I came to the site today to rectify a mistake I made at the beginning in having quoted the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous without permission of the World Service Office of OA. I am very sorry for having violated the rules. I don't want to hurt OA for it has made a wonderful change in all of me. What's left of me. I weighed 190.5 on Saturday morning, down 109.5 from my personal high (or low, depending on the perspective) and down 63 since I began this wonderful program December 17, 2006.
And yet it's been three weeks since I posted here. During that time I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Portland Oregon, the 44th International Women's Conference. Awesome! I have pages of notes I started, lost the last little dab in a stupid act on my part, need to reenter those in the computer and I'll post them here. I expect that will be today, though my life is so full--to the brim, overflowing, and bountifully blessed--that time has become an issue. I got back to obsessing, not over food or stupid computer games, but on an aspect of my new life, putting out books for other people. I have one that is a real challenge, and I've been learning a rather difficult computer program to do it. The program is marvelous (QuarkXPress 7) but you don't try to learn it and put together a book too complicated for programs I'm good at in less than a month, which is precisely what I've been trying to do. And I'm close to having the book laid out! But that's what I've been obsessing over. I turned it over to God Friday night, and I'm at peace more than I have been these three weeks. It's not that I didn't spend hours on it over the weekend, but I also walked dogs for a mile both Saturday and Sunday (dogs plural the first time, but I ended up carrying the little one while the big one pulled me on Saturday, so it was just the big one and me, still pulling but not as hard on Sunday.) And a week from today I'll fly to Europe for a two week vacation, and I'll be at peace, whether I have the book ready to go to press by the first of April or not.
The dog pulling me is a metaphor. Maybe one of these days I'll write it with thought and form, but today I'll just tell you what I see in it. I get these kicks occasionally when I start walking again, and the dog is so totally gung-ho he almost kills himself on the choke-chain. After three or four days he'll calm down, and we'll walk our mile in peace and both enjoy it. But I break the chain, I fail to keep walking, and in months we start again, gung-ho, choking ourselves on trying to do it all right now, and we've lost the peace of the process as well as the progress we made while walking. The weather was pleasant over the weekend, though windy on Sunday. It's still windy, and 40 degrees outside, the expected high for the day. Winds at 25 to 35, half-and-half probability of rain and snow showers. Walking today? I'm not in the mood. Walking today? The dog's in the mood. Walking today? God willing, I'll go.
The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous
The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted to Overeaters Anonymous by AA World Services, Inc.
Although Overeaters Anonymous is a spiritual program, it is not a religious program, and use of OA material in the present connection does not imply OA’s affiliation with or endorsement of any sect, denomination or specific religious belief.
I am the author of Slender Steps to Sanity - Twelve-Step Notes of Hope. You may order a copy at Amazon.com (print or Kindle) or BN.com or the publisher's website.
Give a copy as service.
1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted to Overeaters Anonymous by AA World Services, Inc.
Although Overeaters Anonymous is a spiritual program, it is not a religious program, and use of OA material in the present connection does not imply OA’s affiliation with or endorsement of any sect, denomination or specific religious belief.
I am the author of Slender Steps to Sanity - Twelve-Step Notes of Hope. You may order a copy at Amazon.com (print or Kindle) or BN.com or the publisher's website.Give a copy as service.
I am an author of A Cloud of Witnesses – Two Big Books and Us by Barbara B. Rollins with OAStepper. You may order a copy at Amazon.com (print) or BN.com or the publisher's website. Kindle and Nook versions coming soon.
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