A Story of Recovery:
FA has drawn me into the circle of support that I needed
My father was a pastor of a small church in a marina village in southwestern Ontario. Mom was an excellent cook and baker. There was a two-course breakfast every morning and dessert after every lunch and supper, often with a flour and sugar snack in the evenings, as my parents entertained church congregants and visiting missionaries.
We moved to various small towns in Ontario every three years. Food was a large part of both home and church life. My dad didn’t make a lot of money. Congregants left baskets of fresh garden produce and other assorted treats on our steps. Many church meetings and events were accompanied by home-baked goodies. I would sneak sips of the communion beverage out of the bottle in the refrigerator when my parents went out and scour the cupboards and refrigerator whenever I was left on my own. When I reached babysitting age, I learned to sneak food from other people’s refrigerators without it being obvious.
My parents decided to stay in one place through my high-school years. I wasn’t very social, but when I was 15, I had a best friend, whom I one day discovered was having an affair with my father. I was shocked and hurt, but I kept the knowledge to myself and tossed and turned in my bed at night, praying, “God, don’t let me hate him.” I was depressed, but couldn’t explain to anyone why. I suppose my parents wrote my behavior off as the angst of adolescence.
Because of my lack of sociability, my father felt I was intentionally undermining his ministry. He asked me one time, “Why don’t people like you?” The idea that I was unlikeable was a revelation to me. This shaped my expectations throughout the rest of my life. And because I wasn’t liked, it seemed unimportant to be concerned about my appearance, including my weight. It was comforting to eat the sweet and filling foods that were readily available.
At age 17 I left home to study library techniques in college. I boarded in family homes, and my first landlady offered to help me diet by making my meals. I lost a bit of weight and made a few friends among the other social outcasts at school. After graduation, I became engaged, was hired by a public library, and had a second job. As I raced between one job and another, I cooked quick and cheap flour-based products for my suppers. My engagement ended, and again I felt the sting of rejection and abandonment. I went to live with my parents in a small pulp-and-paper-mill town in northern Ontario for six months. My weight was rising, as I fed my damaged emotions with snack foods and mom’s good cooking.
Then I moved to live with my sister in a farming community and met a fellow from Jamaica. After a couple summers of dating, we married secretly. He went back to Jamaica and applied for his landed-immigrant status. A year later he came back and we had a son, but my husband drank a lot and used marijuana. After a year, I took my son and launched out on my own. We made several moves before my son and I moved in with the man who became my common-law husband and father of my other two sons. He had an affair with my best friend, and we parted ways. I entered into another relationship with a man from a biker background, a good-hearted man who loved children, but he had mental-health issues, so I eventually chose to go on my own again with my sons. Over the years of raising my three sons, our staple foods were inexpensive flour-based products.
Eventually my sons and I moved into a townhouse with a basement that I could rent out. I moonlighted at a bakery/variety store where I would get garbage bags full of flour and sugar products that were due to expire. My middle son ended up in foster care, due to my inability to discipline him appropriately.
I finally came to understand and admit that I was powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life was unmanageable. I had run out of hope when a man who rented my basement room shared with me that his Higher Power had changed his life from one of alcoholism to one of freedom and joy. After the experience with my father’s failure, I was skeptical and angry with God. My tenant went to AA (Alcoholic Anonymous) meetings regularly and encouraged me to go to Co-Dependents Anonymous, which was my introduction to the Twelve Steps. I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
Then my father died of diabetes. The anger that I had clung to, toward him and toward God, no longer seemed necessary. I began to understand that I had made a major mess of my life and of raising my children. I understood that I needed to turn the reins of control for my life over to my Higher Power. I began to attend a church where I have received consistent support for over 20 years.
About ten years ago, my mother was showing signs of Alzheimer’s, and my brother and I bought a house to generate an income to support her in a nursing home. I’d never owned anything before and I was terrified of having a mortgage hanging over my head, so I asked God what to do. If He wanted me to take this step, He would have to bring the people He wanted as tenants and provide the finances to meet the mortgage and expenses. My prayers were answered, and I ended up renting rooms to men who were coming out of prison and into recovery.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. Eating the way I was, I was unable to keep my blood sugar down. The doctor was adding medications to my drug regime. My sister, who is also diabetic, was injecting insulin and I didn’t want to go that route.
It was 2011, and at this point I weighed 198 pounds, which was not my highest weight. After trying a gym and other ways to lose weight, a coworker approached me about a Twelve-Step program for food. I was at the right place in my journey to make the drastic changes required in FA. When the weight began to fall off, I could understand that the structure was good for me and kept me safe. I have lost 46 pounds so far.
FA has drawn me into a circle of support that I needed. As with any worthwhile growth, I’ve experienced pain in recognizing the necessity for submission to FA disciplines and my sponsor. But the discipline brings me a sense of security and enables me to succeed. I no longer need to turn to food for comfort in difficult times. Comfort foods are not an option. That rule keeps me safe. The guys who live in our house watch me weigh and measure my food, and some are beginning to make changes in their own eating habits and life styles. Church folk have also been aware of my changing shape during this new phase of my life journey.
In November I received the gift of a granddaughter. This event makes it all that much more important for me to stay healthy. My doctor has reduced my medications and plans to make further reductions soon. I’m quite confident that I will not fall back into my old way of living if I do my part, follow the FA program, and maintain my connection with my Higher Power.
I recognize that throughout my life I’ve dealt with pain and loneliness by turning to food. With my clouded reasoning, I made immature choices over and over again that hurt me and my family. Now I believe I have clearer reasoning and a growing faith that my Higher Power is in partnership with me on this journey, and there’s nothing He allows in my life that does not have a good purpose. FA is part of equipping me to serve God and others more successfully.