It is a regular Tuesday night, and I head off to my FA meeting to share experience, strength, and hope with 10 other FA fellows. On Friday night, we will all meet again for our second meeting of the week. Saturday morning I will get up early to participate in my AWOL (A Way of Life-Study of the Twelve Steps). This routine of committed meetings has become the norm of my recovery journey. But, it wasn’t always that way. Five years ago, I started on my FA recovery with a sponsor, a phone, and 3 AA meetings. My sponsor had recently moved to the area. She had about 8 months of abstinence when we met. We were the only two people with FA recovery in our part of the state, and I came to learn that we were part of the ‘frontier’. I met her at my moment of desperation.... Continue Reading
I came into FA at the age of 26, weighing 289 pounds (131 kg). I found out about the program one day when I picked up a pamphlet to fan myself while sitting in my chiropractor’s waiting room. Less than a week later, I was at my first meeting and got a sponsor, and within 14 months, I lost 140 pounds. I wish I could say, “…and the rest is history,” but that’s not how my journey played out. FA had always been very good to me, helping me to shed the weight, showering me with love and support from some amazing fellows, and giving me a sense of purpose in reaching those still suffering with food addiction. I had been in FA for nine and a half years when I decided to step out of the rooms. For some reason, I truly thought maybe I didn’t need it anymore.... Continue Reading
It wasn’t exactly peace on earth in my childhood home, except by outward appearances. As an intact, middle-class family with three children, we lived in a colonial home on a countrified road and went to church together every Sunday. That was also our special breakfast treat day; how we all loved that! When I moved there at age three, I kept begging to “go home” to our little ranch in the suburbs. I was wishing then that we had never moved, and even more so as time passed. Yet, I may never have found my way to God and FA if we hadn’t. As a child, fear ruled my little heart. Most of the time, my parents loved me unconditionally, especially my beloved Daddy. My two older brothers loved their chubby, curly-haired, “baby doll” little sister. But, my mom has some sort of mental disorder. It has never been diagnosed,... Continue Reading
I joined my first AWOL ( a 12 step study of the steps in sequence) after I’d been in FA for two weeks, and I was spectacularly afraid of the group of people pressing into the small room with stained-glass windows. My fear of people exhibited itself as irritability and anxiety when I helped set up the room. I lasted four months in that AWOL before I had a break. In my second AWOL, we had just completed Step 5 when I got very full of myself and had a break, which meant I had to leave the AWOL and go back to day one again.. When my third AWOL began, I absolutely wanted to stay abstinent and complete the AWOL. Toward the end of that AWOL, I met a woman who truly had what I wanted, and I decided to switch sponsors. We then got to be in a... Continue Reading
When I came into FA, I heard that this program was not a diet and in the beginning I really did not understand that phrase. Besides, isn’t dieting how most people lose weight? But as my years in recovery mounted up, I not only have learned exactly what that means, but am able to be grateful that as long as I am in recovery, I never have to diet again! Believe me, I spent a great deal of my life “dieting”. The first diet I ever did was Weight Watchers and that was when I was seventeen. At that point I was approximately 160 pounds. My Weight Watchers experience didn’t last long and I never really achieved any weight loss. As I got older, my meager attempts to lose weight included amphetamines, which I got from the health center at the university I was attending. By then I weighed around... Continue Reading
