Food for Thought: October 28th

Food Is Not Home

Breaking abstinence may be an attempt to go home emotionally. Since we associate food, and especially certain foods, with early experience, we may turn to food when we crave the emotional support of home.

Perhaps our early home life did not provide the emotional support and security we needed, causing us to attach a false significance to the food, which we were given. The habit of turning to food and eating as a substitute for love, acceptance, and security may be deeply ingrained in our psyche. We may have come to depend on food instead of people to satisfy our emotional needs.

The problem is, of course, that food is not a satisfactory substitute for love and acceptance. However much we eat, the emotional satisfaction will be only temporary and soon disintegrate into despair and self-hatred. The home we crave can best be built here and now by working the OA program and loving the people our Higher Power gives us to love today.

May I realize that food is not home.

From Food for Thought: Daily Meditations for Overeaters by Elisabeth L. ©1980, 1992 by Hazelden Foundation.

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New level of courage

It is comfortable to stay where you are. But soon, that comfort will turn into boredom, frustration and regret.

It is uncomfortable to take on a challenge and to venture along a new path. Yet that is precisely what makes you stronger, more interesting, more capable and more fully alive.

Go ahead and do what makes you feel slightly apprehensive. That is also what makes you grow.

Feel the fear and apprehension. Learn from it all and let it prepare you.

Then, step boldly forward. Experience the new level of courage you have just attained.

Make good, purposeful use of that courage so that it grows ever stronger. And let it lead you forward into the true greatness that is your destiny.

Ralph Marston - The Daily Motivator

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Each Day a New Beginning

The most elusive knowledge of all is self-knowledge.
  —Mirra Komarovsky

Discovering who we are is an adventure, one that will thrill and sometimes trouble us and will frequently occupy our thoughtful reflections. We are growing and changing as a result of our commitment to the program. And it's that process of commitment that heightens our self-awareness.

We learn who we are by listening to others, by sensing their perceptions of us, by taking an honest, careful inventory of our own behavior. The inner conversations that haunt us while we're interacting with others are poignant guidelines to self-knowledge, self-definition. Just when we think we've figured out who we are and how to handle our flaws, a new challenge will enter our realm of experiences, shaking up all the understandings that have given us guidance heretofore.

It is not an easy task to discover who we really are. It's an even harder job to love and accept the woman we discover. But too many years went by while we avoided or denied or, worse yet, denounced the only person we knew how to be. The program offers us the way to learn about and love fully the person within. Nor will we find the way easy every day. But there's time enough to let the process ease our investigation.

I will be soft and deliberate today as I listen to others and myself. 

From Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.

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