Mountain Frontier

Frontier Focus

I began my recovery journey in FA in April 1995, in southeast Florida. In 2000, I moved to the mountains of western North Carolina due to my husband’s failing health. I had only five years of abstinence under my belt. By the time of our move, I had just finished an AWOL.

I was filled with fear. I was moving to a new state. The closest FA meeting was three hours away. I was also grieving, moving away from my two children and two small grandsons. I felt like my heart was breaking.

I was afraid that my recovery would be in jeopardy with no FA meetings or local fellowship. My “grand-sponsor” gave me sage advice. She said with a smile, “Bloom where you’re planted.”

The trip from Florida to North Carolina was a difficult one. I had worked at my job until the day of the move, so I started off tired and stressed. My 24-year-old son and his friend drove the moving van and I drove our car with my husband beside me. My husband suffered severe PTSD from the Vietnam War and was nonfunctional.

I arrived in North Carolina and fear gripped me again. I realized I didn’t know a soul in this isolated mountain town. I was far away from my family, FA fellowship, church, job, and friends. I am a “comfort seeking missile” and none of this was comfortable. I was living with a mentally and physically ill husband in unfamiliar surroundings.

I found listings for local AA groups and attended my first AA meeting, praying all the way there for God to help me suit up and show up and stay beside me as I walked through that door for the first time. There were about six men there that night, drinking coffee and eating flour and sugar snacks. These kind men welcomed me and asked me to share during the meeting. We became a close-knit group over the years. I asked God for help to not focus on the eating, drinking, and cross talk, but rather to focus on the message of recovery that these longterm recovering alcoholics shared.

I shared at AA meetings about my emotional and spiritual growth through the Twelve Steps. I knew that service was vital to my recovery, so at the AA meetings I volunteered to read, place literature, and clean up afterward. I attended special events in AA— dinners for members who were celebrating birthdays and recovery workshops. These were all hard activities for me. I’m not an alcoholic, but I again asked God for help, and even though I felt like a fish out of water, I kept showing up. I also joined a phone AWOL led by two long-term FA members.

My new job presented challenges that I didn’t anticipate. I was expected to be on call for the operating room and labor and delivery suite. At times I found myself at the hospital for a straight 20-plus hours and would go home and sleep four hours and then return to the hospital for my next regular shift. I knew that if I failed to plan, I planned to fail. I made sure I had enough meals with me to cover those long hours. It was such a relief to know that I had all my weighed and measured meals ready to go! If I was up all night, I didn’t eat until breakfast.

I know that going to God in these situations kept me abstinent. I was tired and that was always my trigger for seeking comfort in the food. I was amazed that prayer provided the protection I needed to stay abstinent.

My sponsor suggested that, once a month, I make the trip to Charlotte, North Carolina for a Saturday morning FA meeting. I did as she suggested and took my lunch, spent the day with my new friends in fellowship, and managed the seven-hour round trip with a determination to put recovery first.

At first my husband went with me. I have a very poor sense of direction and I get sleepy after 45 minutes of driving. After a while, my sponsor suggested I drive by myself. I was filled with that gripping fear again. However, I took the leap of faith, drove myself, and stopped whenever I felt sleepy.

Within a few months, I received a call from a fellow in Georgia. She was also on the frontier and wanted to attend the Charlotte meeting once a month. We met in South Carolina and drove together from there. What a gift of fellowship during that otherwise challenging journey! This friendship led us to co-lead several phone AWOLs together.

From day one on the frontier, I began praying for God to send another abstinent FA member to the area so that we could start a meeting here. At about the three-year mark, I received a phone call from an FA member who lived about an hour away. We started a meeting about 55 miles from my home. We did a public information (PI) session and had five committed members for about two years. Then my friend moved and the others dropped out of program. I was back to square one, still praying for another member to move here.

I asked an FA friend from Tennessee to colead a PI in my hometown with me. She happily agreed. But on the day of the scheduled PI session, there was a snowstorm and my friend felt it would be unsafe to drive over the mountains to attend. I asked God to speak through me as I led the PI meeting alone.

Two people joined FA after that PI session. The meetings lasted two years and once again I was the only one attending. During all the disappointments, I was determined to remain abstinent by being squeaky clean with my food, living the Twelve Steps, and doing my tools each day. No matter what, I did not want to go back to the misery in my life before FA.

I have gone through the death of my husband, the death of my mother a year later, and a new marriage to a godly man who supports my program. Being abstinent has given me the opportunity to grow in recovery in good times and challenging times, by the grace of God.

Last year, God answered my prayers of 20 years with a “yes.” An FA member with over 20 years of back-to-back abstinence moved here. I had met her during my monthly visits to the Charlotte meeting years before. What a blessing! We planned to start an FA meeting and then COVID reared its ugly head. We have not been able to open a meeting yet due to the restrictions, but we have developed a close friendship, and in God’s time we will start an FA meeting together.

Because I have made abstinence the most important thing in my life, everything else in my life has become first class. My comfort comes not from the food anymore, but from God (first and foremost), my fellowship, and living a life of sane and happy usefulness through Twelve Steps of recovery.