Real Life Reflections

A little over a month ago, I set out to go through the assignments in the book, The Highly Sensitive Person's Companion. Five blog posts later, I've found that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in this particular subject. My motivation in writing on the life of introverts is to encourage and support those blessed with this character trait. If that's not happening, I have no problem moving on. Which is exactly what I plan to do. I have several writing projects in process, and I plan to take a break from blogging to spend some time where my passion is - children's literature. Of course, if you're an introvert in need of a little encouragement or some helpful hints, please feel free to contact me by email (lgal116@gmail.com). I'd be more than happy to offer whatever support, advice, and encouragement I can!

A few years and two children after my husband and I married, we gathered in front of a TV along with my small crowd of in-laws. One of my brothers-in-law had converted a collection of home movies into the latest cutting-edge technology: VHS tapes. We watched the black and white antics of twenty-seven cousins who grew up closer than many siblings do. As the tape played, I began to marvel at my mother-in-law and her sisters. I only had two children and often enough felt like sanity was just beyond my reach. Here were three women with twenty-seven children between them. And no, they were not sweet, calm, book-loving children that never gave their parents cause for hair-tearing. They were lively, spirited, wrestling, yelling, prank-pulling, Little Rascals-worthy normal children. As one Easter, somewhere in the 1960s, scrolled across the screen, and these cherubic children in their clean, pressed, darling Easter attire paraded down the front steps of my husband's boyhood home, my marv

I hate this week's topic: me. I don't mean that I literally hate me, but this week's Introverts Thrive assignment is to list all the attributes of your introversion that are positive. The assignment isn't to list positive attributes of introversion in general - you know, all those other introverts out there. Nope. It's to list those positive attributes of introversion that you (I) personally hold and exhibit from time to time. Ugh. Really, I've been stuck on this one for three weeks. Squirming. Writhing. Ignoring. Re-reading. Surely I misunderstood. Not a chance. Honestly, I would much prefer to make a list of the attributes of God. It would be a lot easier and more fun, but I think this exercise is important in understanding ourselves, in accepting ourselves, in loving the person God created. In order to make your list, try looking at yourself from God's perspective. Picture you and God sitting down for a chat. He starts singing to you the song from tho

 I can be my own worst enemy. I do things that disagree with my nature, things that cause me stress. It seems rather silly, right? Okay, maybe idiotic is a better descriptor. Regardless, I still do them. Why? Good question. I'm not a psychologist, but having lived with myself for a while now, my best guess would be that it's because of the lies I've believed (which you can read about here if you missed last week's post). So what exactly do I do that makes me an enemy of me? Here are a few of them: * I spend too much time on electronic media, most notably: Facebook, emails, and Amazon. Do I really need to know what the sister of my best friend in sixth grade is up to? How many times a day is too many times to see if Airfare Watchdog has found me a cheap flight to my desired destination when, in the two years that I've been watching, they've found ZERO? And how many books can I add to my Wish List in one day (quite a few as it turns out)? * I demand of mys

Last week, I introduced my plan to work through the exercises in a little book called The Highly Sensitive Person's Companion by Ted Zeff  (if you missed it, you can read it here) . Before we jump into our first assignment, let's talk a little bit about introverts and "highly sensitive people." There seems to be some widespread misconceptions of what it means to be an introvert. People often define it as being shy or having social anxiety or worse, being self-absorbed. These descriptions simply aren't true. Extroverts can also be shy, have social anxiety, and can definitely be self-absorbed! Simply stated, introverts are internally stimulated, and they internalize external stimuli. Virtually everything is stimulating to an introvert! To bring it home, here are a few questions to which introverts/highly sensitive people would answer yes: * Do crowds exhaust you? * Do you tend to think before acting? * Is your body sensitive to alcohol and caffeine? * Does no

After nearly 54 years in this body, I have recently embarked on a quest to learn how to live with it in peace. Hope that this is possible began to stir in me two and a half years ago when I read, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Since reading Quiet , I've had innumerable conversations, hours of pondering, and read additional articles, blogs, and books on the subject. These have led me to an entirely new term, "highly sensitive person (HSP)." I'm not exactly a fan of that particular term because it connotes weakness, but since no one asked for my opinion, I guess I'll learn to live with it.  In contradiction to how I first perceived the term, it actually refers to someone who is hyper-sensitive to light, sound, touch, taste, and/or smell (NOT someone who is an emotional weakling). HSPs (also known as sensory-defensives), like introverts, are easily over-stimulated because of their heightened sensitivity to

Hi. My name is Lori, and I'm a perfectionist. Over the past thirty-two years of marriage to a non-perfectionist, I have grown and softened. I've relaxed. I've learned. I am not as addicted to perfection as I once was, but it's a lifelong struggle. As you might imagine, perfectionistic tendencies can be a source of anxiety and stress. I've noticed that those of us from Perfect Country vary in what we deem as needing perfection. For me, it's my home. For the past couple of months, our weekends have been full. Add that to a full work-week, and you get the present state of my home: dirty and sporting a to-do list the likes of which makes me nauseous (almost literally). This past weekend was the doughnut hole in our busy spring/summer line-up. Other than a girls' night out on Friday night and a graduation party on Saturday night, the weekend was ours! What to do? Where to start? I tingled with the excitement of knowing that our house would soon once again be ou

Do you remember what the officiant said at your wedding? At any wedding? Neither do I. At least, I don't remember most of them - my own and my children's included - but I do remember one. Though I now attend a non-denominational church, I was raised Catholic. And not just a little Catholic. We were very Catholic. Perhaps other denominations celebrate Easter and Easter week as enthusiastically as Catholics, but I think they'd be hard-pressed to beat them (as if it's a competition): we went to church on Holy Thursday. We stayed inside between noon and 3:00 on Good Friday. We attended church on Friday, Saturday night, and Sunday morning. I loved the solemnity. I loved the celebration. I loved the traditions. I loved remembering what our faith was all about. Those days were always set aside. We did nothing but Holy Week during Holy Week, and I continued that tradition, as best I could, with my own family. Then two years ago, I was invited to a wedding that would take pl

My daffodils. Every year they begin to poke their little heads out of the ground in February. Some years they go so far as to fully bloom in the middle of winter only to have a major dumping of snow plopped on their beautiful, cheerful, bright yellow skin. I can't even remember when I planted these bulbs, but the tulips I planted with them stopped coming up years ago. The daffodils, much to my pleasure, refuse to follow suit. For a number of years now, only a few of these narcissus beauties have bloomed. I've tried dividing them, planting them deeper, fertilizing, and massive mulching, but nothing I did resulted in more blooms even though the plants themselves seemed to multiply and take more ground. I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that it was time to dig them up and start over with fresh bulbs. Then came the long hard winter. Sleet, snow, and ice along with below normal temps abounded for a longer-than-normal length of time this year. February came and went w

As a child, I loved our family dinners. The eight of us sat around the kitchen table. So much laughter! So many arguments! My dad used to yell above the din, "Only three talking at a time!" As my older siblings became teenagers, they got involved with extracurricular activities, and they got jobs that took them from our family dinners, but there were still evenings, though not many of them, when no one had to rush off. Periodically, on those rare evenings, someone would pull out a deck of cards. Our game of choice was "Murder," but every now and again we'd play "Are You Happy?" Each player drew a card from the deck. The card you drew dictated whether or not you were happy - the higher the card, the happier you were. Play went around the table, and each player made their declaration. There is, of course, more to the game than that, but since this isn't a game blog, I'll leave the details to someone else. Sometimes...okay, most of the time...

  My grandson. So cute I can hardly stand it.  BUT He likes to play with poop. Not any poop he finds. He's quite selective. It's just his own poop that holds such fascination.    When all is quiet in the house for two blessed hours each afternoon, and my daughter is lulled into a sense of peace, this otherwise darling little man, emerges from his room. "Momma, I pooped." There is a trace of guilt in his voice that betrays the fact that he didn't just poop. He pooped and then painted his walls, his floor, his bed, his blankie, and himself with it.   Poop happens. It's part of life. The Dowager Lady Grantham said on a recent episode of Downton Abbey that life is a series of trials and hardships. You get through one and then another one and then another one and then...you die. Such an encouraging thought. Yet pretty accurate. I'm pretty crazy about my grandson, but I'm thinking that I don't want to be like him - at least not in

In a world full of delightfully descriptive four-letter words used to express and enhance a multitude of emotions and add color to declarations, I have a new favorite: WITH It's a little word, but it's in the process of changing my life. Not under, over, from, or for. With. I began reading Sky Jethani's book by that name at our pastor's recommendation. A book with a single word - and a preposition at that - as the title? Hmm. Okay, I'll bite. I'm a highlighter and note-taker. When I read non-fiction, I don't want to borrow a friend's copy or a library copy, I want my own because I'm going to take my liberties. Although I've done some highlighting in my copy of With ,  I think Van Gogh would be disappointed. There's a whole lot of black and white and not a lot of color. That's because there aren't many stand-alone sentences within these pages that pack a punch nor are the pages loaded with powerful one-liners - or even two