​How the Enneagram gave me back my daughter— and maybe my son.

When I began writing my memoir, these are the first words that came out, poured out, spilled out--all over the page: 
 
It did not start with anyone screaming in the shower.  It never does.  It always starts with a frog, swimming around in a clear part of the pond, scooped up into a pot for someone about to boil water for cleaning, for making something clean and hot and comforting.  Boiling the water is not a bad thing, and being a frog is not a bad thing either.    (Click here for more.)
 
 
 It was 2009, and my new life was bursting out of an old life that I didn’t even know was dead.

I did all the things I knew: therapy, prayer, hymns, meditation, Jesus, yoga, Tolle, Oprah, better nutrition, hot baths, candles.  These connections and practices all helped me break through myself, helped me come back to life.
 
But it was my encounter with the Enneagram that brought together all the bright, broken pieces of what-used-to-be-me, allowing me to see the intricate mosaic that was my own, amazing life.
 
 
Type 9, at the Level of Violation.
People who know both me and the Enneagram usually ask—are you sure you’re 9? You have so much energy!
 
My answer is always Yes — O God. If only you knew!

I really show up in my life now; I have no choice.  The old patterns pretending to be me just broke too far open to run the show anymore.  But those of you who knew me then may very well remember me as, well, a squish.

A Squish.  Which I was.
Because Type 9s at the Level of Violation are trying to defend our illusion that everything is okay, we look like this:

• low-energy and ineffectual
• unavailable and obstinate
• stonewalling and willfully blind

​
It's scary now to remember--but yes, that was me:  vacillating between peace-at-any-price and outright self-abasement.  In the tumultuous years after my second International adoption (an eight-year-old boy from Russia), I was living out what the The Wisdom of The Enneagram has identified as The Leaden Rule:  "Do unto others what you most fear having done to you."  Fixated in my 9-type trance, I feared loss of connection more than anything.  So I tuned people out, making them feel as if they had lost connection with me.
(Paraphrased from the The Wisdom of The Enneagram, cited below).
 
​My daughter, Type 8, coping with adolescence.
Meanwhile, my daughter (aka Firechild), was quickly approaching adolescence.  During the time of betrayal and eventually divorce, I noted that unlike me, she had no impulse at all to cling to a nostalgic past.  He’s being very disrespectful to you, Mom! shouted my 10-year-old little powerhouse, when I still wanted to save the marriage.

​I watched my daughter come alive instead of shy away when she saw flashes of anger  beginning to spark through my dullness. I decided, over and over again, to use my anger in the service of life--our lives.  This is an unprecedented opportunity for spiritual growth.

Then, just as things seemed about to get better for us, they got very much worse.  My daughter was not okay--very deeply not okay--with joint custody.  There is more to say, but this is already a long post, so I'll cut to the chase:  By the time I got her back with me, I was thoroughly depleted.

 The Wisdom of The Enneagram defines with astonishing accuracy each type's Leaden Rule:
 
"Do unto others what you most fear having done to you."   

---

A Type 9, I feared loss of connection more than anything.  So I tuned people out, making them feel as if they had lost connection with me.

Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.
Don’t. you. dare. talk to me. ​

---

But now I had a secret weapon. 
I knew my fatal flaw:  not showing up in my life unless everything was peaceful. 
And I knew that the peace I craved would never show up . . .  until I showed up

So I tried.  I really did. 
And everyone applauded me.
Everyone except my furious, scared-to-death daughter.  Every time I got strong enough to spark, she attacked me with every bit of rejection-laced fury that her tough little body and tongue could hurl out at me. 

I reeled.
I retreated.
And I knew in a vague and fuzzy kind of way that my daughter needed me to expand my dang consciousness. 

I'm just so tired, said the echo of my patterns.

But by now it was just the two of us in the house, and my inner sanctum was wearing thin. My daughter felt rejected, exposed, unsafe.
 
My daughter will not become a thug.
Here are the words that I read and reread, fiercely determined to keep myself from falling back into stupor:  Eights become more aggressive and belligerent, demanding that their energy be met. Nines respond by not responding: they go on emotional strike.
 
I kept finding the will to stop the bullying as it arose.
​ No. This will not happen. My daughter will not become a thug.

Seeing how destructive type-patterns might play out in my daughter’s  life gave me the courage to stand and bear and confront her torrents of anger.
 
The paradoxical nature of living unstuck was playing itself out in me. 
 
It was terrifying.  It took every bit of strength and will and goodness and determination inside me.  And it still would not have happened except that I loved my daughter with a fierceness beyond words, and her well-being mattered way more than my own false sense of who I was and what I was capable of doing.

Here's the short-course version of what I did:

• Asking her how it felt when I retreated, and hearing her  say — like you don’t love me.

• Tending my own wounds in her presence, in the path of her anger, instead of retreating every time.

• Telling myself she feels unsafe when you back off.  And standing my ground.

• Saying: She feels betrayed when you don’t do what you say.  So I began to follow through every time instead of sometimes.

• Knowing: She will think it is okay to yell at her dearest love ones if you let her get away with this. So I stopped letting her yell at me. 

A thousand-thousand tiny moments of clarity and awareness and pain in the present for blindness in the past.
 
And then – more lasting shifts.
​

Here is a big one.
 
I was at a dance. My daugher was with me because she was still just barely too young to stay by herself.  She wanted to leave, and she was snapping at me, desperate to get me to do what she wanted.
 
But I was not about to leave. Dancing was bringing me back to life. She had her phone and some books, but this was not what she wanted. So she was being rude and obnoxious, snarling at me in front of my friends and fellow dancers.
 
Finally, I snarled back:  “We are not going. And I am not going to speak to you until the end of the dance. You are being incredibly disrespectful.”
 
She fled in a controlled rage and stood in the doorway.  A dancer I don’t know very well began to upbraid me for basic bad parenting. I looked him in the eye and told him he had no idea what he was talking about.  He left, and I looked for my daughter, still in the doorway, still across the room from me.  She was in full-out the protection mode:  arms crossed, face a mask of toughness, body armored in her own energetic force-field. 
 
I caught her eye. So bundled and tight, such a thick shell.

She saw me soften, saw me almost rise to approach her, to speak to her, to tell her how much I loved her.
Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.
Don’t. You. dare. Talk to me. 
So I sat down. 

She needed to trust me. I had said I would not talk to her till the end of the dance, and I had darn well better follow through. Trust is a big one for 8s. 
 
And by now I knew it.
 
So, as I said, I sat down.
 
And I saw my daughter relax across the room, where she stayed in the doorway until the dance was over.  Then and only then, she approached and cheerfully helped me pack away my things.
 
I treated her during that time in ways that would’ve killed me if I were that age and in her shoes.
 But her core fear (of being controlled) is very different from my core fear (of loss and separation).

And once I understood both my core fear and hers, I was able to act more skillfully, even though it meant dipping my toes into waters that felt me as if they would annihilate me.
 
This is why I said that the Enneagram gave me back my daughter.
(Who, by the way, is amazing.)

And maybe my son.
 The jury is still out on that one. My son was in a Russian orphanage before my former husband and I adopted him at the age of 8. His life was not at all supported in any normal way. On the Enneagram, he’s a 4, which means all kinds of ambivalence around both the nurturing and the protective elements of relationship.
 
My part in making it probable to have an adult relationship with my son stands not entirely, but in a good amount, from the myriad forms of consciousness work that I’ve done, especially with the Enneagram, and from both of us understanding that even though my 9 patterns and his 4 patterns may want to run the show, we are free in any moment we choose not the patterned response to life, but life itself, as it emerges.

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Enneagram Type and Level details come from  Personality Types:  Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery.  by Don Riso with Russ Hudson.  Revised Edition.  Houghton Mifflin Company.  Boston:  1996.  page 491.

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Explore my memoir

Details about the Leaden Rule come from The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson.  Bantam Books.  New York: 1999.  pages 82-3.
​
Copyright: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/profile_lightwise'>lightwise / 123RF Stock Photo</a>