My father and I have many similarities.
From our body shape, to our strong legs, from our tenacity to our deep love of people, and even to what many people call us: Coach, my dad and I are cut from the same cloth. We both have stories of small and large triumphs, but also epic and public and private stumbles that have extensive reverberations.
You’d think, with all this in mind, that we would have a great and unbreakable bond, full of compassion and grace. Well, if that was true, I’d have nothing to write about, and this essay could end here.
We don’t often discuss this openly, but we seem to have a bead on each other’s deepest ouches, leaving intentional and unintentional scars through the years. These fester, open up, heal, and then the cycle starts again. We’ve gone months, some times years without communicating. I like to think that as alike as we are, during the quiet periods, we both were experiencing massive self reflection and personal growth.
I don’t know what he identifies as the first time “I broke his heart.” He’s said those words to me before, but when I scan the teenage years interactions that I remember, I just see my attempts to flee the nest to get to college.
Maybe that was it? He hasn’t clarified.
The latest period of familial exile happened before the pandemic. We had already gone over a year without being physically in the same location, this time on their request. I used that time to do some deep work on that familial pattern with my therapist, leading me to establish my own clear boundaries.
Back and forth and back and forth. I was ready for this to stop.
I did what most folks I know do, and did some soul searching, some writing, and some reading.
My parents have lead marriage classes and ministry at their Church of Christ for as long as I can remember. That means that I, their first born, who got married late and then divorced, would have extensive knowledge on relationship tools, yet another paradox we hold. One of those tools would be crucial in this story. The tool was first shared with me through their lens, one of traditional Christian marriage and view of women, I found it hard to use. Much like the Love Languages, through that lens, it felt manipulative, claustrophobic, and diagnostic in that way.
I could not take another tool used to tell me why I was a failed woman. It didn’t help that, for many years, my Enneagram type was in flux, and family members tried to guess what it was…using the least positive traits they could think of.
For me, during the early pandemic, things changed drastically in my work and living situation (started working for myself and bought a house in the same week). As the dust began to settle, I got curious about the Enneagram, realizing that I was beginning a powerful new time of my life. A time where I was learning about myself, supporting myself in the best way I knew how, and using that knowledge to craft a life that worked better for me.
Sure enough, within a few months, my Enneagram type landed. It landed on the type that is arguably the most “challenging” and most often ascribed to bullies and blowhards. Also, rarely women. At least, not women folks want to know.
I tested Enneagram 8.
I did the test over many times.
Still an 8. (Also very much an 8 thing to do, to retest.)
Landing on 8w7 felt like a diagnosis.
THIS must be the cause of the patterns with my parents, I thought.
THIS is the issue.
I challenge too much.
If I were a 9, a peace seeker, like my mother, then I would be a great wife. A great “help mate” as I was trained to be.
If I were a 2, a helper, like my father, then I would have a place in the family, to help people. To be needed for my helping. This would make sense as a woman in this culture of origin, to be a helper. I must be bad at helping. I must be a blow hard and a bully.
I couldn’t shake the 8 off me.
I looked it up online. I thought, there must be something out there to help me.
I knew that Evangelicals adored and used the Enneagram, but I was shocked to find out that it had become popular with millennials on Instagram. I looked and looked for positive or constructive ways to address the diagnosis. I couldn’t find anything, and the dread grew. I read online forums lambasting 8s, and, in one facebook group, there was a forum for Enneagrams in Relationships that pretty much confirmed everything I had thought about 8 women: they should go jump off bridges as they were THE WORST.
This did not feel good. I needed to burn off some of that 8w7 energy.
So, I took up running.
I had moved into a hilly neighborhood in Columbia, with lots of nooks and crannies full of creeks and birds and trees to look at. On one of the runs, most of which were underscored by podcasts, an episode came on by a woman I didn’t know talking about being an Enneagram 8. I had settled into a good running rhythm, and didn’t want to stop to change the program, so I let it play.
She was an 8w7, just like me, and she talked about 8s in a way that was literally the opposite of what I had heard. She spoke of us with dignity. With compassion. She explained that we had the strength and the dedication to stand up for what was right where others could not. We as 8s had a heart for justice, and a tenacity that was enviable. We were like this because, at some point, we had to be.
Jackpot.
For years, I have tried to explain my experience in life as a girl to my dad. Recently, as a business owner, I was asking about his experiences. He told me stories of partners and investors, about people coming to him either to invest or to ask for his investment. I listened, and asked, “But how does a woman do it? All of these stories have men in them. How does a woman get investors?”
He was quiet.
“Ya know, Shannon…I don’t know.”
I asked if he had known I was entrepreneurial early on, and he said he knew I was smart and talented. He knew my little brother wanted to be in business, but not that I would. He knew me as an artist. He knew I was going to make my own way.
“What if it’s the same thing? Being and artist and being in business?”
He listened. Quietly.
“I wish I had known how to help you. I wish I knew how to help you.”
This is where that podcast episode gave me some words that gave us an opening to find each other.
I told him that I had been struggling to explain why some of his advice/helping/2 ness wasn’t helpful, especially when I was trying to explain how gender plays a role in my life.
I wanted better words, and I remembered the words used by the woman on the podcast: an 8 is a 2 with armor.
My dad (2) is a helper. I (an 8) am a challenger. If a 2, in their over-helping way, doesn’t recognize that their hope to change the situation or the outcome for the other person isn’t working or is taking away the autonomy and agency of said person, then that person, if they are an 8, will push back.
This explains many things about both of us.
Maybe what hurt my father was that he couldn’t help me with his tools because they were for men.
Maybe what hurt was that he still tried, and when I told them they didn’t work for me, that he felt he couldn’t help, and that is the worst thing for a 2.
Maybe raising a girl, one who pushes back, was seen as the thing to squash in her so she might make it unscathed in the adult world. But to squash that in the 8 girl just makes her push back more.
“An 8 is a 2 with armor.”
He was quiet when I explained it to him. Thoughtful.
Then he said, “I always wished I had armor, though. I’m a feeling kinda man, and folks don’t like that.”
My armor? The thing he wished for? A gift from my dad.
And the way he took this new info in? Gave me the ability to put it down.