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Hello friends... This morning I opened my email and there was a message from a good friend on this site. I had had the usual daily-sent-to-everyone-comments buts this was a sent-just-to-me-message, the first in about 2 months. About 2 months is how long I have been away from here, but I am back now.
No I wasn't in terrible relapse rolling semi-conscious in the aisles of some convenience store. It is true that I was exposing myself to the risk of relapse here and there. I replied to my friend's message at length and in detail about the trials and stresses of my life int he past 6 weeks, but I will spare you here. You all have your versions of when life gets crazy.
But this is what God has been doing for me about that....First, I mention to another compulsive overeater about this website. I mention my friend from Brooklyn who is a night owl - isn't that great I get 24 access to recovery? (I began thinking about going back online.) Then the wonderful gal I sponsor starts resuming her daily emailed foodplans in an awesome effort to pull herself out of a bad place. I am inspired by the going-back-to-a-better-place that this woman is doing. Next I get the message from Brooklyn asking how I've been. Now I am blogging again, a good thing for me to get back to.
That's how it works, isnt it? That's how HP uses our daily interactions to inspire and cajole us into healthier stuff. I believe that all those conversations, interactions, responses and reaching out in the last three days were meant to be. So here I am....thanks to God.
I will be cruising around here looking at what people are doing, what is HP doing....and getting my dose of recovery medicine that you all provide to each other and -- thank you God -- to me too.
Tags: 10th
 I have been away from you all, my new friends in recovery. My sponsor had me write this letter to God which says it all.
Dear God, I dont know why I feel you should be upset with me. But I have that feeling. I know in my head you love me more than anyone does, but my heart and my gut isn't getting that message. What sounds (insanely) reasonable to me is that I do something really spectacular and self sacrificing to earn your love, but I know your grace doesn't require it. What I come up with is that I need to do something to convince myself that I deserve your love....but just as I typed that in I realized I cant ever earn and I will never deserve your love. So help me feel and beleive the reality of your grace. Help me please, God, to see myself as you see me, and to accept your undying, unfailing love for me. Help me to see that I am not such a bad person or that it doesn't matter that I have flaws, or I cant keep even a week of abstinence strung together, or that I make stupid bad choices. Please help me take care of myself and not feel like I am failing all the time. And thank you for all of your blessings. They are sooooo many, and I forget to look at that. Just the abundance of blessings alone ought to tell me I should feel your unconditional love, so please, God help me have gratitude, too. I know in my head you really love me just the way I am, so please help me feel it too...if it is your will. Your child, Nancy Sometimes starting over is the only way I can conceive of to feel clean again. Then I heard someone share in a meeting that they never start over, just accept what happens and keep on going. My heart sank. I am still processing that. I could always say that "what works for one may not for the other", but there must be a reason I was so taken with that idea. I have called my friend who shared in the meeting and I will talk to him more about it. Apparently it was an idea he picked up from some speakers at a retreat. So I will cruise around the site here and re-connect with some of my friends....feeling very humble...AND grateful. Love to you all... Nancy
Tags: 10th
Damn! I guess I was getting cocky. Have been doing so well, but I have insomnia, probably from sleeping alone, not getting my physical needs met, as Jerry says. It is 3:42 am and I just went down and fixed myself breakfast. I cant do that. My food plan calls for three REGULAR meals, a snack maybe in the afternoon or mid morning if I call my sponsor to discuss it. I did not need food, I needed comfort. So what do I do now? I guess this is it. I cant call my sponsor in the middle of the night, unless I am getting ready to binge and I have to say that this is not where I am. I still give a damn, ya know? So I am getting this out in the open right now in this blog and I will email my sponsor tonight so she has the message first thing in the morning and then I will call her when I get up. Breakfast? I mean the real, 8 oclock in the morning breakfast?...well I haven't got a clue. That will be decided after I talk to Lyn, my sponsor. She will have to be my rudder. Right now I am getting the literature out. Literature is probably the weakest tool I use, but in the middle of the night it's what I got. Yuk!! I am so arrogant about reading other people's stuff...it is my big character defect...arrogance. Well, I could do an 11th step, too. That is a lot more appealing than reading, and it always relaxes me. Right now I am really grateful for this website. It is always here. I know I am not alone even in the wee hours because there are people here from all time zones. That is so great. I'm gonna go pray. THanks, all you other time zoners!!!!! Love and lots of hugs...
Nancy
Tags: 10th
Wow. Thre is so much to write, so much to get our of my system. I have allowed a family member to get under my skin and disturb my serenity. I almost ate over it. Called my sponsor while sitting in the car in front of a Burger King. Was ready to do major damage to myself with food binge. My sponsor wasn't home, left a message, but I needed to hang on to someone. Couldn't seem to connect with HP...probably because I was so full of hatefullness. Needed someone I felt close to so called a woman I sponsor and asked her if she wanted to trade places...she be MY sponsor for a change. It worked.  She is great, anyway!! After 15 minutes of getting all the venom out of my system, I had a reprieve on my hunger. Was able to order a salad and a diet lemonade...an abstinent meal for me. Was able to resist all the comfort food waiting at my brothers house and stick to water when my family of origin was indulging in binge behavior (normal for them). HP was there all along, really. Still working with my sponsor on major resentment and pain from being used by a family member. Still have my abstinence, still have recovery, still have a decent life.
The other problem for me is that my new husband is gone for two weeks,  in another country where his son is getting married. For a variety of reasons, mostly financial, I couldn't go. So this is the longest we have been apart since the first day we laid eyes on each other. I spent the first five days traveling to friends and family, but now I am back home and isolatiing. I am not bingeing, but I have made some less than perfect choices. Today I am OK. I have been isolating and I need to break out of that pattern as isolation for me is disastrous. Writing this blog helps. I have been on the phone with my sponsor, have talked to a friend on the phone and have talked to Jerry on the phone. But I need a physical connection.
So I am going to try an on-line meting. It is not physical but it is program related and I need to double up. All these feelings are very difficult to deal with, and they have led to addiction indulgence in the past. Today I will go to another town to get a face to face meeting, and probably a hug or two. Saturday I have my home meeting here in town, that I started with another two friends last October. It has been, along with my sponsor, my anchor in recovery.
So I hope to chat with some of you Sunday night in the online meeting. I would love to have a phone meeting that wasn't 5:00 am PST! Keep shining everyone! (only 9 more days till Jerry comes home!)
Love and hugs...lots of hugs!
Nancy
Tags: 10th
Hello, All... I have been submersed in a big project, lots of 12th step stuff...which has saved me because I ahve been too exhausted to communicate here. Food is amazing considering my life lately. One near disaster, saved by grace, that was sugar I had at a church potluck. Did not lead to bingeing or other bad choices, thanks to HP and my program. I didnt overeat there and made other good choices...but for me,,,a brownie is like an alcoholic sipping on a beer...you just shouldn't do it!!! So here is my owning up to it.... I will be away from the computer til after the 4th...visiting a friend while my hubby travels overseas. We (Marthe and I) will be on an artists outing at the Oregon Coast. Be back and check in after the holiday, unless I get with a computer somewhere before then. My spiritual program is good. God is good. Life is good (except for being without my hubby for two weeks!) SOOO....my love to you all. Take care and keep shining, Nancy
Tags: 10th
Hello friends...back to blogging tonight after exchanging some wonderful personal messages and text chatting here for a few days. I am beginning to like the feeling of being read, and understood by other people here. Just a little bit, there is a feeling of being not alone when I do this. It is a growing feeling. The messages and comments I have received have always made me feel connected, but I feel kind of alone as I write the stuff out. That is changing. Today I had issues and I am angry, fearful and resentful.
So here is what the deal was. I ate an abstinent breakfast about 7:30 am. Was still hungry at 10 am. Had a few "words" with my hubby earlier, got up on the wrong side of the bed...BOTH of us..not good. My two new kittens had disappeared somewhere in the house and we couldn't find them, then realized they had escaped into the heating ducts!!! My ear had begun aching again and I have had no less than four presciptions over the last month and I was..and AM..very weary of not getting proper treatment from my HMO (long, horrid story, so just take it on my word..HMO's are Satan's idea of a health system.) Bottomline I was having a LOT of emotions...anger at getting the run around from my doctor, fear that my new fuzzy babies would die a long horrible death in the heating ducts, annoyed at Jerry for being a poop first thing in the morning and actual hunger. After talking to Lyn (my sponsor) I realized that last night I had only a bowl of cereal for dinner....it was fine last night, I didn't need more. But I needed more food at breakfast and didn't get it. That is a trap. My food plan requires three adequate meals a day and a snack in mid morning or mid afternoon if warranted. I usually call my sponsor to see if I really need a snack. For you people who have other addicitons, abstinence is sometimes complicated. So all the feelings plus valid hunger added up to very bad food judgement. I have no rationality about food. My sponsor is my partner when making any decisions about food that are not on my food plan. We discussed a few options. I could take an item planned for lunch and have it early, then eat only the remaing lunch items at lunch...meaning I dont actually add to the food amount, just reschedule some of it to avoid hunger (hunger is dangerous to a food addict.) Or I could add a protein item to the total amount of food... that would do the best job of satisfying me for the next 2 hours. Or we could agree that it wasn't really hunger but my reaction to the anger and fear. Anyway we decided together that I needed a snack...since I had not not eaten enough for dinner the previous evening leaving me pretty empty. I added 1 oz of cheese and some celeryto my food for the day and had that for mid-morning snack. Worked fine. Had the lunch I had planned...at the time I planned.
One of the things I need to do to help me stay abstinent is to always have the proper food on hand at home, and nothing that is dangerous for me or a trigger for overeating. Today I needed to go shopping. One of my danger zones is the checkstand at the market...always loaded with impulse items. I needed to do a "sandwhich call". Before I go into the store, I call another OA member and tell him or her what I am doing and commit to leaving non-abstenent food out of my cart and be accountable to them for not giving in to the check stand candy. After I am done shopping and in the car, I get on my cell and call that person back to report on how I did in the grocery store. That works really well. ANother version of "cant do this alone".
Another thing that is super important is to be honest and forthcoming about less than perfect food. Tonight I did not eat too much, but made very poor choices. God gave me grace in that it did not trigger a binge but it was very slippery ground. I will report that to my sponsor who is both my life sponsor and my food sponsor.
So I got through the day. I resent having to take ear drops the third time but I am trying to have some serenity about it (acceptance). The kittens crawled up out of the air duct in the bathroom floor and ate their food. They ran away agin down the duct, but at least now Jerry and I know they can get out and we can make plans to ambush them so we can close up that one uncovered vent and prevent them setting up permanent residence there. I have peace on that issue. And Jerry and I had a rational talk about our morning grumpiness, so that is resolved very very nicely.
So I am back on a peaceful, one day at a time, attitude. I am so grateful. Grace and gratitiude are my themes recently. I thank everyone of you who listen to me or read my stuff or comment. I am not alone. I look forward to the times when I might have something to offer to any of you to help and encourage you. We all need it, dont we? Love to all,  Nancy
Tags: 10th
Hello out there in 12 step land!!!! greetings from the land of Grace. I just wrote to a friend here on MRS (did I get that right?)...."I need to remember days like this. When I get down, I need to remember that sooner or later God will do the Grace thing for me." Things are good today, I am abstinent (and grateful) for today. I got today covered!! There is just this warning I did to myself. I tend to embellish. God decided I would be good at expressing myself...it was HP's idea, not my achievement. Sometimes I want to take the actual, get-real truth and pretty it up even more. I think it is related to my disease..the "cant get enough" disease that makes me (or is a result of my addictions. ) So I had a talk with myself. I told myself to stay real, look at the "is" and not the "wanna be". The "is" is pretty darn good today. Why do I want to take it away from the land of truth to the dark place of exaggeration and not really exactly true? Why do I need to do that? So I am being as real as I can be. I will be simple. Life is really good today. I think about what it feels like to be me. I really examine that. Today I feel light, hopeful, grateful and have more than usual energy. That is exactly how it is. I am so blessed. Keep shining on, folks. Bless all of your hearts.
Love and hugs, Nancy
Tags: 10th
Great day! Abstinent, hopeful, grateful. No struggles with food....total Grace if you ask me. This day is the poster child of happy, healthy days. Thanks, HP! Thanks program people! Keep shining.... Nancy
Tags: 10th
For the past week I have been where my environment has been controlled by someone else, and my needs have been provided for by other people. It was a beautiful place, and there were many benefits, but there were so many ways to not be abstinent...it was just too easy to give in. One of the things this place is famous for is its food. I planned for this, shared my strategy with my sponsor and an OA friend. I just wasnt as successful as I wanted to be. I was truly helpless. Every day I prayed to be better, and looking back, I was. I struggled but I realized that my reactions were the problem, my attitude was the problem. Actually when I shared my week with my sponsor, she pointed out ways I had been successful. I am so grateful for the help I get from this program. Forgiving myself for not being perfect is part of it. Learning to look at my life and my actions in a positive way keeps me from giving up and quitting. This morning I had about the best quiet time, the most joyful contact with God. All that natural beauty I was immersed in last week, and it was my own backyard where I found the deepest spiritual serenity.
Tags: 10th
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