweight co-worker asked... Continue Reading
On my drive home from college after graduation, I felt full of self-loathing, disappointment, and despair. The drive took longer than usual because I had to pull over a few times to get my sobbing under control. My despair was overwhelming and the only thing that could relieve it was food, so I stopped several times at fast food drive-thrus. I couldn’t really connect that food might be the cause of my despair. I read in the Big Book recently something that sums up my attitude at the time: “To my way of thinking, booze (and in my case, food) had been the answer to my problems – not the problem itself.” I had thought a college degree would transform me into the happy person I so desperately wanted to be, and there I was, feeling the same old misery and disappointment in myself that I had carried for as... Continue Reading
