An Introvert Mom's Guide to Staying Alive

Let's get one thing straight: I adore Donald Miller. I hang onto his words with the white knuckles of a Titanic survivor floating on a piece of wood. Words from people like him help me stay afloat and feel alive. And another thing I love: he's a fellow introvert. He gets the need and desire and enjoyment of complete aloneness, and he recently wrote an article about it called "The Introvert's Guide to Staying Alive."

With lines like, "My head feels like a junk drawer [without alone time]" and "For an introvert, [extroverted activities is] the equivalent of hooking an IV up to their artery and draining their blood," I'm screaming YES! YES! YOU GET ME!

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He goes on explain what kinds of alone activities give him rest and life. Among them: going to a movie by himself, taking a long walk with his dog around a nearby lake, taking drives, and eating alone. And they all sound glorious. But there's one problem: he's not a stay-at-home-mom of little people under the age of four.

So, I'm wondering: how do introverted moms of littles recharge? Eating alone? Ha! Taking a drive? I call that "getting my non-napping kid to sleep." Doesn't count. It all looks very different under my hood and I'm struggling to know how to recharge as an introvert in a world that puts me around people (or their monitors) all day long. I'm constantly living in the tension of wanting to be with my kids a lot but also feeling drained by being around people (them) all day. If I put them both in MDO, I'm missing time with them that I love. If I keep them with me all the time, I'm feeling depleted. And guilt follows me everywhere: guilt when I'm not with them and guilt when I'm not refueling. Yuck.

I have no idea how you other introverted moms of littles do it, but since I (we?) just love lists (and since I'm still trying to identify what gives me rest), here are a few ways I've learning to steal away:

• Figure out what gives you rest. Shopping makes me hyperventilate, so that's never on my radar, but could be on yours. Being at a coffee shop is still too peopled. I need quiet. And time to write. And time to think. For me, that's at home in my PJ pants drinking coffee, and usually writing. It's how I'm writing this post today and I'm so happy to be alone I could cry! (Many thanks to the hubs for giving me an hour here and there when I need it.)
• Be okay with smaller pockets of time. My alone time tank doesn't really like little drops of time here and there; she'd much prefer to guzzle. But the gallons of time are so rare that I have to be okay with one minute with the door locked in the bathroom, a sentence scribbled on a napkin to write about later, or 10 minutes while they watch a movie for me to read or think or just drink a hot cup of coffee. In another room. By myself. 
• It's a season. The littles won't always be at your feet, pulling on your shirt, and shadowing your every move. Really, they won't. 
• Once a year, take a personal retreat. Be away from people for at least 24 hours. Get a hotel, stay at a friend's house while they're out of town, do the work to organize childcare or time off work and get the heck alone. It's like spitting in the ocean, but it's something. And you'll be surprised by what comes out of you when you get a whole day or more by yourself; it's a completely different experience from a couple of hours or even an afternoon alone.
• Use the time you have to rest. Now that my kids nap at roughly the same time, I usually have an hour in the middle of the day when they're both asleep and the house is quiet. While I don't completely count this as "alone time" since I'm still "on," it's quiet time without them, and that's valuable. My tendency is to spend that time prepping dinner, eating lunch (alone!), shaving my legs, returning emails--doing something productive, something I can point to and feel accomplished about. But I need to try to have at least a couple designated days a week to rest and write and do whatever is life-giving during that time. And it's going to take discipline for me to stop doing and start doing what's restful, what will recharge me. I also need one night a week that's mine to spend however I need to, and Phil is great about giving that to me. 
• Be okay with saying no. Be okay with not filling your schedule to the brim and saying no to even good things once in a while. Example: some years, I go to Bible study, some years I don't. Some weeks we have play dates every day, some weeks we have none. Some weeks we have people in our home for dinner more nights than not; other weeks, we just have family time. 
• Don't make alone time an idol. I love alone time so much that I quickly find myself living for it, and losing my mind when I don't have enough; it can be a vacuum. On the one hand, there's a real need for time alone; it's how I get my energy. On the other hand, our whole lives are about sacrifice--loving others at our own expense, which often means saying yes to talking on the phone with a friend when you'd rather read read a book, or saying yes to engaging your kids when you'd rather put on a movie for them. The hard thing here is there's no rulebook. Sometimes choosing to sacrifice your need for alone time is godly and other times it's foolishness. Which leads me to my last point:
• Pray for wisdom. I have no idea when introversion slips into selfishness and when sacrifice turns to depletion. It's different from moment to moment, day to day, and person to person. So mostly I need to pray a lot, all day long, asking God to show me how to live with wisdom.

Fellow introverted moms, how do you recharge? What gives you rest? How do you steal away in your extroverted life?