Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Get started.
Compulsory. My name is Bruce and I'll be leading the session today. In case you are lost, this is the specific focus LGBTQ meeting or allies if you want. So everyone's welcome.
Well, we're going to begin with the Serenity prayer, but grant me this parenting, the things I cannot change, courage to change, the things I can, and the wisdom. So as I mentioned, the topic of this workshop is the specific focus lgbtq.
Generally, specific focus meetings are not recorded. This is recording right now. But because it's not, we don't generally do that. Is there anyone here who objects? I will turn it off. In that case, remember that when you're sharing, it is that's sort of in your content that you're being recorded. If you want to be anonymous, use fictitious names. I suggest Ken or Barbie. If that happens to be your name, then by all means you can just switch them. There's no judgment here.
Okay, so I mentioned before, my name is Bruce. I'm a compulsive eater. I am seated with Sherry and we are the co leaders for this meeting. So each of us are going to take 20 minutes to speak and then we'll open up the room for shares. Up to three minutes.
It's saying when I share, spend a moment or two saying where I'm from, etc. And then the bulk of the shares for the topic. So I've done zero preparation for this at all. So I'm flying on the seat of my pants or my shorts.
Okay, so, okay, I want to start off by going to my higher power, getting all the nervousness.
I started OA in the year 2000, February of 2000. I've been abstinent since April of 2005. Right now I'm maintaining about a 60 pound weight loss, although there was a point where I just stopped weighing myself because I didn't want to know anymore.
I mentioned I'm from Ottawa, Ontario.
So I'm trying to think, like, how all of this started, what happened? And I ended up speaking at a retreat in New Hampshire in a city I've never been to in my entire life. I've never even driven through. But it's very nice to be here. Don't get that wrong.
So I am the youngest of 13.
I don't think I need to say that my family was Catholic. I think that's understood. We also didn't have cable, but I lived on a farm. So a lot of this is more about having worker bees.
Needless to say, I would say I grew up in an environment where There was conflict. I'd have a plate of whatever. If I turned around to go get my fork, I'd be back and something was gone.
So I kind of learned how to hoard. But really what was going on is that I was a very sensitive little boy. I didn't have anyone there protecting me.
And I learned that very early on.
I can show you this later, but I have a scar here.
When I was, I want to say, five or six, before I started school, my older siblings put me on a diet. I don't know about you, like, maybe this just happens to me. Someone tries to control my food, I'm going to try to do the opposite. So here I am going through cupboards looking for some sugared cereal. One of my siblings caught me, also theater. And I was caught and I was running towards the back door with one of those screen glass doors. And the age old question of what happens when irresistible force meets an immovable object.
Something's got to give. And what gave? My wrist totally sliced it through. Thought it was interesting because I was just like, hey, look, mom. And of course everybody's screaming around. I didn't know what the problem was. I look at that scar and I remember that happened because I'm a compulsive dot, sort of a direct cause.
So I was always the chubby kid. But like I looked, I always, in my head I thought I was like morbidly obese. But I was never like that neither. In high school, when I moved away to college, my friends were concerned for my health because they thought I was anorexic. I would play with my food, eat something, and I'm like, oh, I don't want any more. Like, you know, 40. I lost 40 pounds in my first term. Like I didn't do the freshman 15. It was the opposite.
You know, people were kind of like, bruce, are you okay? My head, I was like, I'm losing weight. Of course I'm okay. While I'm ghastly pale, hanging onto things to walk because I had no energy.
And when I got older, I went to a different school for another university degree. I got into bodybuilding when somebody was sharing one time about their exercise, the exercise, bulimia. That resonated with me, you know, getting up and I would go to the gym for two hours. I played golf, I played, played some football as well, like all the things, and wasn't losing any weight. So I can only imagine just how much I was putting in. If energy in was equaling energy out. There was a lot of energy Going in. Then I moved to the city I live in now in Ottawa, to start law school.
Listen, I didn't have all that time to do all the exercise.
Didn't reduce the energy in to match the lesser energy. So the weight started piling. In my third year, I was applying for jobs at law firms starting the end of second year. And then after the end of third year is when I start. When I went into the law firm where they had hired me like, eight months before. Had to sort of prove who I was because I was unrecognizable. Gained about 80 pounds in between. I can't remember exactly, but it was something like that. Like, all of a sudden, nothing in my closet f anymore to overlap with part of the LGBT focus meeting we're having.
I found, like, I grew up. Like I mentioned, grew up Catholic, was told that being gay was intrinsically disordered in my head, and I had to change that. I got involved in the.
Through my. Like, it wasn't my parents who sent me. I was in my early 20s, and I wanted. Because I needed to change. One of the things they had us do is put a rubber band on our wrist. I mean, had like, you know, an unnatural thought. You just snap the wrist. All that happened is I now have a fetish for rubber bands.
So, yeah, that's to say it didn't work. All I learned from there is that I must be a terrible person because I prayed so hurt. Nothing had changed.
That led to a huge depression. That led a suicide attempt.
That led to getting therapy for that led me going into another.
We'll call it an S program. So there's lots of them.
So I was so in conjunction with the conversion therapy, I was working the 12 steps to not be gay, if you can imagine that that's how that was working.
Kind of like a little understanding about how 12 steps work. My sponsor in that other program, probably after I've been complaining about all the food at Depth work, suggested I go to Old Readers Anonymous. Why I don't have a problem with food.
He says he is. He was a priest too, as that man was. He said, I know you don't have a problem with food. I want you to go to these meetings to learn about the disease more.
If you want me to do anything, tell me I'm going to learn something, because that will probably motivate me. So I'm going to go to OA for me to learn about the disease and more and, of course, teach all of you how to do the steps.
My first meeting was in the kitchen, basement of a church, rounding up all the newcomers. And we're all sitting around the table sharing leader. My name is blank.
I haven't eaten sugar in a year and a half. And I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. And I thought, liar, there's no way you gave up sugar for that. Remember the Catholic, then the Ash Wednesday? Every year I would give up sugar on Ash Wednesday.
The longest I was able to make it was maybe 10am on the Thursday.
I can tell you today I haven't had sugar since April 2005. Miracle.
And that is not me. That is something else. Because there is no earthly power that could have stopped me from eating sugar. If I wanted it, I got it.
The other thing I think is lying is that if you'd given up sugar for that line, there's no way you're happy.
Everything that was said at that meeting was somebody shared how their parents would apologize when they went visiting for all the food that they ate when they were kids. I remember thinking, dear God, does that happen to. I wasn't going. I was going to go there just to count as a meeting for my other program. I wasn't expecting to stay. I wasn't expecting to, you know, believe that I was a compulsive over leader. So I wish I could tell you, yeah, that's the meeting where everything happened.
I was going to meetings, listening to people share about how they had to run away from cookies and muffle nuts.
And I could still hear the amen from the prayer echoing in the room. And I was at the door because I had to go to the convenience store to get my share of a big pint of ice cream and eat that and wow, I can't wait for the program to start again. Sorry, I haven't done much preparation. I don't know if anybody watches the show called Agatha, Agatha all along who One of the characters said, time does not work is going to be jumping around a little bit. In that other S program, they voted that the definition of sobriety could only mean that you were straight married to someone of the office. I think that's going to work off. I'm into the program and got some abstinence, like for about a year. Ran into something in step nine that I didn't want to do. Lost that abstinence and went into relapse, which is fine. That is a different kind of hell if anyone's ever. Because I knew, like, I was miserable before. I hated myself every day and I didn't really know why.
Now I'm in relapse and I hated myself every day and I knew damn well why.
And I knew how to get out. I just couldn't. So in the meantime, as I am going through relapse, I thought maybe if I come out then I'll get abstinent. I'm writing my step four.
I'm going to back up a little bit because I had to find my first sponsor.
I got up to share his story and I thought, I'm going to ask him to be my sponsor of the most homophobic and racist person you can think of. And then imagine him telling you with someone that they think is too far to the right. Well, that's working class.
I don't know if this was some kind of self sabotage on my.
I figured like, you know, if I come out to him and he rejects me, then I know this program is garbage, right? By step forward, I think it was about, et cetera, stuff that happened at home. I wrote that I was gay. What?
Because I was like, I don't give a damn where you're sleeping. You're going to rewrite the Step four because you didn't swear enough.
Okay, that's a lot to unpack. What did he mean by that? So essentially, and it was funny, we were just talking about step four just before here he installed in me, is that you need to get it all on the page.
That's what he meant. I was being very polite, like kind of giving excuses for the other people that hurt. No, you can't do that. Gotta be honest. Wheel or imagine this could be all in your head. Write it down on a piece of paper. So I rewrote everything. In fact, still today at the end of step four, if it's a resentment person, my last line would be fuck you, blank. I agree, I'm write some more. I have to keep doing that until I'm done with the anger.
So that didn't turn out as well as I thought it would because I had that same sponsor for another five years.
In fact, there was one time when he had a heart attack. So the rest of us in the program were taking turns. He's lying in bed like, you know, there's more tubes and wires coming out of him like a used car. And so I said, are you okay? He was like, yeah, I'm fine. Stay down. I want to teach you how to do step six and seven.
If I have half of that tenacity that man has, I think I'll be okay in this program.
So that was kind of the, you know, a little bit of an auspicious start in my recovery.
So, like, what does that mean? Like, you know, why. Why do. Should we have, like, a specific focus on lgbt? Like, what? I can talk about my partner and I don't have to say, you know, try to come up with names that are very generic, like Terry and Chris. And I'm engaged to a man.
Yeah. My mother was clapping, too, when I told her. I think I'm just very grateful about that because I know many of us are at a certain age. It's not something we grew up with, like, oh, we're going to go get married. Like, all of our friends were thinking about their weddings.
I just didn't think I would get married because I was a horrible person and nobody would love me.
And that took a lot of work. It took a lot of prayer. It took a lot of step work and therapy for me to get to the point where I could look in the mirror and say, I love you. As RuPaul says, if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to learn to love someone else?
So I remember one time I was at an OE meeting with a friend of mine. Now, him and his partner came up to Ottawa to specifically to get married. It still wasn't legal here in the US they were from Massachusetts, but I know Maryland, and I believe at the time the state wouldn't marry you, but they'd recognize marriage, something along that line. So the fact that they got married in Canada, their marriage would be recognized. Here goes into a meeting.
Of course, my husband. This is new. My husband. My husband in the parking lot. I get this pamphlet from this woman. Oh, I just wanted to give you this before you leave. To you and your friend. And it was a pamphlet for that conversion therapy thing that I'd gone through. I knew all the people on the brochure. Yeah, that's why I need, like this, like, be specific, to get away from the harassment. It's rough out there. There's a lot going on.
As much as I'll go to, let's call it a regular OA meeting, I still will sell F. T.
I don't feel safe.
I've been to OA meetings in Louisiana.
I've gone in Washington, D.C. i know what the temperature climate is in Ottawa. It's fine for the most part. Nobody cares. They're probably hearing me talk about my fiance and my husband.
So I'm very glad that we have specific focus meetings here. It's a chance to be I guess maybe it's just a chance just to be open a little bit more honest in a group. For a long time that I was getting an issue. I have shared lots of in smaller meetings and whatnot.
I've shared in meetings like this at retreats and conventions, but in a smaller group and I can relax a little bit.
I have one minute left.
What else to share? Remember listening to somebody end their talk with newcomer if you're new, welcome, keep coming back.
Coming here from relapse. Welcome coming back.
You've been here for 20 years, 25 years and missed a meeting in a week in your entire time here, welcome, keep coming back.
And if you have no idea what you're doing here and you kind of wandered in because you're somewhere else in the hotel, hey, who knows, maybe you need to stay and keep coming back. I'm very, very happy that to have taken the time here and thank you.
Now I'll pass it over to my.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Co leader, Sherry name is Shari. I'm a compulsive overeater. Queer. I'm queer and I've always been queer and I've always been a compulsive overeater. So it's very intertwined for me. My coming out story is very intertwined with my eating.
I want to share a bit about that and I also want to make you feel comfortable and entertain you a little and I'll just give you a few details. I'm from Montreal where all the Canadian shows here day I'm 61 years old. I've been in OA for 21 years. I started in OA in California and that's really, you know, In California, within 10 miles of my house, there were 200 meetings a week. There were women's meetings, there were gay meetings, there were men's meetings.
If you want to be something unusual in your life, go to live in California, especially in Los Angeles because you can find a meeting from Parachuters. So it's an amazing place to go into program.
So I want to first thank you all for being here because I came to this meeting, to this convention to be with my people and I came to this meeting to be with my people within my people. Because no matter what anybody says, no matter how easy it is in the world out there now I only see myself and my story reflected back to me when I'm sitting with a group of people like this.
So I need to be here and I need to look at your beautiful faces and I need you to look at me and know that we're in this together in a different way. In the same way. In a different way. So I want to thank you for being here.
I'm trying to do this all in order.
I never thought about. I was heavy since forever. I was never thin, ever. Not ever. I always ate. I can't even explain. I ate. My parents bought whatever they wanted and we ate whatever we wanted. Everything with their family style. Very traditional Jewish family. We went to synagogue all the time. We had a kosher home.
I talked endlessly with my mother about what my last name would change to when I got married to a nice Jewish boy who was, of course, university educated and could take care of me. Because my father, my parents didn't ever for once think that I could take care of myself. And I can explain it this way. I wanted to go to Club Med very, very badly when I was in my 20s, very badly. I read books about Club Med. I sang all the club. I don't know what it was, but I just wanted to go to Club Med so badly. My father came to me one day and he said, if you want to go. I was young. I was like in my first year of working out of university.
He said, I will pay for a trip. For you to go to Club Med, you have to do two things. You have to quit smoking and you have to lose 25 pounds. Because my father was worried no one would marry me if I smoked or if I was fat.
And of course, I agreed to this right away because I fucking wanted to go to Club Med. So we signed the papers. He put the dog's paws in the ink. The dog signed the papers and I lost weight and I quit smoking and I went to Club Med. So he dropped me off. I was very independent, so I went to Club Med alone. He dropped me off. I go through customs. I bought a carton of cigarettes and I bought. I can't tell you how much food because I got what I wanted. Everything was good.
You can manipulate me only so far. And I felt sort of grateful for him. So that was that. I gained all the weight back, of course. And, you know, he probably thinks, well, he's not alive anymore, but he probably thinks I still owe him that money he spent for my trip to Club Med.
So what happened? I'm trying to correct across these things off when I. When I get to them. But the next thing that happened was in my coming out process. I was at nice Jewish summer camp and I met a nice Jewish summer camp girl. I never ever heard. I didn't even Know if I knew the word lesbian. I don't know any of this. I was 19 years old and I met some girl at camp. And boy, I don't know what it was, but every single time I was with her, my heart was like, ba boom, ba boom. Like, I couldn't. I don't know.
So anyways, turns out camp ended. We fell in love. I really fell in love. It wasn't just like, well, love. It was love. I was in love with her. And we were together and we were so happy. And we didn't tell our parents. We didn't tell her parents. Her parents were Holocaust survivors. We were never telling her parents. And I wasn't going to tell my parents for one very important reason. And I'll get to that in a minute. Even though my parents were open and liberal and everything, I just didn't want them to know. And one of the reasons I didn't want them to know was because they were so liberal. I knew that as soon as I came out, they would tell everybody. And it was private. Like, I wanted to tell everybody. The day I got my period, my mother told our whole campground nothing was private, right? So I wanted to have a little bit of privacy. So I was just not going to come out. But something else was happening. My brother, when I was younger was bothering me, touching me, and not being provocative with me. And I've never shared this whole story in public before, and although I'm happy to share it with you in private, I went to my mother and I told her that my brother was doing things to me that I felt uncomfortable with. And she said to me, it's just sibling rivalry. Ignore that. It's just sibling rivalry.
So I ate some more because I was starting to realize that, A, I might like girls, and B, that I didn't like was starting to happen to me and way more.
I was not doing anything right. I wasn't growing up right. I wasn't doing any of the right things. I was weird, I was awkward, blah, blah, blah. 19. I fell in love. I didn't care about any of that stuff anymore.
My brother let him go to hell, and I was in love. And we were so happy. We were so happy. I couldn't wait for the rest of my life, honestly. And then she broke up with me maybe nine months into the relationship. Why? I kept asking why? You're too fat. You're too fat. I was not going to provide her the life she wanted to have, which was arm candy, expensive clothes. Like, she came from a poor Jewish family. She wanted to uplift herself. I was not high enough for her, so that broke me. Many, many years. For 10 years, easily. I was not okay. So I just continued to eat and I was not okay because as lesbians do, she wanted to still be my friend, right? Finally, I had to move to LA to get away from her.
So I moved to la. I decided I'd be straight city to be reborn and work. I found the gay and lesbian synagogue. I found my people. In la, there's two gay and lesbian synagogues. Because if there's going to be one, they're going to argue and make two. So it was two. It was the 90s, right, the early 2000s. We were coming out, it was fantastic. I loved it. But I couldn't meet a woman. I couldn't fall in love, I couldn't date. I was too afraid. I was so fat. I was £200. Think about £200 on this frame. You can't imagine how big it was. Even though I was very. I exercised a lot. I had a lot of friends.
I was just afraid to. So I did a lot of therapy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I. Because if you're in la, you need to do a lot of therapy. It's part of your.
Your ability to become a citizen of California.
[00:26:43] Speaker C: So.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: And I had to start dating. I was like 35 years old and I wanted to meet somebody. So I figured out where to go. But I kept saying to her, when am I going to get thin?
[00:26:55] Speaker C: When am I going to get.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: I'm going to lose weight. I can't meet somebody and look like this. They're not going to want me. And she said, it'll happen when it happens. That's all she ever said to me about everything.
So I decided to go somewhere where there were other lesbians besides the synagogue I was at, because I was not doing that very publicly. And I went into. It was a Jewish. It was a book group, a lesbian book group in the women's bookstore because they have everything in la. And I sat down, I was so freaking shy. And I looked around the circle and I thought to myself, who is the cutest woman here? I had read the book, but who cared? Who is the cutest woman here? Who would I go out with if she were to approach me? And I found a woman and I looked at her and she was adorable and she was fat and I loved it. And right after the book group, she came up and talked to me and she's sitting right there. I've been married to her for 25 years, 23 years.
So. So God sent us to each other to come to this program. We both gained plenty of weight when we got together. I finally we found each other to be fat together. So we got married. A big Jewish wedding. I called my mother a year before and I said, I've met the one. I finally had come out because my parents knee. They said, when are you going to talk about it? And I told them never. And I want to tell you the other reason I wouldn't talk to them about it. Because you can see I'm not shy here.
My brother was arrested as a sexual predator finally, and he was going to jail. And I couldn't imagine my parents trying to explain they had a lesbian, a sexual predator and a straight daughter. I just didn't want to add to there difficulties. I didn't want to discuss it with them because like, it was too crazy. But I finally did when I met the person I love so much to this day, I called my mother and I said, I think I met the one. And she said to me, is she Jewish? That's what my mother was interested in. I said, yes, no. I said, no, she's not Jewish. I don't care. I didn't ever wanted to marry a Jew, blah, blah, blah. She says, well, what's going to happen when you have babies? I'm like, we're not having babies, we're not having babies. She said, you never know. I said, actually, I would know. They're not going to happen by accident.
So we went on from there on her very own. My wife converted. I didn't want her to convert, but it was her deal. Fine. I'm telling you. Breaking so much anonymity, we got married within two years. Our marriage was having difficulty because we were so fat and we were so unhealthy. And I just blamed everything on her. If you lost weight, I would be happier. If you were different, I would be happier.
No responsibility for my weight problems. And one Saturday. And then my father died. I was 40 years old, my father died.
I went Shiva in Montreal and I ate an unbelievable quantity of food. Unbelievable. And if you don't know what a Shiva is, I'll explain to you later. And I came home and I thought to myself, here's my wife lying next to me. We're never going to have sex again because we're too fucking to it. It's too hard on us.
And I'm never going to have sex again because my father's dead and I'm unhappy.
And one Saturday morning I Got up. I knew that OA existed. I went to my computer, I found a meeting. I woke her up, and we went to a meeting. It was in West Hollywood. It was a woman's meeting. And it was really full of a lot of anorexics, which really made me feel even crazier. But because I like. Yeah, it was just complicated because LA is a skinny city, so there's sometimes more anorexia than overeating. Anyway, I'm just getting to the end of the story. We went. We went out, we binged on breakfast afterwards. And yet we kept coming back. We always went back. And I became abstinent, like a week later. My wife became abstinent the same time as me. Even though we weren't together, we were in different cities. And I lost 70 pounds really, really quickly. And really, it was an incredible journey for me. I was amazed and happy. And I have had a broken. I have broken my abstinence twice, and I gained, like, 40 pounds back out of the 70, but I've lost it all again. And I guess what I want to say to you is, because we're soon going to end this. And there's one more thing I wanted to say is there's one more little story that I wanted to say. But what I really want to say about the program and about being queer. Thank you. Is the more honest you are with the people around you and yourself, the better your food's going to get and the better your program's going to get. When they say, do you want to taste this? I'm like, yeah, I want to tape this. Because I need to be my authentic self. If I can't be who I really am, nuts and bolts, and the good things and the bad things, then nothing's gonna work. Because I won't be presenting an honest picture of who I am to my higher power. And if I need to be able to do that minimally, I went for this.
Did anyone notice anything in the bathroom down here? The first thing you notice. What, the scale.
Oh. I'm, like, drawn to it like a magnet. I'm like, I'm just going to weigh myself, even though I only weigh myself once a month. And then I had to leave.
I also want to tell you something that bothers me a lot about this program.
When I quit smoking, originally, it was through a clasp. It was with the patch. And you have to go to a class or they wouldn't give you the patch like, it insisted you do it together. So I went to the class. I did quit smoking. This way, it worked for two years and we had to fill out a form the first day. And one of the things was, what would you like to gift yourself with when you quit smoking? And my answer was a pack of cigarettes. So the thing I don't like about this program is as I get thinner, I have to eat less. It really upsets me because I am noticing what all you are eating and some of you who are still heavy or heavier than, just heavier than me can eat more than me. And it kills me, the cigarettes. All I really want to get out of this program to this day, 21 years in, is to eat four.
And it's never fucking going to happen. And I have to turn that over to my higher power every single day. Not cured. I'm not recovered. I'm barely recovering. Even though I feel in fit spiritual condition, I really do. More than ever before, I feel close. I have a higher power who I choose to not call. God lives somewhere inside of me and it's that small, quiet voice.
I am close to my family.
He is good in my life, every day I think I wake up breakfast. Every day. I finish lunch, what's for supper? I finish supper, what could I eat next? I'm so sad. When I finish supper, it's so sad for me. I want to cry.
I don't get to eat for like 12 more hours. Because if it was up to me, I would just eat 24 hours a day without the stomachache. I can't stand the stomachache now. I really can only eat a little bit. And it's hard work for me just to eat a little bit and to be happy. Oh, that. I'm trying that here. And if you see me, feel sorry for me so little.
And I want to tell you one more lesbian related story. When we moved to Montreal, we moved to Montreal for one year to help my sister with her fourth child 17 years ago and have not left.
Thank you. He went to an OA meeting in Montreal, an English meeting. And we walk in and sitting in the front seat is an old friend of my parents. Not with her husband, we went camping with him. All the time she's with her wife.
I just want to say, you don't know who you're meeting in this world.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Good luck.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Like, there's queer people all around you. There's fat people, there's skinny people. I often feel like I look good, but I am crazy inside. So don't be thinking, all done. I have to work. Really, Really. I don't know what I'm saying. Anymore so I'm going to stop talking and tell you you could do it, you could do it because I am. I could do it. If I could do it, you could do it. And I'm here afterwards if you want to talk to me and if you need help with anything. I'm a happy, lucky, blessed human being with a life she truly wants. Thank you.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Thank you, thank you Sharon.
I have no more information here so we're just going to start our.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Oh here it is.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I know there's. We're going to open the floor we have and if you need to go longer is there anything on your mind?
[00:37:12] Speaker A: And again as I mentioned before if you want to remain anonymous use a different name. And we go until 3:30 so that gives us another 17 minutes. Please just come up to the microphone.
[00:37:25] Speaker C: My name is Susan, I'm a compulsive overeater.
I came out last fall, ended my 32 year marriage last June and don't even know who I am anymore.
This is my first time.
I don't even have any friends never mind and feel like I need to be with my people within my people. I really like that but since I came out, when I first came out.
[00:38:04] Speaker D: I was so happy, so happy. Oh it can be me.
[00:38:07] Speaker C: I'm still living with my ex husband for financial a minute of it. He still wants us to live together and grow old together but he's okay with not ever having sex again.
Just I'm impatient. It's probably gonna be another six months before I can get my own place.
I feel like I can't be who I am. I can't figure out who I am until I'm on my own. Life feels like it's on hold. I haven't been working my program and it was only because I had a nervous breakdown last night started to accept who I really am and who I've always been the only thing that I wanted when I became an adult back in the 80s the only way to be a mother was with a man. Made it my mission to find a husband Is that because I was in the food safe because I hated myself. I was not a good mother. Children love me, we have great relationships but I did not do a good job Giving myself to that has been the hardest thing I've ever done.
I know that I did the best that I could at the time that I didn't have love growing up and that I was told that I said and I felt was wrong so how could you possibly love somebody like that? You know I did have A lesbian relationship in my 20s became obsessed.
I thought, oh, well, this is what all lesbian can, so I don't want this.
And it just. It got to the point where the only way that I could sleep with my husband was to be high and watch lesbian porn. I went getting ready and I said to myself, I don't know why I like the lesbian porn so much. And then I went, duh.
You know, it was like this huge light bulb moment where I went, okay, yes, you do, and you always have.
And since then, I've looked back over my sexual history with all the men that I've been with. Not that there's been that many, but. And realize that I always have been, and I never let it be part of who I really am.
So I'm in a middle messiness, and I'm really struggling with my program.
It's just really hard right now.
Feeling like my life is on hold is the hardest part. Well, why bother doing these things now?
What's the point of working my program now? Because my life isn't going to start until I get out of here.
But one of the great things about being here is that I get to be.
Whereas at home, I don't feel like I can. So thank you.
[00:41:00] Speaker E: I'm Blair, compulsive, overeater and anorexic.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: And.
[00:41:05] Speaker E: Really grateful to be here.
I came into the rooms 10 years ago about, and I have anorexia. In my story. When I was 15, I had a rape and then plunged into a depression and was anorexic for a couple years in high school and then surprisingly went the other way. Top weight was at least 350. Don't recall. I'm maintaining a weight release of about 180 pounds and a weight gain of 60.
And if you had asked me 10 years ago if I'd be in the program and doing service at all levels of the program, I would have laughed at you.
Service helps me stay abstinent, helps me get outside myself and shocking. So I heard when I came into the rooms, like 10 years ago, do service. It's really important. I was like, what?
[00:42:01] Speaker C: What is service?
[00:42:02] Speaker E: Just put away the chairs, collect the money, like, write people's names on, you know, the we care list and all right. Then I got into intergroup about six months later and the rest is history. But thank you so much for sharing, both of you. It was so good to hear your stories. And, you know, right now I'm in a.
In a process with my sexuality that I am learning more about myself and married to A lovely woman and we're having trouble and scary. But it's also important that I share that out loud and tell you what's going on.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:40] Speaker E: Because if I can't be truthful and honest with you guys, who can I be truthful?
[00:42:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:46] Speaker E: Know is that I have to work my program around all sorts of things. 12 stepping a program, you know. Thank you so much.
12 stepping a problem is my middle name. You know, my mom, my aunt, My brother, my two cousins and my grandparents are all in program or 12 step. They rather my grandparents never went to program. So I've grown up with 12 step programs in my life and better bet I wanted to run the other way when my brother so casually mentioned when I was visiting him in New York City like how about we go to a meeting?
[00:43:18] Speaker C: What? I don't need a meeting.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: What are you talking about?
[00:43:22] Speaker E: Oh, how right he was.
Thought I escaped it. Nope. But it's kind of interesting to be in a family that is in 12 step programs because they don't work their program like I think they should work their program. Just kidding. No, but all serious, serious work around that. But just really grateful that there's a space that I can share who I am authentically.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Out.
[00:43:50] Speaker E: Just living the dream. And if anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them. But really, really grateful there's a space to live authentically.
[00:44:00] Speaker C: So thanks.
[00:44:04] Speaker D: Hi, I'm Karen. I'm a compulsive leader and God, it's good to be here. I used to dream early in my program of having meetings like this.
I felt very sort of coming out in OA meetings. I can remember my sponsor after we went to a meeting together and in my comment I changed the pronouns of the person I was talking about dating. And after the meeting she said, you know Karen, I think here it would be okay to tell the truth.
And I heard today about the value of telling the truth or truth we share the the more we recover that and makes me smile to think of being in a meeting and lying.
That's not what we do.
So I took what she said to heart and I started taking that risk and I stopped changing the pronouns of the person I was dating and nobody fell off the chair and nobody threw me out. In fact, I discovered there were some other people in the meeting who were gay. And then we could talk to each other and be our real.
[00:45:39] Speaker C: With our real people really with our people.
[00:45:43] Speaker D: I've always believed there is a great troubling connection between disorders, sexuality.
And I was so ashamed to look at that, think about it, talk about it. More about it all the time. You know, eight years later in the book, the Body image, Sexuality and relationships book, I go meeting that.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: We use that book a lot of.
[00:46:12] Speaker D: Understanding, fellowship, connection, which is very helpful in my recovery here with you guys and hearing from.
[00:46:27] Speaker F: Hi, I'm Laz and gay for as long as I can remember, which may not seem like that long to all of you, but is a long time to me.
And my parents sent me to Catholic boarding school very early on to try to, you know, pray that gay away. And one of of the biggest things that they would do at the boarding school if you showed any interest in being gay, was to restrict your food and take it away. And that didn't make me any less gay and didn't make me any healthier, just made me leave the program. Wanting to eat everything.
I left the program. I got very big. I got to my highest at 350 with my first ever long term partner. And she and I had like eating disorder packs where we were allowed to binge together as long as we were allowed to purge, but we could only do it so many times.
And I thought I loved this woman. And to the point that I was like, okay, I'm ready to tell my parents that I want to be with her. And I told my parents and to my surprise, they already knew I was gay. But it was like, just don't talk about it at home anymore. But when I was like, I'm ready, I want to buy a house with this woman, they were like, kind of were like, okay, it's okay for you to be gay, but no one else in the world can be gay. So I was like, this is a step in the right direction, I guess. I bought a house with that woman. And she and I continued our bad eating habits, which just ruined our relationship. And I discovered that I wanted to take charge of my own life and I found. Oh, I got weight loss surgery. Through that process, I found oa. And OA is what changed my life, the surgery? Nothing.
And when I got that, when I got through oa, I really discovered myself and I found the woman that I am engaged to today. And I am so happy that I get to have her to be here. And I'm so happy that I get to have my mom here at this conference convention supporting me and my fiance getting married and loving the fact that she supports my eating addiction and she supports my wife. And I just can't believe that I went from being sent to Catholic boarding school and getting my food taken away to having this relationship with my mom through this program, because without this, I would have never gotten to being able to have that with her. And I'm just so happy that I.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Got to do that.
[00:49:02] Speaker C: So thank you.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: That was a great meeting, eh?
Happy to see everyone. Thank you for those who shared. Thank you for showing up.
Let's end with the Serenity prayer and we'll do the we version.
Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Everybody do we need to do something there?
