Spirituality is the solution to our problem of powerlessness, and we find this solution in the Twelve Step program of recovery. I’ve experienced three stepping-stones in this process: Amen, Amends, Amended Life. Step Three. Amen. So be it. I’ve made a decision to surrender to this process. Steps Four to Nine. The process of housecleaning, ending with my amends. Steps …

Like many in OA, I found that my compulsion to overeat originated in childhood. I came from a broken home with absent parents, and my happiest memories were of family visits to buffets and gatherings with large meals. I was praised for my “healthy appetite,” which invoked feelings of love and acceptance around overeating. I had a fast metabolism, so …

I was complaining recently to my sponsor about the religious language of the Eleventh Step Prayer (AA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 99), and she suggested I rewrite it in language that is meaningful to me. Perhaps this version will speak to other compulsive overeaters: Higher Power, help me to convey the peace of mind you have given me. Where I find hatred, I can show …

As a part of making amends to myself, which was suggested by my sponsor, I created the following prayer. The prayer lists positive characteristics that oppose my character defects, which I discovered when working my Fourth and Fifth Steps. By saying this prayer daily and out loud to my HP, I am acting as if I believe these good characteristics are true about myself and trusting my HP to lead me to this recovered …

I have really been getting a lot of guidance and clarity from HP during meditation lately, particularly during OA meditation phone meetings. On a recent group meditation call, these words came to me as a message to my body after I realized what a beautiful and sacred gift my body actually is. Dear Body, You are so amazing! You have been trying to take care of me for …

Dear God, Your plan is severe. I want to have faith in this time of uncertainty. Your protection and guidance have seen us through harsh and dangerous times before. Why are we so far off track from the world you put us here to cultivate? Each spring, I see and feel the renewal, and nature’s beauty moves my soul. Are all those who have passed on part …

I don’t consider myself atheist or agnostic, but Steps Two and Three still posed a challenge for me because I found myself unable to embrace the concept of God that I was raised with. I couldn’t understand how an all-powerful, all-loving creator would design a world with so much brutality and suffering, or how I could trust such a God. I felt distressed and wondered …

Higher Power, build with me and do with me as this program requires. Relieve me of the bondage of self. Let victory over my difficulties bear witness to the love and power of this program. Let me follow its way of life always. Direct my thinking. Eliminate my self-pity and dishonesty with myself. Confine my self-seeking to positive directions. Keep my mind open and …

In 2008, I worked on a prayer based on the Big Book passage that begins, “On awakening . . .” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., pp. 86–88). Early in my program, I read this passage every morning for two years, and I wanted a way to incorporate the spirituality of this reading into my daily routine. I fashioned and refashioned the prayer for weeks and then started praying it every …

What in the world is spirituality anyway? I’d had a good upbringing in my family’s religion, but had no more spirituality than I had control over my eating. The God I grew up with was not personal to me, more like an ethereal image that I couldn’t grasp or really even believe in. He was from a book, rather than …