Episode 213 (Transcript): Introverts in an Extrovert's Church

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Emily Wadley, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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TEASER INTRO

SH: So it makes sense that our culture rewards the qualities that are exhibited by the leaders of that culture. And as we know Latter-day Saints are very fond of thinking, you know, if you're doing it right, then you get this result. And so if church is really hard for you, clearly there's something that you're not doing right.

EPISODE

Hello, I'm Susan Hinckley. And I am Cynthia Winward. And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things. And the title of today's episode is “Introverts in an extrovert's church”. We're excited for this one. Yay. At last. 

CW: The irony, Susan, is that you as the introvert should do all the talking on this episode, but as an introvert, you may not want to, but you're going to have to because I'm just going to sit back with a bucket of popcorn. 

SH: If you think that I'm going to let you get away with that. Introverts have sneaky ways, you know, of working the system in our favor. So we'll see how it goes.

CW: Before we jump in, Susan, let's talk about the most important thing going on in our lives right now, which is, we wrote a book. 

SH: That's the thing. Well, I'm not sure if it's the most important, but it's taken over everything else. I can tell you that. Yes. So tell our listeners a little bit about it. And about getting it. 

CW: Our book is called, no surprise, “At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations About Faith, Church, and Everything in Between.” It is paperback. It is available April 28th, 2025. I feel like making that more like, “in the year of our Lord, 2025”, because it feels that monumental to me. 

SH: It does. Yes, it does. 

CW: And it's 270 pages. So paperback, e- reader, audio-- it should all be available at the end of April. So I don't know. Do you want to say anything else about that?

SH: Not really. I mean, if people are wondering what to expect from this book, I mean, it's very much like the podcast. So if you like At Last She Said It, then hopefully you'll like the book. But one of the specific aims that we had with this book was to be able to bring some of these conversations to a new audience.

We have our social media audience. We have our podcast audience, but there are a lot of people in the world who are not doing social media and they are not podcast listeners. And so we were hoping for a way to invite them to join the conversation. So we're hoping that this book is a tool that women can use to start conversations with women that they haven't really, well, women or men, that they haven't really had a way to figure out how to talk about this stuff with. Hopefully our book can be that kind of bridge. That was our goal in writing it anyway.

CW: I hope so, and if nothing else, we have good grammar in the book. We don't have good grammar out loud when we speak on the podcast. So, everyone pre- order it if you can. That really helps us. We may or may not have surpassed certain church leader's books on certain days if you look on Amazon Reviews.

SH: Okay, for a brief moment, we had our number one day in the spotlight, so that was great. If women are not in a place where they want to be supporting Amazon right now, as I know some people are not, you can also pre- order our book through your local bookstore. 

CW: Yeah, support your brick and mortar bookstores as well. So yeah, you can order it. So I'm so excited. Susan, you and I will be seeing each other in person a lot this year because we will definitely be doing book signings. 

SH: And hopefully we'll be seeing a lot of our listeners in person this year too. So I'm looking forward to that. 

CW: So stay tuned. Watch our Substack newsletter or social media and you'll hear more.

So should we jump in to talking about our topic today? I have to confess right up front, Susan, that when we were working on this outline, at first I thought, oh, we'll have a whole section for the extroverts who called in as well. We didn't get one single message from an extrovert, and then the more I thought about it, I was like, well, duh, that's like asking a fish, how's the water? And the fish says, what's water? 

SH: Okay, yeah, that should not have been a surprise to us, actually, that extroverts wouldn't have that much to say about it. However, what I thought was funny about it was, why would I ever tell introverts, hey, call us and leave us a message about this. Hello! Introverts are not going to call anyone and leave them a message.

So, yeah, that was just stupid on my part. I don't know, Cynthia. I'm not sure what the best way to gather information for this topic would have been, but we're going to use what we have. 

CW: Well, we had a few brave [00:05:00] introverts who sent emails as well. So I'm guessing that was just more comfortable for some people to write down their thoughts.

So I'm just going to say right now, if you ask an introvert to send you an email about being an introvert, they have a lot to say. So we had to edit. I apologize right now to anyone who's going to hear their email read. We had to cut back portions because it was a lot, and I don't blame them at all for saying, you want to know how it is?