I got started with a new sponsor. She seemed to be very thorough and to-the-point (which I like). She gave me a list of eating behaviors and asked which ones I did. She then gave me a bunch of rules that I needed to follow in addition to abstaining from sugar. I don’t remember all of them because many were non-issues for me. The ones I do remember are: don’t eat standing up, eat slowly, do not do anything else while eating (like play on your phone or watch tv), do not take seconds, do not hide your eating, do not eat in the car, and only weigh yourself once a week. I argued for weighing daily and for our movie night once a week where we share a big bowl of popcorn. She was willing to allow movie night, but not weighing more often than once a week. She did not ask that I provide her with my food ahead of time and seemed to trust that I was following the guidelines, which I was. There was one exception, but I figured it wouldn’t count. I wanted a banana for a snack. However, my son loves bananas and would want one if he saw me eat it. We only allow him one banana a day because they make him constipated and he already had one that day. So I ate a banana while standing and hiding so my son wouldn’t put up a fuss (he’s only one and a half).

With this new sponsor, I was flying through the steps. She had me read each step in the book and then discuss the step with her. There seemed to be some pivotal questions to answer and then I was onto the next step. Today I reached step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”  I knew I would have to deal with this eventually. I prayed and meditated for weeks hoping to find a deity willing to take on me and my recovery. Instead, I was met with silence. I finally decided to use “my-best-and-highest-self” or “Goddess-within-me” as my higher power. I’m glad I did, because when I thought about turning my will and life into the care of an outside deity, I think I would have had a more difficult time doing it. Instead, I could definitely turn my will and life over the best version of myself. Gods know, I am certainly not the best version of myself right now, but she is in there somewhere.

I attended my fourth meeting today. I had even convinced my husband to attend (albeit in the back). He has eating issues but is still convinced he can handle them on his own. Even so, he was curious about what happened at these meetings. He was called out at the beginning of the meeting for not being part of it. The woman who did this was the only sponsor in the room (what a great example). She claimed she was concerned about anonymity (even though this was an open meeting) and told him to go sit in another room. I was annoyed but stayed because I am abstinent for 33 days today and was looking forward to getting my coin for 30 days of abstinence.

The meeting continued with their usual announcements at the beginning, including “children are welcome so long as they are supervised”. My 1.5 year old son was there, giggling, running around and smiling at everyone. He was never an issue before. In fact, I was told to bring him back because he was a sweet boy. Now I am not one of those parents who is deluded in thinking that my terror of a son is a sweet boy. My son did not scream or cry. He didn’t even babble much and when he did it wasn’t that loud. They asked if my husband could look after my son. I said he could for today, but that there were days when I would have to bring him. I brought my son to my husband in the other room who suggested we leave. I agreed with him and started crying because I really felt unwelcome. One woman came out and apologized for the others and begged me not to give up OA because of it. I told her I didn’t intend to, but that I wasn’t going to drive an hour to go to that meeting again either. I was livid. There were no other meetings within an hour drive of me (except for the ones that met when I was at work). I never did get my coin.

I received a phone call from one of the members of the meeting about an hour later. Apparently after I left, they were all discussing how they could have handled it better. They decided to add language at the beginning of the meeting to mention that all who were interested in OA were welcome at the meeting. Unfortunately, they also changed the language at the beginning of the meeting from “all children are welcome if they are supervised” to “all children are welcome, but they must be in a different room from the meeting.” There is no way in hell I’m putting my one and a half year old in another room by himself (or with another child). So basically I can only go when I had child care, meaning my husband would stay at home with him when he could. That also meant that he could not come to meetings with me. I am very angry that this happened. I resent them for the way they treated my family today. I also resent them for changing the rules so I could no longer attend regularly. I am told that the next step is all about resentments, so this next step should be fun.