March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

March 20, 2020

Hello CHI-WIF Viewers-

This is an update as to what’s happening in our area. The Intergroup meeting will be held with the officers only this month in order for the treasurer to conduct the business at hand.  Following the meeting an agenda, minutes and treasurer’s report along with a report from the Spring Assembly will be posted. Next month we will hold the meeting via zoom for all to attend.  More information to come.

We are blessed to have a 12 Step program that’s prepared us for dealing with life on life’s terms.  As we navigate these uncertain times, we continue to do the footwork that’s before us.  We work our program to the best of our ability and we DON’T ISOLATE. “Each One Reach One” holds a whole new meaning and value during a time where “social distancing” and isolation is being encouraged.  WE ARE NOT ALONE!  This is a WE PROGRAM!  Together we can do that which we could never do alone.  WOW, our sayings/slogans hold a deeper meaning now than ever before.

Call each other, connect with the huge variety of virtual meetings available.  If you don’t know how to deal with the technology check out YouTube videos, call a friend and ask for help, DON’T ISOLATE.  Click Here and remember the Responsibility Pledge:   Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion; for this I am responsible.

As I’m typing this my husband informed me of the statewide Stay at Home order our Governor has implemented.  No better time than now to dig into our program!

In Loving Support-

Sandy F

CHI-WIF Chair

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

March 20, 2020

Hello CHI-WIF Viewers-

This is an update as to what’s happening in our area. The Intergroup meeting will be held with the officers only this month in order for the treasurer to conduct the business at hand.  Following the meeting an agenda, minutes and treasurer’s report along with a report from the Spring Assembly will be posted. Next month we will hold the meeting via zoom for all to attend.  More information to come.

We are blessed to have a 12 Step program that’s prepared us for dealing with life on life’s terms.  As we navigate these uncertain times, we continue to do the footwork that’s before us.  We work our program to the best of our ability and we DON’T ISOLATE. “Each One Reach One” holds a whole new meaning and value during a time where “social distancing” and isolation is being encouraged.  WE ARE NOT ALONE!  This is a WE PROGRAM!  Together we can do that which we could never do alone.  WOW, our sayings/slogans hold a deeper meaning now than ever before.

Call each other, connect with the huge variety of virtual meetings available.  If you don’t know how to deal with the technology check out YouTube videos, call a friend and ask for help, DON’T ISOLATE.

As I’m typing this my husband informed me of the statewide Stay at Home order our Governor has implemented.  No better time than now to dig into our program!

In Loving Support-

Sandy F

CHI-WIF Chair

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

March 20, 2020

Hello CHI-WIF Viewers-

This is an update as to what’s happening in our area. The Intergroup meeting will be held with the officers only this month in order for the treasurer to conduct the business at hand.  Following the meeting an agenda, minutes and treasurer’s report along with a report from the Spring Assembly will be posted. Next month we will hold the meeting via zoom for all to attend.  More information to come.

We are blessed to have a 12 Step program that’s prepared us for dealing with life on life’s terms.  As we navigate these uncertain times, we continue to do the footwork that’s before us.  We work our program to the best of our ability and we DON’T ISOLATE. “Each One Reach One” holds a whole new meaning and value during a time where “social distancing” and isolation is being encouraged.  WE ARE NOT ALONE!  This is a WE PROGRAM!  Together we can do that which we could never do alone.  WOW, our sayings/slogans hold a deeper meaning now than ever before.

Call each other, connect with the huge variety of virtual meetings available.  If you don’t know how to deal with the technology check out YouTube videos, call a friend and ask for help, DON’T ISOLATE.

As I’m typing this my husband informed me of the statewide Stay at Home order our Governor has implemented.  No better time than now to dig into our program!

In Loving Support-

Sandy F

CHI-WIF Chair

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

August 9-11.  See Events Page for more information

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

Lifeline Weekly is a weekly publication of the OA World Service Organization. You can receive your own subscription to LW as a bonus when you subscribe to e-Lifeline, the online version of Lifeline magazine at http://www.oa.org/lifeline-magazine/subscribe-to-e-lifeline/.

Lifeline Weekly provides an inspirational “best of” selection of articles from previous editions of OA’s Lifeline magazine and its digital counterpart, e-Lifeline. Here are a few recent editions:

 

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

The Butterflyer is the newsletter of Overeaters Anonymous for the Chicago Western Intergroup Far-Out CHI-WIF. This literature has been locally produced by CHI-WIF IG. The content reflects the experience, strength and hope of our local members. It is not OA Conference- or board-approved and does not represent OA as a whole.

Subscribe

The Butterflyer is only available via email. If you are interested in receiving this free monthly
newsletter electronically or if you did not receive your electronic subscription please send an email with the word “SUBSCRIBE” in the subject box to: MSBUTTERFLYER@YAHOO.COM

Submissions

If you are interested in using the tools of writing and service by contributing an article on the monthly topic, an anecdote, a poem or just simply how program has helped & is helping to improve your quality of life, please email: MSBUTTERFLYER@YAHOO.COM

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

Meeting Minutes

Treasurer’s Reports

Meeting Contribution Reports

Other Documents

Bylaws & Standing Rules

 

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

When several groups form in an area, they soon realize that they can better perform certain together rather than separately. So the groups may form an intergroup that is directly responsible to the groups it serves. Intergroups spring from a need to provide service for a number of local groups and better information about OA in a community (adapted from OA Handbook for Members, Groups, Intergroups).

Typical services provided by an intergroup are:

  • Providing a central telephone number for information about OA and the local meetings
  • Publishing regular newsletters or bulletins to keep groups informed about each other and upcoming OA events
  • Coordinating speakers, public information and contact with the professional community
  • Maintaining a supply of OA literature and OA and AA books
  • Sending delegates to regional assemblies and the World Service Business Conference

From the CHI-WIF Bylaws, Article II – Purpose, the purpose of the CHI-WIF Intergroup is:

  • To aid those with the problem of compulsive eating through the 12 Steps of OA.
  • To be guardian of the 12 Steps, 12 Traditions, and 12 Concepts of OA.
  • To coordinate and facilitate OA activities common to its membership.
  • To serve and represent the OA groups for which the Intergroup is formed.

 

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

Only you can decide that question. No one else can make this decision for you. We who are now in OA have found a way of life which enables us to live without the need for excess food. We believe that compulsive eating is a progressive illness, one that, like alcoholism and some other illnesses, can be arrested. Remember, there is no shame in admitting you have a problem; the most important thing is to do something about it.

In Overeaters Anonymous, you’ll find members who are extremely overweight, even morbidly obese; moderately overweight; average weight; underweight; still maintaining periodic control over their eating behavior; or totally unable to control their compulsive eating.

OA members experience many different patterns of food behaviors. These “symptoms” are as varied as our membership. Among them are:

  • obsession with body weight, size and shape
  • eating binges or grazing
  • preoccupation with reducing diets
  • starving
  • laxative or diuretic abuse
  • excessive exercise
  • inducing vomiting after eating
  • chewing and spitting out food
  • use of diet pills, shots and other medical interventions to control weight
  • inability to stop eating certain foods after taking the first bite
  • fantasies about food
  • vulnerability to quick-weight-loss schemes
  • constant preoccupation with food
  • using food as a reward or comfort

Our symptoms may vary, but we share a common bond: we are powerless over food and our lives are unmanageable. This common problem has led those in OA to seek and find a common solution in the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions and nine tools of Overeaters Anonymous.

March 20, 2020 Covid19 Update

The Twelve Steps are the heart of the OA recovery program. They offer a new way of life that enables the compulsive eater to live without the need for excess food.

The ideas expressed in the Twelve Steps, which originated in Alcoholics Anonymous, reflect practical experience and application of spiritual insights recorded by thinkers throughout the ages. Their greatest importance lies in the fact that they work! They enable compulsive eaters and millions of other Twelve-Steppers to lead happy, productive lives. They represent the foundation upon which OA is built.

The Twelve Steps Of OA

  1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted by AA World Services, Inc.

The Twelve Traditions are the means by which OA remains unified in a common cause. These Twelve Traditions are to the groups what the Twelve Steps are to the individual. They are suggested principles to ensure the survival and growth of the many groups that compose Overeaters Anonymous.

Like the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions have their origins in Alcoholics Anonymous. These Traditions describe attitudes which those early members believed were important to group survival.

The Twelve Traditions Of OA

  1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon OA unity.
  2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants;
    they do not govern.
  3. The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
  4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole.
  5. Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers.
  6. An OA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the OA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
  7. Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
  8. Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
  9. OA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
  10. Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
  11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television and other public media of communication.
  12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Permission to use the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted by AA World Services, Inc.