Intentionally Strong We can be intentional about strengthening our OA meetings. At your next group conscience meeting, try these conversation starters: What is a “strong meeting” for you? If someone told you their meeting was struggling, what specific suggestions would you offer? What actions might you be willing to take to help a struggling meeting or strengthen a meeting you attend? OA has … Read More
I’ve Decided to Sponsor I have been attending OA for about nine or ten months. Coming into my first meeting, I did have some idea of what to expect; a friend had told me. I have a tendency to connect deeply with the emotions of people in a room; sometimes that’s a blessing, sometimes it’s a struggle. In that first meeting, I immediately felt … Read More
Attractive Basics The first OA meeting I attended had all the elements of a strong meeting, and it still does seventeen years later. I continue to attend the Saturday morning Back to Basics meeting in Oakland, California, with about forty other compulsive eaters. We study one Step and its corresponding Tradition for an entire month, and each week, we read from OA-approved … Read More
The Regulars We call ourselves “The Regulars,” although there’s nothing regular about any of us, except this: we keep coming back to our 7 a.m. meetings, Monday through Friday, week after week. Many of us come every day, some only on certain days, and several core members have been showing up for many years. What, you may ask, would drive us to … Read More
Scripting Strength About ten years ago, my home meeting was dealing with talkative, unruly, and sensitive newcomers. The meeting was beginning to feel unsafe. We regulars, being the people pleasers we are, considered just letting them talk without a time limit. Luckily, sanity ruled that out. We considered removing them from the meeting by having a special “newcomer time” in another space. … Read More
Multifaceted Meeting I love my Saturday Abington meeting because it is so strong. The following qualities all contribute to its strength: The meeting only uses OA-approved literature and material downloaded from the oa.org website. Newcomers and returning members are acknowledged and given a Serenity Prayer coin and newcomer literature or a Welcome Back, We Care! packet. Greeters make a point of talking … Read More
Meeting on the Menu After a twelve-year absence from OA, I began to admit that I was back in food obsession and my crazy thinking about food was my only tool for handling life. Even though I was down a little from my all-time high weight of 212 pounds (96 kg), I was hovering just below 200 pounds (91 kg), well above a healthy … Read More
Second Edition Experience My heart just dropped into my stomach—did yours? On page 168 of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition, it says we “accept responsibility for our actions, looking only at our own faults and taking no one’s inventory but our own.” A list of questions follows, under the heading “In what ways do we act ‘to … Read More
Fostering Harmony My very first OA meeting demonstrated the Principle of unity. The OA website provided me with info about a local meeting and a contact person’s phone number. When I called, she invited me to a 10 a.m. meeting and also to a book study group that met half an hour before. I thanked her. On May 28, 2017, at 9:25 … Read More
The Powerless Problem I had a problem with my food and weight, which I’d tried most of my life to solve. With various calorie-controlled ways of eating and exercise regimes, I had periods of what seemed like success, followed by gaining weight, feeling worthless, and being uninterested in physical activity. As time went on, the periods of apparent success became shorter: from months, … Read More
