7/18 Starting tomorrow’s early because didn’t do enough from yesterday. Besides, doing readings in attempt to keep self sane while waiting for friend to show up
1. Yesterday’s In This Moment: “In This Moment, I am patient with my own recovery.
2. “I am unique, with my own history, feelings, and life experiences. I must build a strong foundation with myself first and that takes time. I take one step at a time, working my recovery completely and thoroughly.”
3. “Otherwise it would be as if I were painting the walls on a house whose foundation is collapsing.”
And it says: “There is no need to rush. I am on God’s time and schedule. Everything is unfolding as it should and the pattern will be beautiful.” Okay.
4. E-mail thing today: “Yet it was the desperation we felt before coming to OA that compelled us to accept the First Step. We were fresh out of ideas, and so became open to new ones. “
5. “Our insanity had finally risen higher than our wall of denial, forcing us to get honest…”
6. “forcing us to get honest about our compulsivity around food and our behaviors with food!”
7. “Our best efforts at control had only worn us out; hence, we became willing to surrender.”
8. “We had received the gift of desperation and, as a result, were able to accept the spiritual principles that make it possible for us to recover.”
9. “Desperation is what finally drives many of us to ask for help. Once we’ve reached this state, we can turn around and start anew.”
10. “Just for today: The gift of desperation has helped me become honest, open-minded, and willing. I am grateful for this gift because it has made my recovery possible.”
11. “Just for today: The gift of desperation has helped me become honest, open-minded, and willing. I am grateful for this gift because it has made my recovery possible.”
12. Rec. Med: “I became a compulsive overeater in recovery. I was on a fantastic journey towards a new, healthy and brighter life. I was a compulsive overeater with a future, although I did not -- and still do not know what that future is. Most importantly, I was a compulsive overeater who realized it's okay to not know what lies ahead. In fact, there is no choice in the matter; it was out of my control. I never had control in the first place. It was all an illusion. When I realized that many things are simply out of my control, I surrendered my useless struggling and accepted the help offered by my new program family and my Higher Power.
13. July 17’s Language of Letting Go: “…We may have had a mother or father who said, ‘I love you’ to us, and then abandoned or neglected us, giving us confused ideas about love. Thus that pattern feels like love – the only love we knew.”
14. “We may learn to love others or ourselves the way we have been loved, or we may let others love us the way we have been loved, whether or not that feels good. It’s time to let our needs be met in ways that actually work.”
15. “Unhealthy love may meet some surface needs, but not our need to be loved.”
16. Today’s for Today: “No, I don’t always know which course to take, where to go, what to do. But OA says, in effect, ‘don’t sweat it. Ask your Higher Power for an answer and then relax. Inspiration will come, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.’”
17. And “whether I have to act quickly or have some time to think, the answer will come freely, from God, if I ask for it.”
18. Today’s Voices of Recovery: “Cultivate humble gratitude that you were fortunate enough to find out what was wrong with you before it was too late.” From - Before you Take That First Compulsive Bite, Remember… [and may it be true for me that it is not too late]
19. And it talks about gratefulness for “Learning more about the various symptoms of food compulsion prepares me to take action to manage it through the Twelve Steps and OA’s tools of recovery. The mental obsession, the cravings, the self-centeredness, the isolation, and the feelings of grandiosity make sense in the context of the disease.”
20. And then it says: “Now when I feel angry, rejected, or depressed, I can look for perspective in the AA and OA literature. I identify with the thousands of recovering people who have suffered the same ills and who have found happiness and freedom from the bondage of compulsive eating.”
21. And it talks about the joy of having choices about future, one day at a time.
22. And today’s In This Moment says: “in This Moment, I put myself first. Whenever I put myself on hold, my life goes haywire. Putting myself first doesn’t mean that I neglect those I care about. It means that I don’t neglect myself. If I neglect myself, I’m not helping anyone.”
23. “When I put myself first in my own life, when I take responsibility for meeting my own needs, then I can be available for those I care about in a healthy way. It doesn’t come naturally yet. I have to make a conscious effort. Today, I choose to put myself first when I make decisions.”
24. Today’s Language of Letting Go July 18: “We may simply be afraid of our anger and the potency of it. We may not know we have a right, even a responsibility – to ourselves – to allow ourselves to feel and learn from our anger.”
25. And “God, help my hidden or repressed angry feelings to surface. Help me have the courage to face them. Help me understand how I need to take care of myself with the people I feel anger toward, Help me stop telling myself something is wrong with me when people victimize me and I feel angry about the victimization. I can trust my feelings to signal problems that need my attention.”
26. Dr Ellen Kriedman, who I see online has answered a question for someone else, and ended her answer with this:
I want my husband back
Dear Dr. Ellen: Please tell me how I make myself more and more desirable to win my husband back. He has to give me the chance to prove to him that I have changed. We've not been husband and wife now for almost eight months and separated a total of almost 3 years. I love him more than he can ever imagine. I know he will want me again if he will only open his heart. How do I do that? I know I can. I've made so many wonderful changes in myself and continue to do so! But this loneliness without him gets worse and worse. No one else will, or can ever take his place or even be close to what he is. So, even if I was with someone else, the loneliness and missing him and everything about him would make no difference. - Sally
Dear Sally: Unfortunately, you have been separated and not lived as husband and wife for a long time. It is easy to live in the past and be in love with the memories you have had together. It is even easier to live in the future and picture your life as it used to be when you were happy together. The problem is that the PRESENT, which hasn't existed for quite some time, doesn't exist. While you are thinking and dreaming about him, your husband has probably gone on to make a new life for himself. Here is the impossible to answer question I always get asked. How can I make someone love me again if he won't talk to me or see me? The answer is, of course, that it is impossible to show him the changes you have made if he will not talk to you or see you. I am going to assume that you have tried and he hasn't responded. There is no way to force someone's heart to open. I am a great believer that if a relationship is "meant to be" then in time the two of you will get back together. The problem for you is, "How do you fill your time until he comes to the realization that you are the love of his life?" You can't speed up the time for him to realize that you are the best thing that ever happened to him. He may have to experience life without you for the next two, five or even ten years before that happens. In the meantime, continue working on yourself. Keep growing, changing and becoming the best woman you can be, not to get him back, but for your own personal fulfillment. Continue learning from your past mistakes and make wiser decisions and choices in the future.
I always find it amazing that so many couples who are unable to have children finally adopt and then miraculously get pregnant. Once they relax and put their energy and focus into other areas, they wind up with what they couldn't have. I find it is exactly the same for women/men who finally stop waiting for a boyfriend/girlfriend or a husband/wife to come back into their lives. As soon as they fall in love again or pursue a career and stop thinking about the past and are very involved in their current life, the phone rings and there he/she is again. The boyfriend/girlfriend who left, or husband/wife who had an affair, wants to start over again. It seems that when you are busy doing other things and involved in living your life, the very thing that you kept hoping for, magically occurs. Anyone waiting for a phone call knows that as soon as they leave for a second, the phone rings. When you just sit and wait for that phone to ring it never does. So my advice is to get on with your life as if he is never coming back. If he doesn't come back, at least you haven't wasted your life waiting for him. If he does come back, you will have gained valuable life experiences during that time that should help you in the future. - Dr. Ellen
27. And on another site: although you should absolutely look your personal best when you interact with your husband). What's most important is that you're able to return the positive, loving, and empathetic feelings that made your husband want to marry you in the first place. This will make getting him back so much easier.
28. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1393725Followed by this: The truth is, you're probably closer to getting your husband back than you think. Why? Because you've already made him fall in love with you once. Therefore, you intuitively know what you have to do to make your husband fall in love with you again.
29. I’m grateful that O came over here so I wouldn’t call J and say come over and talk now, looking as I did
30. And that tomorrow I can get my hair colored and buy and outfit or two
31. And that I’ll see him later in the week
32. And that O drove me and my other to my mother’s dr appointment
33. And that online everything I’m reading is saying there’s hope in getting back a marriage if you believe in yourself and grow as a person and believe you are worthwhile and it can work. Hmmmm.
34. And that MA helped me on the phone and said J needs more time.
35. And that Dr and O aren’t sure it’ll be a very bad talk anyway.
36. And that I prayed to God with full heart.
37. And 4 other people did too.
38. And 2 regularly do.
39. Now it’s the 19th - Today’s For Today: “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” Andre Gide
40. Wow: “OA is a new way of life. Nothing in this program has much relationship to anything I have known before. There are steps to take and meetings to attend. Recovery means going to any lengths to stay abstinent. It means being willing to give up, for today, any or all of the comfortable and familiar old ways that may interfere with abstinence, including cooking, restaurants, friends, meals for my family, flag and country. I found it wasn’t necessary to give up these things, but I had to be willing: willingness is the key. Without abstinence I have nothing except a killing, progressive disease.”
41. “For today: I am willing to put abstinence first. That means talking to anyone who is able to help me, asking questions even thought they may make me appear foolish, making phone calls even though I may bother someone.”
42. Today’s Voices of Recovery: “If something has repeatedly worked well for us or for someone else in a similar situation, we may assume it will work in our present situation, ultimately bringing good to us and to others, which is God’s will.” OA 12 & 12 p. 24
43. “I owe much of my recovery to the experiences voiced by others. I did not always believe that what worked for others would work for me. But loving OA members shared with me an approach they used with great success: their experience with ‘acting as if.’” I think I really needed to hear this today.
44. “By using this concept, I was able to develop trust in a Higher Power that was all accepting, loving, and understanding. I ‘acted as if’ until one day God actually was all these things to me.
45. “This approach also allowed me to achieve feelings of love and compassion toward my mother, where I once felt only emptiness. Me too.
46. “I pray that I will always be teachable and open to the experience of others. Likewise, may God allow me to be a vehicle for His good works by sharing my own experience with another compulsive overeater.”
47. Today’s In This Moment. “In This Moment I’m glad I have a sponsor.” Yes. I am. In both OA and CoDA
48. Today’s Language of Letting Go. Wow. “I spent months trying to prove to a man I was dating how responsible and healthy I was. Then I realized what I was doing. He didn’t need to realize how responsible and healthy I was. I did.” Anonymous
49. “Trying to prove how good we are, trying to prove we’re good enough, trying to show someone how much he or she has hurt us, trying to show someone we’re understanding, are warning signs that we may be into our self-defeating behaviors.”
50. “They can be an indication that we are trying to control someone.
51. “they can be an indication that we are not believing how good we are, that we’re good enough, that someone is hurting us.
52. “They can be a warning that we’ve allowed ourselves to get hooked into a dysfunctional system.
53. “They may indicate that we’re stuck in that cloudy fog of denial or doing something that is not good for us.
54. “Trying excessively to make a point with another may mean that we have not yet made that point with ourselves. Once we make that point with ourselves, once we understand, we will know what to do.
55. “The issue is not about others understanding and taking us seriously. The issue is not about others believing we’re good and good enough. The issue is not about others seeing and believing how responsible or loving or competent we are. The issue is not about whether others realize how deeply we are feeling a particular feeling. We are the ones that need to see the light.”
56. “Today, God, help me let go of my need to control outcomes by influencing the beliefs of others. I will concentrate on accepting myself, rather that trying to prove something about myself. If I catch myself in the codependent trap of trying to emphasize something about myself to another, I will ask myself if I need to convince myself of that point.”
57. Next day now, the 20th, my 20th wedding anniversary and so sad but still so much to be grateful for. O has been practically baby-sitting me lol. Spending so much time with me
58. We went shopping yesterday. She dropped me off, went and taught, and came back for me.
59. And even helped a bit. I bought some much-needed clothes and on great sales.
60. I didn’t overeat for 2 days now. Underate, which is also unhealthy, but for now I’d take that over overeating.
61. Saw J. yesterday. Hurt how polite and formal he is, but also was my fix. I know that’s not healthy but I’m grateful for it anyway.
62. Sponsor said this morning Acceptance is the answer. And I’m *beginning * to get that now.
63. And Sp said you have to sit with the feelings. Let them wash over you. And when you don’t die, it helps you be stronger next time.
64. And said you don’t dive in or it’ll choke you. You put a foot in. Try it out a little. Then take it out. Etc.
65. And that’s exactly what Dr. Drew said on his show the other day. Different wording but same meaning.
66. Last night I watched a movie here, for five dollars on demand, with O.
67. We enjoyed it.
68. She seemed comfortable.
69. And I gave her red cherries, which she loves.
70. And during that movie, or maybe after, when I was watching something else, a girl said something about wanting to be dead or something, and I actually thought: “Oh how sad. *I * don’t want that!” Phew. That’s a *much * better feeling than the one I’ve been having for the better part of two weeks, that I do want to be. I’m so grateful for that.
71. And even though today I wish we were together and celebrating and I’m so sad that it’s not that way, this morning I still do not wish to be dead. Thank God!
72. I’m grateful that I’ve never lost a limb.
73. And that K called and asked to get together last night. I already had plans, so that means I had two plans!
74. And that Mar called about the upcoming retreat. Good.
75. And that I have good healthy food in the fridge and freezer right now.
76. And that I am starting a careful new budget. Now. Have to. But can and will.
77. A/c
78. More flowers are doing better out here now
79. My new happy pink carnations
80. First pedicure in a year yesterday.
81. That I *want * to practice piano.
82. My program books.
83. Prayer
84. That I gave O, who loves Starbucks and I don’t, that Starbucks gift card I’d gotten.
85. That it had 25 dollars on it!
86. That I’m just gonna try to eat today. Not overeat, but eat. 3 little meals, nutritious.
87. I’m grateful for my eyesight and my eyedrops
88. And that there is still hope
89. And that I am not alone because I have friends and I have God
90. And that there are people who see this blog and I am not all alone in cyberspace.
91. And that I can type
92. And that I have programs. I know some of these are repeats, but I am truly grateful for them. And it *is * a very hard day.
93. And that I still have my mother
94. And that her appointment went so well the other day, thank you God
95. And that I’m living through it. Sometimes barely, but I am.
96. And that I did a load of laundry finally this morning.
97. And got my recycling out, and in time I’m pretty sure.
98. And that the people in the two stores treated me so well even thought they’re not exclusive stores or anything. That was nice.
99. I’m grateful for my feet being useful.
100. And that although sometimes it’s not comfortable getting up, that I can still kneel.
101. And that I have a job.
102. And that I’m off from it right now lol.
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