Gift List This year, OA celebrates its 60th birthday! Observances and activities will be held worldwide. My Pinellas County Tradition Intergroup was part of the celebration last year, and we organized a workshop where we created a list of all the gifts for which we’ve been grateful. As our gift list grew, our eyes were opened to how the program has changed … Read More
Lost Half, Gained Everything I am at a peculiar milestone. I now weigh 168 pounds (76 kg), and that reflects my 168-pound weight loss. It’s also been three years since I started my transformation. I joined OA in January 2013. The following September, I was sitting in my chair and purposefully eating myself to death. I felt done with life; I could no longer … Read More
Promises Missed I enjoyed my August 2014 Lifeline very much but think the issue’s title could have been better. I am a huge fan of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and credit my fourteen-plus years and more than 80 pounds (36 kg) of recovery to repeatedly working the Steps with my sponsor using the Big Book directions. I love all the promises … Read More
Viva OA I do not have an adequate vocabulary to describe Region Eight’s first international assembly and convention in South America where we met in Medellín, Colombia. Board members, region reps, and committee chairs began arriving on Wednesday, greeted at the airport by OA members with signs that read, “Bienvenidos, OA.” We were driven to the hotel, and as we arrived we … Read More
Marking This Day The purpose of this special day, International Day Experiencing Abstinence, is to encourage members to establish or reaffirm their own abstinence. Many people ask what abstinence is, so we will look to the OA Policy on Abstinence and Recovery: “The WSBC 2019 accepts the following definitions: 1) Abstinence: The act of refraining from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors while … Read More
Which Word I didn’t focus so much on the word “abstinence” in the March Lifeline Ask-It Basket until I read a Share It in the August issue that expressed a strong preference for the word “abstinence” and explained why. I, a longtime OA member, have always struggled with the word “abstinence.” It took me several years to come to terms with that … Read More
Road to Serenity When I first came to program, I did not understand the first part of the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” How could I accept all the wrong things in my life and the universe? Although everyone told me that “accepting” does not mean “liking,” it took a long while to understand this … Read More
Doubly Troubled About the Ask-It Basket in the July 2019 issue, how could the trustee who responded, writing that OA does not offer food plans at meetings, not have read the new Where Do I Start? pamphlet? Pages 13–17 are devoted entirely to, perhaps not “food plans,” but “plans of eating.” How are these different? One plan of eating looks rather similar to old gray sheet. … Read More
Fad Free In the July 2019 issue, I read an OA slogan that was new to me “Eat light and feel right; Eat right and feel light!” Really?! Do we need a slogan about food in OA? Whatever happened to the basic idea that “we are not a ‘diet club?’” (Overeaters Anonymous, Third Edition, p. 2). What impression will this new slogan … Read More
Soak Up the Recovery and Fellowship The 2020 World Service Convention is less than ten months away, August 20–22, 2020, in Orlando, Florida. Registration opens soon, in January 2020, but I’m already getting excited just thinking about Convention. This is an event not to miss. I have attended almost every World Service Convention since 1995, and I’ve attended lots of workshops at them, but it is … Read More
