Introverted Mom Read online

  The details of our days differ drastically: we may work outside the home or work at home. We might homeschool or have our kids in public school. We may be called “Mom” by many or by only one. We might be unexpectedly single or have just celebrated twenty-five years of marriage. We may have biological children, have grown our family through adoption, or both, as I have. The details vary, but our introversion connects us.

  Now take a moment and return to the beginning of this introduction. Count the number of “introverted mother” descriptions you identify with. Do you see yourself in ten or more? If so, welcome to the club.1 You’ll be relieved to know there aren’t any loud meetings to attend. We’ll just sit and read side by side, grateful that someone else finally understands. Membership lasts a lifetime, so come on in. I’m thrilled you’re here.

  PART 1

  the true way to live

  The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.

  LAURA INGALLS WILDER, WRITINGS FROM THE OZARKS

  CHAPTER 1

  the distance is nothing

  ON DISCOVERING YOU’RE AN INTROVERTED MOM

  I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing when one has a motive.

  JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

  You’re kind of a . . . homebody, aren’t you?”

  Her tone made it clear this was not a good thing.

  Embarrassment colored my cheeks, but I attempted to shrug off the comment.

  “Well, I don’t know. Yes . . . maybe?” I answered, glancing at my new baby on a blanket nearby (thinking of how life could change so much, so fast).

  GOING THE DISTANCE

  I had only been a mother for a year, yet somehow I had two babies. One from my body, one from the other side of the world. Not long before this living room conversation took place, I had done the hardest thing God had asked of me up to that point. I’d kissed my one-year-old son, Jonathan, and my husband, Steve, goodbye and boarded the first of several planes on my way to a country the Department of Homeland Security had suggested Americans avoid because of its instability: Liberia, West Africa.

  Before leaving, I tearfully typed Jonathan a letter to read in the future:

  Last night we found out Baby Elijah is sick with malaria, and right now he really needs a mommy with him. So I’ll go for now, then come back to be Mommy to both of you. Out of all the children in the world, how could it be that I have been blessed with the best two boys of all?

  After learning about Elijah’s illness from the adoption agency, we scrambled to get immunizations and paperwork together to hasten my departure. My brain physically hurt trying to organize every miniscule detail. Desperately out of my element, I clung to a quote from the title my book club had recently finished: “The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness.”1

  Looking back, I don’t know if I’d have enough courage to do now what I did then. But isn’t that always the way with mothers? Somehow we dig deep, with a strength that goes far beyond our own internal resources and capabilities, to do whatever our children need. In this case, however, I didn’t know the child I was sacrificing for. I hadn’t even seen his picture.

  Three long flights later, exhausted, I landed in another world. By that point I had joined a handful of other adoptive parents who were also coming to meet their children. An orphanage worker drove us down a dark, bumpy road to our accommodation. I’ll never forget my shock the next morning when I saw it in first light: a patched-up concrete shelter that looked barely held together.

  I’d shortly find myself barely holding together as well.

  Twenty minutes after I held my six-month-old son, tears flowing with a mix of joy, awe, stress, and jet lag, Elijah vomited on me. Then he did it again. And again. During our first endless night together, I kept vigil beside this sick, small stranger, wondering if I had a dying child beside me. The next morning we drove to the US embassy, then the nearest hospital: the care basic, the wait eternal. After four hours, a doctor finally told me that Elijah’s best chance for survival was to get to the United States ASAP.

  Recalling the forty-eight-hour journey to Liberia, I didn’t think I could physically make the return trip so soon. I had only slept a handful of hours since I’d arrived in West Africa. God put an angel in my path, though, a missionary who offered to watch my son through the night so I could rest.

  “Thank you so much, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable leaving him all night,” I said. “Maybe I could just take a nap and then come get him?”

  More than eight hours later, I woke, stunned to realize how much time had passed. I raced to Elijah, murmured my heartfelt thanks to the man who had watched over him, and prepared to head back to the airport. Years and fatigue have mostly blurred the two-day journey home, but there’s one part I’ll never forget.

  At the Brussels airport, I realized we were in serious danger of missing our flight. Boarding ended in twenty minutes, and the security line stretched to an hour’s wait or more. Desperate mothers—no matter their personality type—do desperate things, don’t we? Without a second thought, I ran to the front, passing more than a hundred people. Heart pounding, with Elijah in a Baby Bjorn strapped to my chest, I said to the man standing there, “Sir, our flight leaves in a few minutes, and I’m trying to get this sick baby home. Please can we go next?”

  He looked at the handful of people around him, at the long line curving behind in the distance. Glancing back at me, he spoke words I’ll always remember: “Well, now, I don’t see how anyone could argue with that.”

  Gratitude overcame me, and an instant later I bolted through the terminal, my baby’s head bobbing up and down as I ran all the way to the gate. We just made it. I sat down in our seat, sweaty from the stress and exertion, wanting to sob but lacking the energy. I willed myself to do what had to be done in the days and weeks ahead as our family pursued every avenue available to keep Elijah alive. It worked.

  In case you’re feeling at all impressed with me by this point, don’t be. When the immediate danger had finally passed, the tension, pent-up fear, and yes, the tears, all caught up with me. Like maybe they’d never stop. Like maybe I’d never get back to “myself.” Whoever I was. In this new mothering role, I had no clue.

  All of these experiences flashed through my mind in an instant as I stood in my living room, accused of being a homebody. How could I possibly qualify for that label with all we’d just gone through? And even if I did, why would it be a bad thing?

  I had crisscrossed the globe on this crazy adventure, much of it on my own. Yet somehow, when I walked into our local moms’ group, which rotated houses each week, my head began to swirl. A dozen cute kids ran from one end of the room to the other in all their noisy glory. Mothers tried to keep them safe and happy while also attempting to get in a sentence of conversation here and there.

  After my first visit, I had to rest on the couch for a couple of hours. After my second, I decided I’d rather just meet up with the moms one-on-one instead of attend a group playdate. But the other women seemed to enjoy the large, loud gathering.

  How could I travel the world, yet be unable to handle the noise down the street?

  What is wrong with me? I wondered. And not for the first time.

  RETRACING CHILDHOOD CLUES

  Maybe you were the girl who climbed a tree to gain distance and a new perspective. Or maybe, while the other kids screamed in fun during dodgeball, you’d lean toward the ball, get knocked out early, and have an excuse to sit on the bench before heading back to class. Maybe you hung out at the library instead of the mall. Perhaps you noticed some of these signs; perhaps you didn’t. But clues pointing to your introversion have always been there.

  In my case, I turned my closet into a private childhood getaway, long before tiny houses became fashionable. As if my small bedroom wasn’t snug enough. An avid bookwo
rm, I found more than enough adventure between the covers of a book and my imagination. I retreated to the television before tackling my homework, desperate to escape for a few hours after being surrounded by people all day. I was the good girl who couldn’t make her needs known too loudly, the one who tried to follow the rules. If I could just follow all the rules, I could prove to myself that I mattered. Instead of turning to the social scene for affirmation, as an extrovert might have, I turned to the inner world of academics, “making the grade” in an attempt to earn my worth. But of course, it was never enough.

  How I wish I could have known this truth from Susan Cain, author of the bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking: “Being introverted is not something to outgrow; it is something to accept and grow into—and even to cherish.”2 I’ve spent more than three decades attempting to “accept and grow into” myself, but only in the past handful of years have I ventured to take a few tentative steps on the “cherishing” path. Once I dared to do so, I discovered flowers blooming alongside it, giddy joy among its quiet twists and turns.

  I took my first personality test in high school, at age fourteen. No doubt the intent was to offer teens vocational advice as we began to consider our futures. I pondered the results during Civics class from my desk at the back of the room. The test seemed like a game, the kind my friends and I used to play with folded paper to figure out who our husband would be and where we’d live someday. I read my description as if visiting a career counselor / fortune-teller, laughing aloud when the job portion of the results suggested I train horses for a living, since I wasn’t an animal person and had no experience around equines. The jumble of letters, tagging me as an “INFJ,” didn’t mean much—except that I noticed the “I” stood for “introversion.” Having read about the differences between extroverts and introverts already, I knew on some level that society preferred the first. Though I’m not sure I could have articulated it, that “I” brought back a little embarrassment and a few memories.

  I remembered how in the sixth grade, I asked my beloved teacher, Mrs. Wright, if I could move my desk away from the other kids and up by hers “so I could have more quiet.” I recalled how it touched my heart when she said yes, how grown up I felt when I pushed my fake wooden desk with the shiny metal legs over to face hers. How I felt a little less overwhelmed by the school days that followed.

  I thought about how even now, after a full day of high school, I watched other kids head off to part-time jobs or friends’ houses. That rarely appealed to me, though, so I’d usually find myself heading home to recharge for a few hours before starting my homework, heading to youth group, or attending choir practice. “Why don’t you have a friend over or go out?” Dad sometimes asked. And I did: restaurants, movies, football games. But every time the question came up, I had to wonder, What is wrong with me? As I held the personality profile in my hands, I suspected this mysterious “I” could be to blame.

  Over the years I learned to manage my introversion. If I had an extremely draining day, another came along that allowed me to rest. College, marriage, and then a full-time job made this more challenging to do, but I could still control and regulate my environment to some degree. Then came motherhood, bringing with it joy and love like I’d never known—as well as sleep deprivation, no days off, and constant needs to meet. Eventually, it also brought me to a breaking point.

  REACHING THE BREAKING POINT

  The glass left my hand and slammed into the wall on the far side of the bedroom, shattering into hundreds of shards on the carpet. As I turned to the side, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror before sinking to the ground in sobs. I didn’t recognize myself.

  I had managed fairly well as an introverted mom with just one child to care for. I had time to rest during Jonathan’s naps and, after he began sleeping through the night, long evenings to spend alone with Steve. Even sleep deprivation was almost endurable with just one baby. But when Elijah came home at death’s door, my margin dissipated and my stress levels rose. And two years later, when we adopted our daughter, Trishna, from India at the age of four, the reality of having three little ones less than two years apart in age hit me hard.

  Of course, like we all do when we’re insecure, I compared myself to other moms. I saw mothers in my neighborhood heading off to jobs, juggling daycare as well as volunteering with what seemed to be ease. I saw other stay-at-home moms crafting with their kids, cooking their families’ food from scratch, and refusing to use screen time to occupy their kids no matter what. Somehow, even as I tried to give my best to my family, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was failing.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t love my children. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to care for them. I had been called to and wanted to do both of those things. They had been my dreams. But as an introverted mother, the sudden increase in noise and in chaos kept my nervous system in overdrive every day. I didn’t understand that at the time, though. That outburst with the glass happened over ten years ago, thankfully without anyone present, but I’ll never forget it. I realized I could no longer continue just getting by. I could no longer ignore the warning signs.

  What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? I wondered.

  Not long ago, I came across a list of the major factors that stress out my particular personality type on the blog Psychology Junkie. I had to laugh (or cry) when I realized that nearly all of them appear repeatedly in a mom’s daily life! Can you relate?

  Introverted Stressors (with my own notes added as they relate to motherhood):

  •Having to focus too much on sensory / concrete details (“Mom, what’s for breakfast, lunch, dinner?!”)

  •An overload of sensory stimulation or noise (Um, hello, children!)

  •Interruptions (Like I said.)

  •Distress within close relationships (All. the. time.)

  •Having values violated (Wanting to change the world, but changing diapers instead.)

  •Not enough alone time; too much extroverting (Hmm, just a tad.)

  •Working with closed-minded people (Oh, of course you’re having a tantrum because your toothbrush is blue, not red!)

  •Not receiving appreciation or understanding (Here’s looking at you, kid.)

  •Unfamiliar environments with excessive amounts of details (Sounds like a group playdate.)

  •Having plans disrupted (Part of the job description, right?)

  •Not having a clear direction (But somehow I’m the one in charge!)

  •Lack of harmony (Sibling drama, anyone?)

  •Criticism and conflict (Rinse and repeat.)

  •Not being able to use intuition or envision the future (Yep, no idea how this experiment will turn out.)

  •Having to focus too much on the present (All day, every day.)

  “When under stress,” the article went on, my type “may become uncharacteristically angry and quick-tempered, unreasonable, and irrational.”3 Yeah, you got me. They might as well have added, “may begin to throw breakable objects at any time.”

  WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT ANGER

  I never thought of myself as an angry person until I had kids. Ever. I don’t think anyone else would have used that adjective to describe me either. A former boss thought me so calm, she always wanted me nearby in stressful moments. As a young mom, however, I didn’t understand enough about my personality to make sense of the transition I was undergoing as an introvert. But throughout the past decade of parenting life, I’ve learned three truths about anger that comfort me.

  Anger is the natural response to the hard parts of motherhood, especially as an introvert.

  For years, a pleasant, magical mother lived in my head, taunting me. She never got angry, but responded to her children in a singsong voice like this:

  “Oh, you bit your brother again? Don’t do that, sweetie!” (spoken while gathering the child in a hug).

  “You threw your toys all over the room during a tantrum and broke a window
? We’re both going to laugh about this someday!”

  “You didn’t like any of your birthday presents? I’m sorry. What else can we get you?”

  Realizing that anger is the natural response to these situations—and that anger in itself is not wrong—lifted a huge weight of guilt off my shoulders.

  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.

  Quiet is a must for an introverted mom.

  Our kids cannot flourish in our homes if we constantly live on the edge of our God-given personalities. We are all connected within these walls. That means we must do whatever we can to recharge on a daily basis.

  We can lament this fact or view it as a gift. Regardless, it is a necessity, and if we neglect it, every person in our home will pay the price. By taking care of ourselves, we can care for others well. This, after all, is what we most long to do.

  OUR MOTIVE AND WHY IT MATTERS

  The desire to care for our families well is why we gather over these pages. As Jane Austen said, “The distance is nothing when one has a motive,” and boy, do we have one. Maybe our motive has a sweet grin and a few teeth missing. Maybe he has never-ending energy and gives slippery kisses. Maybe she looks up from her crib with arms stretched toward you, the most important person in her universe.