Whether of Not We Believed

Coming to believe was something that happened as we began taking actions which others told us had worked for them. Whether or not we believed these actions would work for us didn’t seem to matter. Once we took the action and saw it work, we began to believe. ~ The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, pp. 16-17

Just do it. We walk into this program
(or hobble, or come in wheelchairs,
with walkers, any way we can get there)
having done it our way for years.
And having proven conclusively 
that our way consistently fails.
We enter battered down, hopeless,
disgusted with us and everyone else,
with whatever god we had nodded to
or feared or ignored or scoffed at...
at wits end. And we found folks
who told stories that sounded like us
but they weren't like us, resembled us not!
And they were functional, happy, effective,
moving toward where they wanted to be.
They told us what they did 
and maybe we scoffed, probably we doubted,
but we had nothing better to offer
and – incredibly – it began to work for us
as we got better, found a modicum of self respect,
and accepted the truth not because it was believable
but because it changed us and we could believe
that.