We ate to sate the fears, the anxieties, the angers, the disappointments. We ate to escape the pressures of our problems or the boredom of everyday life. We procrastinated, we hid, and we ate. ~ The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous (Kindle Locations 102-104).

We ate to sate…
to satisfy with fullness.
to consume as much or more
than is desired or can be managed.
Like Thanksgiving, Christmas,
Valentine candy, Easter eggs…
we ate to sate. But not the hunger.
We stuffed full the fears,
anxieties, angers, disappointments.
We used the only drug we knew,
calories, carbs, sugar, chips.
We tried to fill anger with food.
It’s childish, really.
But isn’t that what it’s all about?
A disease, an incurable disease,
one some of us contracted in childhood
and decades later stand hostage to it,
acting as if we can eat enough
to sate fears, anxieties,
angers and disappointment.
When I was a child,
I spoke as a child,
I understood as a child,
I thought as a child;
but when I became a man,
I put away childish things.
In Recovery, we call that surrender.