After I shared my Fourth Step inventory with my sponsor, taking the Fifth Step, I moved on and wrote this poem during the hour I spent with God alone as I took Steps Six and Seven. Broad highway Narrow path, narrow steps. Tight rope strung between mountain peaks formed by stories, wrapped in drama, about a life lived overdone. Suspended, …

The AA Big Book outlines “the spiritual answer and program of action” (4th ed., p. 42), which hundreds had followed with success at the time it was written. Now millions of people follow the Twelve Step path with miraculous stories of recovery. Ours is a spiritual program. What exactly does that mean? I grew up in an organized religion. As …

If I wasn’t stuffing my mouth with food, I was “verbally vomiting” out of it! My former purpose in “venting” wound up revealing itself to me and others as a lack of acceptance and a failure to trust that God is in control. A lack of acceptance indicates discontent and disagreement; a discrepancy between the way people and things are …

When my sponsee and I finished the Twelfth Step, we looked at each other and said, “Now what?” It felt more like a letdown than a victory. No certificate was awarded, no pin, no ceremony. A few days later, I made a card that showed a house with a huge gold star in the garage. In the card I wrote: …

The Third and Eleventh Steps were difficult for me in the beginning because of the word “will”; “our will” in the Third Step and “His will” in the Eleventh. “Will” sounds so demanding, definitive, coercive, and exacting. However, in the process of writing about Step Three, I came to understand it as “God’s direction.” I believe God is always trying …

Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Most days, I take personal inventory at the end of the day. It helps me sleep. I inventory fears, resentments, and stressful thoughts and beliefs. Wrongs seem to stem from those. I also list gratitudes, but not the things I think I should be grateful for. …

OA recovery helps me with my relationships with my Higher Power, myself, and other people. Abstinence gives me clarity to be open to my Higher Power’s messages: I listen to the wisdom of my own body and I hear my HP’s voice in my sponsor and in meetings through members’ shares. I pray to see and hear others through God’s …

I felt fat from the time I was in kindergarten. Though only slightly heavier than other girls, I was obsessed with my size. I always daydreamed of returning from summer vacation magically thin, suddenly popular, and beloved. As my disease progressed, it morphed through an all-consuming cycle of binge eating, dieting, and exercise bulimia—of self-loathing and self-punishment. After ten years …

“In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., p. 101). The Big Book promised that working the Twelve Steps would allow me to feel neutral about my former binge foods. This was one of the things that attracted me to OA. I wouldn’t …