The WSO staff creates Lifeline from OA members’ letters. Monthly topics are suggestions. You may write about any subject important to your recovery from compulsive eating. Send your letters to Lifeline, PO Box 44020, Rio Rancho, NM 87174-4020 or email.
Features
- Stepping Out, Service with a Smile, Living Traditions and Taking the Spiritual Path: we always need stories related to these themes.
- Newcomers Corner: newcomers, share your OA experiences and concerns.
- OA Around the World: give us a history of OA in your country or area; current information on the number of service boards, intergroups and groups; significant accomplishments; and two or three short pieces from local members. Please send your history today!
- Generally Speaking (general OA topics) andHow OA Changed My Life
- Main Attraction: share your successes with public information and attraction.
Departments
- Ask-It Basket, For Discussion and Web Links
- Share It runs only if sufficient material is available.
Other Materials
Lifeline accepts letters, artwork and photos (no faces, please) for publication. Credit lines and rights to submitted work apply equally to articles, artwork and photos. The WSO does not return submitted materials. Lifeline may edit articles and crop photos. Lifeline promotes “unity with diversity” regarding the race, nationality, gender, age, physical challenges and sexuality of its writers.
Please submit articles at least three and a half months prior to the first day of the month of publication. Deadlines appear in parentheses next to topics. Indicate the topic and month for which you are submitting the article. Typed letters by mail, fax or e-mail are preferred. Letters must contain the author’s name and address, even if the author wishes to remain anonymous in print. Thank you.
2013 Topics
JANUARY (Deadline: 9/15/12)
2013: The Year of Abstinence Awareness
How do you celebrate your abstinence?
What was the turning point that brought you abstinence?
What Steps help you most to maintain your abstinence?
What tools save your abstinence in critical moments?
Who has been your greatest influence in finding and maintaining abstinence?
How the Abstinence Definition Affects Me
Has the definition caused you to change your program or helped you to maintain abstinence?
February (Deadline: 10/15/12)
How Hard Is the Program?
If your group complains about how hard it is, how do you get beyond the complaints?
Should more groups adopt a policy of “positive sharing only” (especially at newcomer meetings) instead of using the meeting to “dump” or as “group therapy”? Explain why.
What is hard about the program?
What is easy about the program?
What actions, Steps or tools help you overcome the hard parts?
The Importance of Sharing at Meetings
How has someone’s sharing at a meeting helped your recovery?
How has your sharing helped you?
Conventions and Retreats: Why Are They So Important to Our Members?
How has the World Service Convention helped you?
Why are region conventions and retreats helpful to you, your group and your intergroup?
How have intergroup retreats strengthened your program, either by attending or planning them?
Golden Nuggets Gleaned From Conferences, Conventions and Retreats
Share those nuggets that have shaped your program and life.
How have these nuggets helped you maintain abstinence?
How have these nuggets helped your relationships outside of OA?
March/April (Deadline: 11/15/12)
How OA Changed My Life
May (Deadline: 1/15/13)
Anonymity Matters
What does anonymity mean in OA?
What situations have you experienced in OA where anonymity was necessary or unnecessary?
How has a breach of anonymity affected you or others?
Our Virtual Program
How have you gotten the most out of OA’s Web site, e-books, online meetings and/or phone meetings?
How do the advantages/disadvantages of these options stack up against advantages of a face-to-face meeting for you?
June (Deadline: 2/15/13)
Vital Spiritual Experiences: Understanding My Higher Power
How does your Higher Power today differ from the one you knew prior to OA?
How would you describe the Higher Power of your understanding?
How did you find acceptance that the Higher Power of others may be quite contrary to your Higher Power?
What spiritual experience helped you understand the existence of your HP?
Atheists and Agnostics: How We Approach the Spiritual Side
How did you reconcile the spiritual side of OA with your beliefs?
What is your comfort level with the spiritual side of OA: is it too much or just fine given your perspective?
July (Deadline: 3/15/13)
Generally Speaking
Write about anything relating to your experience, strength and hope in OA.
August (Deadline: 4/15/13)
The Twelve Steps and Traditions: Longtimers Share Why They Keep Coming Back
Which Step or Tradition has been most important in keeping you in OA?
Why do you keep coming back?
If you had a time when you thought you might leave, what kept you from doing so?
How do you keep your program and meeting attendance fresh after years of participation?
What are the benefits to hearing shares versus giving shares?
Why would you advise others to keep coming back?
What has been the most significant change in your life because of your longtime participation in OA?
September/October (Deadline: 5/15/13)
Sponsoring Through the Twelve Steps
How do you and your sponsor/sponsee work the Steps together?
Which Step have you and your sponsor/sponsee worked that changed both of your lives while working on it?
Which Step was the hardest for you as a sponsor working with your sponsee?
The Role of Sponsorship and Its Limitations
If you are a sponsor, how did you prepare for your role?
What life lessons has being a sponsor taught you?
What are some inherent limitations in sponsoring?
November (Deadline: 7/15/13)
Working the Program: It Works—It Really Does!
How do you work your program?
Over the years, how have you changed the way you work your program and why?
What Steps or tools have been the most helpful in working your program?
What part of the program did you resist at first but later embraced?
December (Deadline: 8/15/13)
Before and After: How Living the Twelve Steps Has Changed My Daily Life
How have you incorporated the Steps into your daily life?
What Step makes the most difference on a daily basis?
Has working the Steps changed your relationships?
How did you overcome obstacles in your life using the Steps?
Don’t Rain on My Parade: An Honest Look at Whom We Have Harmed
How did you overcome your initial resistance to examining whom you have harmed?
How did you shift the blame to where it belonged?
What have been the benefits of taking an honest look at those you have harmed?