The regular Brentwood, CA "Light A Candle" meeting of Overeaters Anonymous

I would now like to introduce our speaker, Barbara. Thank you. And I'm really happy to be here. It is such a thrill to to be amongst compulsive overeaters and also to witness someone get a a 1 year candle because my 1 year my 1 year candle, I I crawled through that year. I didn't think it was possible to to to stop eating.

When I came here, first of all, I'll qualify for those of you that don't know me, the newcomers and any others, that I am not familiar with, I I came to OA in June 1975. Probably, Probably some of you weren't even born in by June 1975. I was 25 years old, and I I weighed a £180, and I couldn't stop eating no matter what I tried. And I had tried everything. I started eating like a bat out of hell when I was 15 years old, and actually, I should turn the clock back a little bit further than when I was about 12 years old, I started eating out of control, and it was I didn't gain any weight as a result of that eating, because I was growing up.

And and so, I was able to to not gain weight and being the vain person that I am, I thought things were really pretty okay. I eat mountains of food and everyone in the family is quite amazed and astonished with my keep a bit my capacity to eat volumes of food more than my father who is, capacity to eat volumes of food more than my father who is 511, but that that stopped. And, anyway, I I feel a little bit off right now. I I feel a little bit off right now. I don't I I wanna start all over again here.

The 12 steps help me. The 12 steps. Number 1, I there there is not enough food in this universe to satisfy the hole that's inside of me. There's absolutely not enough. There's never there's not enough food.

There's person, place person, place, or thing can fill the hole inside of me. It's absolutely impossible, and no person, place, or thing could stop me from eating the way that I was eating. Only there's only one fix for this problem. And for those of you that are new, I hope this doesn't offend offend you, but it's God. I came here agnostic.

At my very first meeting, I agreed to hold hand at the end of the meeting. I didn't tell anyone that, but I had a very condescending attitude. I didn't know I wasn't completely unaware of that, but I said, well, they're all completely unaware of that, but I said, well, they're all holding hands and I was a hippie in the sixties seventies, and I can hold hands with everyone. That's okay. And the whole spiritual aspect one.

That's okay. And the whole spiritual aspect of this program is something that I really didn't embrace. I really found it not necessarily offensive, but just against my own personal belief system, which I was completely, unsure of. I didn't really know what it was, but I wasn't really I was uncomfortable with the spiritual aspect of this program, which is everything. It's absolutely everything.

Every inch of this program, every every every part of this program, and every part of my recovery has to do with my dependence on a higher power because there is no one that that there is no person, place, or thing that can fix that can fill the hole inside of me. And I got the spiritual aspect at my very first meeting. I just didn't universe is what that's how my journey started in this program, towards a concept of God, because I couldn't accept the word God. The acronym HP for higher power was way too much for me as well, and spirit of the universe, I wasn't so so sure about that. So the way that my spiritual journey started was with acknowledging that I didn't do this.

I had I have nothing to do with the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening with the moon, the stars, and the planets. I've got nothing to do with the ebb and and the flow of the tide. That's how I started. That's how my that's how my spiritual program started. I was able to accept that I didn't do it, that there had to be and there has to be a power greater than myself.

And on that foundation, that was the beginning of my foundation of adopting and embracing the spiritual aspect of this program and finding a belief that I could find comfortable. And the thing that was so wonderful, that is so wonderful about this program, is that I was not told I had to believe anything. No one told me I had to do this thing called abstinence. I wanted it desperately because that this overeaters anonymous was truly the last house on the block. I had joined Weight Watchers 8 times.

I went to a TOPS meeting, and they were so they were not for me. That's all I can say. People running around with little bibs. I don't even know if tops still exists. Does it?

Oh my god. Anyway, you know, know, it works for some people, I guess, but I'd I'd even work for Weight Watchers. When Jean Jean Nidetch, isn't that the that was the founder. She came from New York, and she's she came to Los Angeles, and her first office was on Melrose. It's now an art gallery.

I worked there at 16. It was my first job, my very first job, and they fired me. I got fired. I I'm not a file clerk. I I knew, you know, all the way through high school, my parents told me you'll have we'll have we'll send you to college.

And when I graduated high school, they had no money, which I sort of had I got the drift of that all the way, you know, growing up that, you know, my dad was really rough economically, so I put myself self through college. But I will I had no plans to become a secretary or a file clerk and file. And it's kind of funny because it in my I have to do some filing now. I've had to do filing. I was changed careers 4 years ago.

I actually have to do, like, file clerk stuff. I don't have, like people ask me who my secretary or assistant is. I don't have one. I mean, there's a staff that helps me to accomplish my job, but I don't have that kind of help. That's what my mother wanted me to do so I'd be out of work, mom.

But the spiritual pro I have a higher power today. I'm gonna talk about the higher power I have today that goes with me everywhere. This is like an an amazing thing. My higher power goes with me everywhere that I go. Every challenge that I have to meet starting with waking up in the morning, that's the big challenge, waking up and starting my day.

And so I start it with God and I start my day on my knees with God, with prayer, and then I take a shower and I start, and that's where I start. I state my first three steps. My first three steps are the foundation of my day, and then I meditate. And I read this book. I've had a lot of books.

I've donated a lot to the universe because I I have a habit of losing these books. This is my last one. I bought it about a month ago. And I have one that's from the early days, and it's got pages missing. And I read page 86 and 87 and 88 every day.

And I also read I know when I'm in trouble, and I am too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, and I seem to hang out in the anger and resentment department a lot. I go to page 67. I read that page. And when I'm angry at some a specific individual and I know it, I there's other pages for me to read. I do 10 steps in the morning.

Ten steps keep me straight, and they keep me on the road. And the last couple of days, I've done 3 3 10 steps. I've I've gone for I've written thousands and thousands and thousands of 10 steps, and there's absolutely no limit in how how deep I can go into this program to get to what I want, which is peace of mind and serenity, and number 1, to not ever feel that my abstinence is in jeopardy or threatened. And I can tell you that I am truly a blessed person. It's a miracle that I stand here.

What December 2nd is, right now, I guess I'm 27 and a half years of abstinence. Right about 20 that's 3 meals a day and nothing in between, sometimes 2 meals. And when I go over the international date line, I like traveling. You can't figure out what the hell is going on. I mean, go over the actual date line.

I've given up on on the meal thing, but it it's it's a miracle. Abstinence is portable. I eat 3 meals a day most of the time, sometimes 2, and nothing in between, and that is something beyond my I I can't do it. It's a higher power that is doing it for me. And in all of these years, I can say that I've only felt a couple of times that my abstinence was in jeopardy.

And I remember one incident very distinctly, and I have benchmarks in that 1st year of abstinence. The 1st year was truly the most difficult year of my of my recovery. Absolutely. The 1st year is so I applaud anyone who takes a a 1 year candle because for me that I was really on my way after 1 year. Because in my second month of abstinence, I had 2 roommates that called me up and told me that I had left something behind.

And they were sharing an apartment with me, and this was a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment that I had taken on my own, and they were my neighbors about 6 months prior to that. And for some reason, they became my roommates, and I don't know why I didn't need the money. There's a lot of reasons, I suppose. But, I had moved out of my own apartment because I was uncomfortable in my own apartment, and I lived in Burbank. And Burbank was not the entertainment capital of the world in 1976.

It was absolutely not cool to live in Burbank so I moved to Toluca Lake, which is far more cool. And my roommates called me up and they said I'd love something behind. And the the day before I was to go to pick up the sheets I'd left behind in the linen closet, I started getting uncomfortable. And I remember this this day and a half experience so distinctly because it was the closest time in all these years that I have come to breaking my abstinence. And I started feeling really uncomfortable.

And I went to a a meeting, and I told my boyfriend I was really uncomfortable. And the next morning when I got up, I said, I can't spend I can't I can't be with you. I've gotta go to a meeting. And there were we didn't have meetings every day of the week in o a at that time. I went to a lot of AA meetings as well.

I went in my first 12 months of abstinence, I went to 7 to 12 meetings a week. Actually, the first three 3 years of my abstinence. And I went to an AA meeting on the Angeleno Street AA meeting in Burbank at 10:30 in the morning, and I really was frightened. I was I I felt like my abstinence was in jeopardy. And I sat on the chair, and there was maybe 200 people at that meeting, and 10 people took took cakes on that at that meeting.

And I was so frightened. I knew where I was going to binge. I used to binge a lot in liquor stores. They're easy. It's kind of like, you know, drive by shooting.

You stop your car, you run in, you get your stuff, you run out, you shoot, you you eat, and you keep driving. And that's how I I binge. I mean, my my primary binge buddy was my car. I I was always on the run, running away from myself. I didn't know that for many years, but this program has taught me a lot of things.

And I sat at that meeting, and I literally held the chairs were metal chairs like this, the same chairs we sit in, and I held on to the chair. And I prayed that I would be able to sit in the chair for 5 minutes. And I prayed that I could sit in the chair for another 5 minutes and then for another 5 minutes, and then I made it to the break. And it was with a tremendous amount of relief that I I thought it was a miracle because I knew what I was going to eat. I actually had planned my binge, and I didn't wanna go back.

I in my first 6 months in the program, I broke my abstinence twice, and I went back to the gates of hell. And I entered it and I abstinence twice, and I went back to the gates of hell. And I entered it, and I lived on the other side, and I never want to go back there. I don't know if I have another recovery. And I I almost lost it on that day in 10 people that took cakes.

And there was a woman who stood up, and she took a cake for 10 years 10 years of sobriety. And, an hour without running out the door and going up the street to the liquor store. And at that point, with 1 hour of success and 1 hour more of abstinence under my belt, I said to myself, you're gonna try to make it for another hour and thank the speakers. And indeed that's what happened. And when that one woman stood up and accepted the the cake for 10 years of sobriety, she said, people have asked me how I did it.

And she said one day at a time. And that's how I do it, you guys. I do it one day at a time. I'm no different than anyone here. I'm not any different.

I'm just I've just done it longer and I don't wanna go back. And this program has saved my my life. The life that I have today is really such a miracle, it is such a miracle. I've been able to walk through things that I really have believed absolutely impossible, absolutely impossible. You know, in 20 27a half years, a lot of a lot of stuff happens.

I lost my father after a very long illness. I lost my brother. He committed suicide. That was in my 4th year of abstinence. I have another brother who's paranoid schizophrenic.

He was almost sent to jail about a month month and a half ago, and by the grace of God, he's in a mental institute, institution, and he's going to have to be in a locked facility. You know, my life hasn't been easy, but you know something? My life is better than I ever dreamed possible. I have a career that I never ever dreamed that I would ever be living the dream that I live. I'm able to travel all over the world, a free woman.

When I one of my first trip in this program. My first trip, I had broken my abstinence, not on the trip, but it was my first 6 months in program and I broke my my abstinence twice. And I got this idea when I came to the program because one of the old ideas I had was that I had to be thin to travel because I had a whole paradigm, a whole checklist of what I had to look like. Because for me, life was about what I looked like and what people thought of me, which I hate to say is still very much about what my life is, not what I look like necessarily, but I am very driven or I have I I'm very, it's a negative, a characteristic of mine. I am very obsessed with what pea what people think of me, and so I'm I'm driven to 10 steps to uncover, discover, and discard what it is that's going on inside of me, to feel that my my self worth is hinging on something that somebody said to me.

But an idea that I had was that I couldn't travel, that abstinence was not portable. And in this program I've been able to prove myself, prove that that idea wrong and that concept wrong. And the the funniest one, one, of course, is going over the international date line, and I'm gonna do it again in exactly a month, a month to today. I will be in, where am I gonna I'll be in Buenos Aires on the 26th August, and I have this long journey. And I haven't you know, I'm not thinking about how many meals I will I eat when I it takes 2 days to get there.

But I'm gonna be on a plane the whole time. So I look at flying on a plane to the other side of the world kind of like being in a hotel. So if I checked into a hotel, I wouldn't eat more than 3 meals, but the difference is that you might have a day that is 38 hours long. And and that's like from sunrise to sunset. It's a very bizarre thing.

So I've sort of let go of that. You know, it's like 3 meals a day, nothing in between, and we'll we'll figure it out when we up in the sky and bring a lot of my own food with me. But my life really is a miracle. It really is a miracle. I'm a survivor in my family.

Out of 3 children, I'm the one that made it. That's not because of me. It's because of God. God gave me one incredible gift and that is he gave me many, many, many, many gifts, but the the first gift is willingness. Willing us to recover no matter what.

Willingness to go to any length no matter what. Willingness to drive the distance, to walk the to walk the distance, to run the distance, to make as many phone calls as I need to, to get to the place that I am feeling serene inside, and that I have my higher power, conscious contact with my higher power again if I've lost it, and that I'm not jeopardizing myself physically with abstinence, emotionally with my state of mind, or spiritually with losing my concept of a higher power. No one can take any one of those things away from me today, guys. No matter where I am, no matter what, one day at a time. That's how it works for me.

So I'm going to wrap up. It's time to wrap up. I want to thank you for being here for me because with everyone that walks in the door of an OA meeting, I I see recovery. OA meeting, I I see recovery. No matter what you weigh, no matter what you say, I hear the voice of recovery and everyone that walks into Overreaders Anonymous because you're here because you want to be.

And this this no one has forced any one of you to be here. And no matter what you did before you came to this meeting, you're abstinent now. And I made the decision to abstain no matter what at 7:25 on December 1st 1975, and I make the decision again every day of my life. And it's available for every one of us here, so thank you very much.