For Today: March 6th

For Today: March 6^th

Let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know what “geographical cures” are. I have taken some. Wherever I went, I ended up the same way: in the despair and degradation of compulsive overeating and the attitudes that go with it.

Today I am worth enough to give myself the best---the best thought, the best care. I guard my abstinence and my program as though they were my dearest possessions----and they are. Wherever I go, I expect good, beautiful and worthwhile things, and I find them. I treat myself and others with respect, and I do not react in kind to people who behave badly toward me. My self-worth comes not from others but from myself, from caring about my own opinion and about what I do and say.

All that I am and hope to be comes from giving myself the time---and the patience, compassion and understanding---to grow.

For Today: Caring for myself is the best way I know to care for others and to find the good in everything.

Phew, I’ve taken many, many geographical cures myself over the years.  For some reason, I thought ‘things would be different’ if I packed up the family & schlepped them to a new location. That somehow, magically, my marriage would improve, I’d lose weight & life would be grand! It all existed for me, in a new location.

What a crock.

Wherever I went, I took MYSELF with me. Without a change in attitude from ME, what could possibly change in the new location??

Nothing, is the answer.

I am now permanently rooted & I have no desire to run away, looking for life to be better. Life  now is just  as it should BE! Because I am abstinent & I have serenity. THIS is what I’ve tried to achieve through the years & I’ve found it through OA, not from fancy houses in exotic locations.

For today, I pray that I may be willing to keep up my personal growth. I pray that I may keep stepping up on the rungs of the ladder of life.