I found Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) at 48, after dieting my way up to 360 pounds. Today, I have maintained a 200+ pound loss for over 18 years.

My weight struggles began in childhood. In third grade, my worried parents put me on diet pills; by fourth grade, I weighed 157 pounds. My mom, who was the county school nurse, told me I was the largest kid in the entire school district. Food was restricted at home, so I stole money to buy snacks, growing bigger as my weight became my whole identity among my siblings.

Nothing worked – not the pills, not commercial diet plans, not a trip to the doctor, where I was told I was "morbidly obese.” As a young person, I took that to mean I was a “morbid beast.”

College brought more isolation – eating all morning in bed, late-night vending machine runs, failing grades. On planes, I had to pretend the seat belt was fastened, and I once rode an upside-down roller coaster without the restraint fully secured because I was too ashamed to admit it wouldn't fit around me.

I convinced myself I'd be single forever (though I later found a wonderful husband). Everything changed when, at 295 pounds, I had a daughter and realized she deserved a living mother. I found FA, terrified but willing to do whatever it took. My first 24 hours without flour or sugar became another, then another. I found freedom I'd never known, with quiet in my head, peace in my life, and real recovery at last.

I was born into poverty in the Jim Crow South, the oldest of five children, in a home marked by food insecurity and violence. As I grew older, flour and sugar products became comfort, companionship, and protection from trauma, loss, and pain. My father lived with schizophrenia and spent much of my childhood institutionalized. My mother could not provide emotional safety, and I learned to stay silent and hide my pain, even as I was bullied and struggled in school. I entered adulthood already shaped by secrecy and deprivation. After high school, I became pregnant, started my first job, and finally had unlimited access to food. At 22, I married a gambling womanizer whom I thought I could change, and we had two more children before the marriage ended. Tragedy compounded tragedy: my young, seven-year-old daughter was killed by a car, my ex-husband died by suicide months later, and I simply wasn't emotionally available to my surviving children. By the time I reached my forties, my eating was out of control. I cycled through diets, compulsive exercise, pills, and laxatives, always ending up where I started. The turning point came when I was diagnosed as prediabetic, and I could no longer pretend that food wasn’t harming me. I had served as a hospital chaplain and had seen amputations because of diabetes; I didn’t want that to be my story. When I walked into my first Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) meeting, I knew I’d found where I belonged. Now, as an octogenarian and grief counselor, I know recovery is about far more than food. It is about spiritual healing, rigorous honesty, accepting help, and discovering the freedom of surrender. Recovery has given me clarity, dignity, and peace. Today, I no longer use food to numb out or escape. I live one day at a time, supported by the FA program, a Higher Power, and a community that holds me accountable with grace.

At 37 years old, I weighed more than 200 pounds and felt trapped in a cycle I couldn’t explain or escape. I had tried countless times to control my eating, but every attempt ended with shame, anxiety, and another promise to start over tomorrow.

Food was my solution whenever I felt overwhelmed by stress, perfectionism, or fear. From sneaking sugary lunches as a teenager to enduring electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression, from the terrifying premature birth of my daughter to the loneliness of early motherhood, I kept turning to food, convinced I simply lacked willpower.

When a friend invited me to a meeting of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), I resisted. I could not imagine a life without addictive eating. But desperation opened the door to willingness, and one measured meal at a time, one day at a time, I discovered recovery.

More than two decades later, I have built a meaningful career and found a purpose I never expected: helping others recover. Perhaps the most moving realization is that my daughter, now an adult, has never known the mother who ate addictively – only the one who found freedom. My experience of addiction, grace, and transformation in FA has taught me that recovery doesn't just change what’s on your plate – it changes your whole life.