Chichi Agorom - The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry

Praise for The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry

Chichi Agoroms voice is a part of the reckoning that has been needed in the culture of the Enneagram. Writing with clarity and heart, she describes the map of the Enneagram and the armor that marginalized identities have depended on to survive in a culture of white supremacy and patriarchy. This is simply a great book on the Enneagram and an offering to our collective liberation.

Rene Rosario, MA, LPC, Core Faculty member of The Narrative Enneagram

Chichi Agorom is inviting us to center Black womens wholeness in order to define and find true liberation that sees us all. She proves, through beautiful storytelling and masterful teaching, that when black women are free we all will be free. This book is pure womanist ethic at work.

EbonyJanice Moore, hip hop Womanist scholar & founder of Black Girl Mixtape

This is the most important Enneagram book I have ever read. While this book was written specifically to further the cause of Black liberation, it should be in the hands of every Enneagram enthusiast. By highlighting how our place in society, inherent privilege, and unearned power affect our ability to lay down the armor of our type, Chichi has made the Enneagram and the deep, healing work it invites us into something truly accessible and useful to everyone.

Abi Robins, author of The Conscious Enneagram

In this book, Chichi Agorom answers the commodified, memeified self-help version of Enneagram with an invitation to become free of entrenched survival patterns, more connected to self and others, and ultimately more whole using this spiritual-emotional tool that can help us truly awaken to who we are meant to be. By centering the experience of Black women, she offers us a path for understanding the Enneagram as a tool for collective liberation.

Micky ScottBey Jones, The Justice Doula, founder of Enneagram for the People, Certified Enneagram Teacher and Coach

Chichi Agoroms The Enneagram For Black Liberation reclaims seemingly lost identity, reimagines what is possible for Black Bodies, and decolonizes concepts and spaces that refuse to center our experiences. I will be using and recommending this powerful tool of love and liberation throughout my lifetime.

Thea Monye, EcoWomanist, Oya Priestess, and Creative Healer

The Enneagram for Black Liberation is a beautiful embrace of the Enneagram system as a tool for freedom and transformation, as well as a powerful critique of ways the Enneagram has been taught through the singular lens of dominant culture, which has limited greater liberation for those with marginalized identities.

Rev. Dr. Christopher T. Copeland, spiritual director and Core Faculty member of The Narrative Enneagram

Chichi Agorom

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

THE ENNEAGRAM FOR BLACK LIBERATION

Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry

Copyright 2022 Chichi Agorom. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email copyright@1517.media or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Cover design: Marcie Lawrence

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-7896-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-7897-5

To my youngest selfthe one who always knew she was enough, deserving of love without effort, divine: thank you for showing me the way back home.

I am, in addition to many other things, an Enneagram teacher and practitioner because I believe in the power of this tool to help us move toward our more integrated selves. I distinctly remember when I realized that, while I had utilized my type for so many years to navigate the world, I was more than just this type structure that had held me up. This realization gave me so much freedom to explore the fullness of who I am outside of my type.

There are many ways to work with the Enneagram. It can serve as an aid in self-discovery, relational health, organizational development, and so much more. For me, the most profound way that working with the Enneagram has helped my personal growth is as a tool to rediscover who I am separate from who I always believed I needed to be in order to be loved. From my own personal work and from my experience working with many others, I know the Enneagram can help free us from our limiting stories of who we think we must be to be okay and offer us a path to wholeness and freedom. I wrote this book to offer that invitation to you.

In the time I spent training to become an Enneagram teacher and practitioner, I was often the only Black person in the room. The content of the trainings was deep, complex, and nuanced, but to me, it very often seemed privileged. It required a certain level of protection gained from privilege and power to be able to do the work of integration without facing any harm. I started to wonder how these conversations about the Enneagram would shift if the experiences of those who hold marginalized identities were centered. Naming issues around structures of power, systems of oppression, and access to privilege and power within those systems made it clear to me that Enneagram work is not the same for everyone.

When I centered myself in all of my particularitiesBlack, woman, immigrantI was able to use the Enneagram in a way that helped me find more freedom. That is why this book centers Black women in our exploration of the Enneagram as a tool for liberation. I believe wholeheartedly that when Black women are free, we will all be free. My hope as an Enneagram teacher is to create more space for Black and Brown bodies within Enneagram learning communities. I hope to teach in a way that honors and centers our lived experiences and acknowledges that different work is required of centered folks than of those whose identities are marginalized. And I want to center our healing, rest, and liberation in a world that demands that we continue to labor and suffer for the advancement of others but never ourselves.

However, even though I intentionally center Black women, this book is for everyone. Liberation is everyones work, not just the work of those who are harmed by systems of oppression. If your lived experience is differentif your identities are centered or you have more access to power and privilegeI invite you to engage this book with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to investigate what role your own types armor has played in upholding harmful systems and harmful narratives within yourself.

I believe it is important to know who your teachers teachers are because it helps ground our study and practice in lineage. Knowing who you are learning from, and who that person learned from, offers not only a sense of greater connection but also a system of accountability. Thousands of Enneagram teachers and coaches exist out there today. In fact, almost anyone can read a couple of books on the Enneagram and begin typing people based on that cursory knowledge. But cursory knowledge severed from its lineage and context can be used in harmful ways, whether intentional or not. We risk using the tool in a misguided way at best or using it to perpetuate harm at worst. For example, using the Enneagram as a way to place people in boxes that restrict the fullness of who they are based on certain characteristics is a misuse of the system and can be harmful.