Abstinence Percentage, Not Perfection When I joined OA, my first struggle was to understand what “abstinence” meant. Oh, sure, I read the definition and understood the basic premise that abstinence meant not eating compulsively, but I couldn’t tell when I was eating compulsively and when I wasn’t. I just didn’t know. So I asked a bunch of long timers, and I got all sorts … Read More
Literature Momentous At my first OA meeting, a kind soul offered to buy me a book of my choosing from the OA library. I had no idea what I was even doing there, and every piece of reading material looked foreign and, quite frankly, just weird. I rifled through the stacks of books, and one caught my eye like a beacon in … Read More
Tools & Concepts Starting Days with For Today My favorite OA book is For Today: I love it because it helps me begin each day with recovery in mind. Reading it makes me part of a huge OA community; we’re all reading the same thing each morning. For Today demonstrates in a tangible way how many days have passed in the year and how many are left, which reminds … Read More
Share It Staying With It Thanks so much for the article “One Small Part”. Staying in the moment and paying attention to what’s in front of me has been something I have always struggled with. Years ago, I discovered that when I did not want to do something at work, I got hungry. I’d want to stop working to eat a little snack. It amazed me … Read More