At the end of our meetings, our group leader usually says, “After a moment of silence for compulsive overeaters who are still suffering, please join me in the OA Promise.” But one night, it came out like this: “After a moment of suffering for compulsive overeaters who are still silent . . .” It felt good to laugh together at …

My first region convention was quite an adventure. I was nervous and apprehensive but knew I needed to volunteer for service, so I volunteered to be a greeter for the first evening. My thought process was that it would be hard to mess up that job. I reported on time for my service and found I was partnered with a …

We once had a large group. Slowly it got smaller until we were just two. We thought seriously of closing our meeting, but it was our time to get together (we’d even have supper after). So we continued to meet for several years. One day, three members who had dropped out of OA ten years earlier came back. We were there …

I should be the poster child for “keep coming back” because my stubbornness is finally paying off. I regularly showed up to a meeting once a week for almost two years, but I wasn’t working the program and I didn’t have a sponsor. Today, I am a newcomer with a newcomer’s mind. Until a month ago, I did little more …

When I first came to OA, I had no hope. I thought I would never look normal or be able to eat regular food. I was obese and profoundly depressed. In OA, I found much more than just weight loss and “control”; I found a Higher Power, a Fellowship of people who understood me for the first time in my …

For me, being a compulsive overeater is a gift. It came wrapped in ugly, grimy paper, but it’s still a gift. The ugly paper represents how my illness treated me: It made me eat so much I got really fat, made it so that even if did lose weight I gained it back, and it made a glutton of me. …

My “home” has been under renovation for the past sixty-five years. When I first walked into OA rooms in 1977, my home was mangled, beaten down, and full of holes. My efforts alone were not working, but it was hard to trust the process. I had failed so many times, and I did not want to wait—I was constantly frustrated. …

Since arriving in the OA rooms, I have a new understanding of forgiving myself and others. OA does not say I must be good or walk on my knees repenting. OA says: Make a list, go to meetings, share my despair and hear the despair of others, and listen to the solutions that each of us apply, one day at a …

I reach out my palm and you touch my heart. Together we make a valiant start. We guard against any halfway measure As we embark on this journey together. We’re raising the banner for spiritual living, Changing our actions from taking to giving. Our hands and our minds retreat from the fridge; The past becomes water under the bridge. Taking …

I was enjoying a new relationship with a sponsor, and everything seemed to be going very well. I was preparing to do Step Five when it occurred to me that I might feel more comfortable doing this Step with a different person, someone other than my sponsor. I mentioned this to my sponsor in an email, but something I said (I may never …