Increasingly, we are developing a “Us or Them” language and attitude within the OA Fellowship. What we call ourselves and each other can serve to unite or divide us.
One of OA’s strongest assets is that there is not just one way or one right way to work the program. What works for one person may not work for another. As a result, there is a need for (and room for) many different meeting formats under the OA umbrella. We are all part of OA, joined by the desires to stop eating compulsively and to carry the message of recovery to the still-suffering compulsive overeater. Meeting formats and the ways people work their programs may change. The steps, tools, traditions, and concepts of OA, however, do not change.
We are all part of Overeaters Anonymous, and none of us is modifying OA. Sending this message is especially important in our publications and communications. We may attend meetings with different formats, agreed upon by the individual groups’ conscience. We do not, however, belong to different types of OA, nor do we wish to or need to. The framework of OA is broad enough for us all. Therefore, in our language we do not want to directly or inadvertently give the impression that any of us are modifying OA.
There are not different kinds of OA. There are, however, different meeting formats such as HOW meetings, Primary Purpose meetings, 90 day meetings, Step meetings, Big Book Study meetings, Traditions meetings, and Literature Discussion meetings, just to name a few. OA needs to be referred to simply as OA. If distinctions are wanted or needed they should refer to meeting descriptors or meeting formats. Meeting descriptors would be day, time, location, or group name. For example, a meeting could be referred to as the Tuesday morning meeting, the Tuesday morning HOW format meeting, or the Tuesday Minneapolis meeting.
The goal is to provide a framework so that we do not end up implying, by using terms such as Traditional OA, OA-HOW, OA-PP, 90 Day OA, and Regular OA (to names a few) that we modify OA or that there are subdivisions within OA. We need to drop the modifiers and the “dashes”. After all, “our…personal recovery depends upon OA unity.” (Tradition One, OA 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.)
By Vicki W, Region 3 Trustee, based on discussion at the November Board of Trustees meeting.
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