Sharing Introverted Mom
Thank you so, so much for being willing to spread the word about Introverted Mom!
Please feel free to take your own images and share your own favorite quotes, thoughts, etc., but I’ve put this page together to help make it as easy as possible for you as well!
The book landing page also contains helpful information that you/your readers might find useful to include.
With gratitude, Jamie
Images:
Memes:
Quiz and Book Trailer
You can also help by sharing my introverted/extroverted Mom quiz and/or book trailer!
Note: The book trailer is on both Facebook and YouTube.
Quotes:
from Chapter 1, The Distance Is Nothing: On Discovering You’re an Introverted Mom
“Anger is an indicator to pause or change something. Comparing anger to hunger helps. After all, we don’t try to eliminate hunger from our lives. It’s just a cue, a signal that our body needs fuel. Anger is also a cue from our body, a signal that we need to pause. We don’t just press through for the sake of it. We change course, walk away, breathe before dealing with the situation. Anger points the way toward peace if we pay attention.”
“We aren’t attempting to make our lives calmer out of selfishness. We are mothers, called to lay down our very lives for our children if necessary. We are here because our families deserve our best. Because we deserve to understand ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses. There’s nothing wrong with you, fellow introverted mom. And I hope that by the time you finish this book, you will have begun to believe that.”
“The common advice ‘just take care of yourself’ as an introvert doesn’t come easily to those of us in this 24/7 role. We have a challenge on our hands, which is why we need this book.”
from Chapter 2, Learning How to Sail: On Believing That You’re Enough
“We love people: our families, friends, groups, and activities–so much so that at times we may be mistaken for extroverts. And if we’ve started our day with a fully charged battery, we will be good to go–for a while. But eventually we will run down. We have to disconnect ourselves and unplug, metaphorically but likely literally as well, to regain our energy. Time alone is our converter. And that’s no small challenge for mothers because pulling the plug, so to speak, is not simple when we’re constantly surrounded by little people.”
from Chapter 3, A New Day: On the Freedom that Comes from Acceptance
“The key to refreshing self-care, not to be confused with self- ishness or self-help, is acceptance. I have to accept my life, not try to solve it. I have to release my loved ones into God’s hands, trusting he will care for them and get them where he wants them to be. I have to believe he will give me the insights I need at the right time, not by my attempts to force them to materialize, which leads to anxiety. I have to trust, and then I have to rest.”
“It takes a while to figure out who you are as an introverted mother, who you are as a person now that the lifelong job of raising children has forever altered your identity. We find ourselves mostly through trial and error. The errors don’t mean you’re doing something wrong; they mean you’re one step closer to knowing yourself.”
“Busy mom who works all day and feels like you have nothing to show for it, don’t compare your season of planting seeds with another mom’s season of harvesting them.”
from Chapter 4, No Great Loss: On Navigating Heartache and Disappointment
“I thought telling the truth about the tough stuff equaled “being negative” or complaining, and that in order to be a positive person and a hardworking mom, I had to ignore those feelings or at least put a spin on them. Guess what? That didn’t work; it only made life harder.”
from Chapter 5, Tenderness of Heart: On Marriage and Raising Children
“I have never loved books more than my husband, yet I need my books so I can love my husband even more.”
“Healthy introverts have the capacity to be rock stars when it comes to relationships because they naturally prefer the deep over the shallow and quality over quantity.”
from Chapter 6, Pruned Down and Branched Out: On Stretching Out of Our Comfort Zones
“Understanding our introversion, therefore, doesn’t mean we attempt to avoid challenges, but that we recognize challenges ahead of time and come up with a plan for how to handle them.”
from Chapter 7, Always Good Company: On Good Books and Good Friends
“The best books connect us with others. Great friends can lead us to great books, and great books can lead us to great friends. It’s the perfect introverted mom cycle, a secret technique to locating kindred spirits.”
from Chapter 8, Feel a Prayer: On Connecting With God as an Introvert
“I’ve touched on a way to share my faith that comes more naturally to me as an introvert: stories. As moms, the stories we share most often tend to be those we tell our children, a powerful opportunity to invest into their hearts and minds before they leave our homes.”
“There’s a difference, I’ve found, between being pressured to share my faith and being led to share it. And it turns out that difference makes all the difference.”
“Jesus’s life on earth offers introverted mothers the best example of all: a pouring out of ourselves follows by a filling up so we can pour out again, yet never run dry. It’s the recharging cycle God’s own son used, therefore it’s not selfish or self-seeking.”
from Chapter 9, As the Years Pass: On Watching Your Family Grow Up
“Whenever we press pause on our ‘get-it-done’ lists in order to deal with a heart issue, we follow the example of Jesus himself, who always put hearts first.”
“I remind myself that in the future, when I have all the quiet I could ask for, I will miss these ordinary days. And that knowledge helps me get up and once again offer my imperfect best to whatever this imperfect morning might bring.”
from Chapter 10, In Quiet Places: On Cultivating Calm Wherever You Are
“While an extrovert’s brain sends data via a shorter pathway, mainly through the areas that handle sensory input, an introvert’s brain sends data through a much longer pathway, including the areas that deal with empathy, self-reflection, emotional meaning, speech, self-talk, ideas, expectations, evaluating outcomes, and long-term memories.”
“If God made our brains this way, it is not a deficiency but a beautiful reflection of his nature. We aren’t overreacting or malfunctioning, we’re going deeper. And we have something to offer that those who process differently cannot.”
from Chapter 11, Your Own Happiness: On Uncovering Joy
“Have you ever taken a walk with a toddler? They rarely care about the destination or how quickly we get there…from them we learn that joy can never be rushed. It’s much easier to find it in life’s wide-open spaces, which is why we must protect them.”
“Whether we realize it or not, we are living in the midst of our happier ever after, even when our trials block it from view.”
from Chapter 12, A Beautiful Success: On Defining for Ourselves What Really Matters
“In a typical four-season climate, no tree produces fruit year- round. Different months serve different purposes, all of them contributing to the final harvest, even when it isn’t obvious. If we judge a tree during its unproductive times of year, we might decide it’s dead. We might deem it a failure, make the mistake of cutting it down. If only we’d waited! Winter would end, spring would arrive, buds would appear—a preview of the tree’s com- ing attractions. It’s the same with our lives. Can we honor our personal seasons of rest, of beauty, of letting go, as much as we do those of productivity? Let’s dare to define the good life for ourselves instead of swallowing the watered-down definition our world tries to convince us matters most.”