38: How to Be More Compassionate With Your Family (Jill Savage)
Vibrant Happy Women
Jen Riday
4.8 • 671 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2016
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, I chat with Jill Savage and she shares a lifetime of experiences and struggles - including raising 5 children, facing the challenges of her husband's lifelong depression and an act of infidelity, and her triumph over breast cancer - each which helped her learn to feel with others rather than trying to fix others. Author of 11 books, Jill shares many nuggets of wisdom about building stronger relationships and not comparing our "insides" to other people's "outsides."
Jill Savage is known as The Go-To Mom. She is the founder and CEO of Hearts at Home, an organization dedicated to being a moms best place for answers. She is also a popular public speaker and has written eleven books including, Real Moms ... Real Jesus, the best-selling No More Perfect Moms, No More Perfect Kids, and her most recent book authored with her daughter Anne, Better Together. Jill and her husband, Mark, live in Illinois and have five children and three grandchildren.
Nuggets of Wisdom from Jill:
"We have to stop comparing our insides to other people's outsides." - from Jill's friend
"It is recognizing another person's pain. It is not necessarily agreeing with it. It is not giving them pat answers to pull them out of it. It is sitting in the pain with them. So being able to say, 'Wow! That must just feel really dark to you, I am so sorry that it gets hard like this.' That is a validating statement."
"He starts feeling like I am distant from him when I try to fix him. But when I try to feel with him, he says that, 'That makes me feel closer..' to him, and that is huge. Me learning to feel over fixing."
"Feel, don't fix."
"They say people don't care what you know until they know that you care. "
"Unfortunately, we just live in a very broken world. I think that the struggle, the pain, the hardship is just a natural byproduct of the human experience."
"I am an introvert, and I am refueled by being alone. And so another part of self-care is figuring out ways that I can be alone. "
"We cannot be a perfect parent, but we have to stop trying to be perfect and embrace being perfected. That is what God does with the broken places in our life."
Some of Jill's Favorite Things:
Personal habit: "Self-care is not selfish. Each morning I get up and I take an exercise class. I always also take time to have a little quiet time with the Lord. I perceive all of that as self-care. "
Easy meal: Mexican. Cook lots of beef or chicken in the crockpot, add Mexican seasonings, then serve it throughout the week with veggies and toppings.
Possession: My little chopper from Pampered Chef
Jill's Favorite Book: How We Love: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage by Milan and Kay Yerkovich
Best advice received: "You've got to stop comparing your insides to other people's outside."
Jill's Happiness Formula:
"Faith + Family + Friends"
A Challenge from Jill:
"My challenge is to stop trying to be perfect but embrace being perfected."
Resources
Better Together: Because You're Not Meant to Mom Alone by Jill Savage
No More Perfect Moms: Learn to Love Your Real Life by Jill Savage
Real Moms...Real Jesus: Meet the Friend Who Understands by Jill Savage
My little chopper from Pampered Chef
How We Love: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage by Milan and Kay Yerkovich
Subscribe to Vibrant Happy Women:
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast, episode number 38. |
| 0:05.3 | It's recognizing another person's pain. It's not necessarily agreeing with it. It's not giving |
| 0:12.0 | them pat answers to pull them out of it. It's sitting in the pain with them. Welcome to the |
| 0:19.1 | Vibrant Happy Women Podcast, stories of vibrant women living happy lives. |
| 0:24.6 | And now your host, Jen Ryday. |
| 0:31.2 | Hey there, welcome to Vibrant Happy Women. I'm Dr. Jen Ridey, women's happiness expert. And are you |
| 0:42.1 | feeling a little bit like me starting to freak out as you contemplate all that you have to do |
| 0:47.3 | before the holidays arrive? Shopping and gifts and decorating and panic, you begin to feel a little |
| 0:53.5 | bit overwhelmed. This can happen to the best of us. |
| 0:56.7 | Well, I have something I want to give you today. It's called the Eliminate Overwhelmed Guide. |
| 1:00.6 | It has two simple questions that you need to ask yourself to reduce that stress and maximize your joy this holiday season. |
| 1:08.3 | You can get your copy by going to genriday.com forward slash overwhelm |
| 1:12.6 | or by texting the word overwhelm to 4422. On our last episode, I spoke with Callie Blunt, |
| 1:20.7 | and she talked all about the art of showing love through hospitality. Callie is a high-energy |
| 1:26.5 | southern gal who has figured out the art of balancing |
| 1:30.0 | being an excellent hostess with showing love and being that true friend and landing on the side |
| 1:36.5 | of community. Today I'll be talking with Jill Savage on how to be more compassionate with your family. |
| 1:47.0 | This is the perfect episode as we launch into the holiday season when things can get busy, but we want to have that loving, amazing feeling in |
| 1:52.7 | her homes. Jill talks about how we should feel but not fix. And she's a mom of five. She knows what |
| 2:00.4 | it really means to do that in fact she has a husband mark |
| 2:04.3 | who has dealt with depression for years and jill has learned the art of feeling with him which is |
| 2:10.7 | another way of describing compassion rather than trying to fix him so if you'd like to have more |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jen Riday, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jen Riday and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.