Stretched Too Thin

Back Cover

As a working mom you can often feel like you're living stretched too thin.  You want to thrive personally and professionally, but the day-to-day responsibilities and mental load can make that feel impossible.  While periods of busyness are normal, if life feels overwhelming, it's time for a reset.  With compassion and encouragement, Jessica N. Turner shows you how to:

• work and parent guilt-free
• set achievable goals
• discover more flexibility
• establish clear work boundaries
• develop home management solutions
• become more efficient and less stressed
• prioritize self-care
• invest in your marriage
• cultivate deeper friendships

Want to embrace your many roles and learn solutions that really work?  Let Stretched Too Thin empower you to make changes and live with contentment.

Review

Stretched Too Thin addresses a common struggle in today's culture: how to balance the many hats a woman, particularly, working mothers, wear.  It can seem impossible to give 100% equally and fully to being a wife, a mom, career woman, homemaker, friend, sister, etc. all at the same time.  Many women think of the descriptions of the Proverbs 31 woman in the Bible as the all-time example to emulate.  And for many (myself included), while it can be encouraging, it can also be equally discouraging seeing how high the bar is raised.

What if there was a way to do it all?  To be the successful career woman, doting wife, loving mother, and loyal friend?  Jessica N. Turner seeks to answer that question in Stretched Too Thin.

Just reading the title speaks to me.  It is a phrase that has almost become my mantra, so I was eager to dive into book to hopefully glean some wisdom and practical advice.  My final impression of the read was overall positive.

One of the prevalent themes I found throughout the book was self-care.  It is true that unless we take care of ourselves, we will be unable to help others (something that I've been repeatedly reminded by my other half...).  If our well is running dry, we can't even being to hope to draw water from within for someone else.  Self-care includes physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, etc.  As my understanding was the book was being written from a Christian perspective, I would have liked to have seen more emphasis on spiritual self-care, as it was very, very briefly touched upon.

The majority of the book is filled with helpful suggestions, checklists, and brainstorming opportunities for better organizing daily routines and tasks.  Efficiency can often be the key to success as well as keeping track of time.  More often than I care to admit, I've been the victim of going on a social media website to check "just one thing", and before I know it, that one thing turned into many rabbit trails, and soon an hour has passed!  Oops...

In all, I found that Stretched Too Thin, while light on the faith component, provided some helpful tools for better organizational success to help maintain sanity whilst juggling all the different priorities in life!

Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.