It’s been a few years since our 2016 World Service Convention in Boston, and I’m very much looking forward to the next one! Ever since my first Convention in Los Angeles in the early 80s, I’ve found these events truly exciting and have attended many since then. Whether it’s the regional or world service level, I’ve probably become what we …

When I think about the next World Service Convention it takes me back to the exhilarating experiences I had at the 2016 Convention in Boston. Over 1,000 OA members from all over the world gathered in one place! I received many gifts from that weekend. My emotions were on alert because my roommate practiced a different food plan approach than …

I have been blessed to attend the World Service Business Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico USA, for the past four years as a delegate from my intergroup. It has been an incredible learning experience and a great gift to meet members of our Fellowship from around the world. We meet to learn and share experience, strength, and hope and also …

“No-Apologies ‘Carefrontration’” (May/ June 2019, pp. 8–9) gave me pause, such that I reread it several times. I found the approach a bit troubling. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to make another person become abstinent. I don’t believe that is what the Steps, Traditions, and Concepts of OA Service tell me to do. Step One …

I took Step Nine, completely and thoroughly, thirty-one years ago. I’d been a compulsive thief and cheat and often a manipulator and bully, so I had a lot of cleaning up to do. My sponsor kept me at it, doing one thing each day. It might be searching for a phone number for someone I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, …

My sponsor taught me “Abstinence no matter what,” and for me, it all begins with willingness. I have severe and persistent mental illness, or SPMI. I don’t see myself as a victim, but I do feel anger regarding my symptoms. I’ve learned, though, that everyone in OA has challenges in addition to their overeating illness that make it difficult to …

My sponsor had me start sponsoring at thirty-days abstinent. I was working Step Three by that point, so I could help newcomers getting started on Step One. My sponsor gave me ten minutes every morning for my first three years of abstinence. Now, I carry on that pattern, offering a daily ten-minute slot to someone newly abstinent and starting on Step …

Sponsoring is working one-on-one with another compulsive eater to uncover and release whatever separates us from a loving Higher Power of our understanding. We use and share about OA Tools and slogans, study and apply the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of OA in our lives, and reach out to each other on a daily basis to share our learning …

Service at the group level is that which can be accomplished by the group members on a weekly basis. Tradition Eight at the group level reminds me that I’m just one of many trying to survive the disease of compulsive eating. The longer I’m in program, the more I realize I don’t know what will work for anyone other than …

My first sponsor, M., passed away last month. He was one of the first people I met in OA, but it was a year before he became my sponsor. He was one of the few men I’d met and one of very few OA members who identified as a sponsor. I wrote down his number, but at the time, he …