This speaker has been recorded at a meeting of Addictive Eaters Anonymous. For more information, visit our website, www.aeainfo.org. My name is Cara and I'm an Addictive Eater. I enjoy the start of this meeting as well, like to be able to smile with everyone to be reminded not to take life too seriously. Good to open with that.
What I'd like to do, I'm just gonna open in my little big book, read a little bit and take it from there.
Okay. So we're on page 47 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. We agnostics, and I'm just gonna read until I stop, we'll see how much comes out.
" When therefore we speak to you of God. We mean your own conception of God. This applies to the spiritual expression, which you find in this book. Do not let any [00:01:00] prejudice you may have against spiritual terms, deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth to affect our first conscious relation with God as we understood him.
Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things, which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth. If we wish to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was".
I'll leave it there.
We had to use our own conception. Coming here, I don't think I could have ever comprehended that there would be a solution. Let alone come up with a conception of a power that was gonna help me on a journey of recovery like that's not what I came here for. I came here because I was absolutely petrified about continuing to put on [00:02:00] weight.
And really just full of fear that the image that I portrayed to the world was slowly breaking down. I was at the point of before coming into recovery on one of the merry go rounds of addiction. I was at the stage of being super healthy and super fit with my job and, I knew everything I should be doing to keep myself well. Super competitive in my job, I had to be the best female at the job I was doing.
And I would show you. And just that whole obsession about me. And that obsession about the food and the exercise was just all encompassing. The last [00:03:00] six months of my eating I just couldn't keep up the act anymore. I was so embarrassed and full of shame about how I was eating. I remember thinking that if I moved into my grandma and Papa's house, one of the ways of trying to escape what was happening, if I moved into my Grandma and Papa's house, then I would have like the spirit of my papa with me and he was just a well loved Christian man who had a strong faith and strong morals, and somehow that, that would like rub off on me. And that might fix me and stop me binging. But that didn't work. If anything, It just got worse. And life was just getting really small. A nd I just didn't want to partake in anything that really involved other people at all, 'cause I wouldn't be able to, [00:04:00] I can see now, I wouldn't be able to control what was happening around me. So I'm just really grateful that yo-yo in life got to the extreme that it did. And that I was only left with food, because for years and years I'd used other substances to just numb out on. I always had to have something to numb myself out, to black out before bed, always something. It was the only way I could get to sleep at night.
It is just a miracle that it's not like that today, and it just had to get bad enough. And it did get bad enough and what a blessing that all of the other options I tried didn't work. The self-help books. I remember reading a self-help book, lying in the bath on my phone to a friend telling her that she really needed to read the self-help book too, because, it was working.
It's [00:05:00] just really good to be here. And what a relief to be here. And just to hear that substances swap from one thing to another. And as soon as I read that, it was the first time I read it, I was just like that's me. That is me.
And just taking the simple suggestions of picking up the phone and coming to a meeting and knowing that deep sense, a fter the first meeting, I'd found something, and not long after that, I had a conversation with a member who suggested that I write a letter to my higher power. I suppose going back to the reading, that's the first time I ever was willing to come up with a conception of this power.
And I don't think I could be wrong, but I really don't think I questioned any of the things that were suggested at the start, 'cause I was just so desperate, but that [00:06:00] letter I wrote about, how my higher power would remind me that it was there in the breeze when I was outside.
And that my conception and my understanding of that time was nature, that could be bigger than me. And just through being here and being sober, I'm learning to trust this higher power because this higher power has given me the gift that I don't have to eat today. And that's what I get directed to by other members when I speak to them. And it's coming to that point in my sobriety where that's what I'm being directed to more, is that I've got to, go deep and ask my higher power rather than go to a member in the fellowship.
And trust. I just need to take the action and everything else will work out. And I'm just so grateful [00:07:00] that anything that I'm doing at the moment in life, I'm just not on my own. I'm not my own 'cause I've got the fellowship, but I'm not on my own 'cause I have a higher power there, all I need to do is connect. And through speaking to other people, things get turned on their head. So I'm cleaning my flat at the moment to hand it back and it could be in my head such a chore and a member suggested, it can be a goodbye to your flat whilst you clean it, and how that can flip my conception.
So today I've been doing it just room by room. I've been sitting after each room and like just trying to connect with my higher power. I find saying God really cringey, but I love other people saying it. So I know that'll get better, but trying to connect with God and just having a chat about, thank you for this space to lounge about in. For the view, particularly for the [00:08:00] view.
So what am I trying to say? I'm just trying to say that, my life is just getting better. It has changed so much since I first came in. And when I was talking about, not wanting to be part of life or spend time with other people, just recently I realised that when people phone me now I actually, I'm happy that my phone is going and I want to pick up my phone.
And it wasn't like that before. I remember when people phoned me, it was such an inconvenient. It's like, I don't want to talk to you why are you phoning me. And just recently being, invited to a few trips with friends and parties and events. And just actually wanting, like really in my heart, wanting to go and be part of and that's just so special. Like having the connection with the fellowship, trying [00:09:00] to do my best to connect to my higher power means I can actually have a connection with other people in life. Like in some kind of real connection.
I would just like to keep coming back and just practice what I see here. And just, to know, deep down in my heart, I can't do life on my own. And that's okay. That is okay. And you know what? That is sometimes even great. Thank you. I'll leave it there.
