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- [00:03]
Ann Roby
Welcome to Flowing east and west, the perfectly imperfect journey to a fulfilled life. I'm Ann Roby, an HR advisor and consultant focused on building strong employee engagement and meaningful company culture.
- [00:16]
Sheri Essig
And I'm Sheri Essig, an executive and life coach. And I work with people who are done settling for less than success and happiness.
- [00:23]
Ann Roby
So, Sheri, today we have the amazing Dr. Deborah Egerton joining us. I'm just so excited to have her here. She is an internationally respected psychologist, creative thought leader, executive coach, and corporate facilitator. She has super deep knowledge and expertise around diversity, inclusion and does a lot of anti racism work and has worked with major organizations in both the private and public sectors. And trust me, I know from very firsthand knowledge that she's incredibly busy with her truly, truly impactful work. I first met Deborah about five years ago in an Enneagram workshop. And you know when you meet somebody and you just think that person's pretty cool, I really want to get to know that person. Deborah is like magnetic and generous, wicked smart, and has a laugh that can light up a room. She is super, super masterful at tough conversations and really helping to keep everyone feel safe. I know this both from firsthand experience. Being part of a workshop that she did when we were both in Cape Town presenting at an Enneagram conference, as well as some work that she did for me back in my corporate life, really just had such a tremendously amazing impact. She's just such a super cool person and somebody I consider a friend. And I'm so excited to welcome you here today. Deborah, thank you so much for joining us.
- [01:44]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Well, thank you, Ann and Sherry. I'm excited to be here. There's nothing that is more fun than few girlfriends getting together, having a really meaningful conversation.
- [01:57]
Sheri Essig
We're just missing some wine.
- [01:59]
Ann Roby
It's a little too early in the.
- [02:00]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Day yet, but next time I want to come on during wine time.
- [02:05]
Ann Roby
Perfect. Wine o'clock. We will.
- [02:07]
Sheri Essig
We will work that out.
- [02:09]
Ann Roby
Deborah, you know, I would love to just start how we start all of our podcasts. And you have had such an interesting life. You're having such a huge impact in the world right now. I hate to even ask you such a big, broad question, try to ask you to boil things down, but I would like to start there. I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey, the things that have happened in your life and in your world that have really gotten you to where you are now.
- [02:33]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Well, it is a broad question and it's been a long and winding road. I have traveled. I was born and raised in New York City. And I always like to call that out as being an important fact, because when you grow up in New York, you grow up with access to a lot of opportunities. And as a little girl, I was quote, unquote, discovered. And I was a child model. And I did that from the time I was 10 years old until I was in my early 20s. And the interesting thing about that, I'm a black woman. And I was selected during a time when if you were going to be seen in magazines and television commercials and do that kind of work, I was selected because I am fair skinned and green eyed, you know, and from my earliest memories, I always felt this sense of responsibility that I was opening doors. Even as a little girl doing this work, I knew that I couldn't mess it up because if I was successful doing whatever I was doing that other people would get to follow.
- [03:56]
Ann Roby
I mean, that's a. That's a lot of responsibility for a little girl. Like, where do you think that came from?
- [04:01]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
For one thing, I'm an enneagram. One social one. Okay. And the sense of responsibility and doing the right thing.
- [04:12]
Ann Roby
Yeah.
- [04:12]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
I mean, talk about something funny. Just because I was having those experiences, I actually wanted other little girls in my neighborhood to benefit from it. So I started this little neighborhood charm school.
- [04:26]
Ann Roby
Oh, my gosh.
- [04:29]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
They taught me how to walk on a Runway. And everybody needs to know that. I corralled them all in and I taught them how to walk and how to sit and how to actually hold a teacup. I mean, it was hilarious. So, you know, just so early on in life, I can see the formation of my personality, what motivated me. But this sense of duty and responsibility was really, really something that, you know, at that age, you don't know how to shake it. You don't even know that you need to shake it. You just know that it's there.
- [05:04]
Ann Roby
Yeah.
- [05:05]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
But anyway, I went on and I married young. I had my first child. I continued going to college because I wanted to get my degree. I was always fascinated by how people's minds worked, but I was also fascinated with writing. So ultimately, I went on to get my bachelor's in what we call then mass communication with a focus on broadcast journalism and my master's in psychology, psychological counseling, and then on to do my doctorate work in health sciences. But the road that I traveled, when I think about some of the stops after leaving New York, I've been married twice. My first husband was a West Point grad. And so he decided after coming Back from Vietnam, that he wanted to be a doctor. And so we ended up going to Charlottesville, Virginia, for him to go to medical school. And I continued working and going to school and taking care of our little boy. And then when it was time to move, his residency, an internship was in El Paso, Texas.
- [06:19]
Ann Roby
It's a big change for a New York City girl.
- [06:22]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
It was a huge change. And I remember as the landscape changed, as we were driving to El Paso, and it got flatter and drier and dustier and stranger looking to me. You know, the tears just started coming, and I thought, oh, my God, you know, I am going so far away from everything that I know. But one of the things that I discovered is that I was very adaptable. I'm one of those people that will grow where I'm planted. Upon our arrival in El Paso, Texas, which is right there on the border of Mexico, one of the first things that I observed was these young girls coming across the border looking for work so that they could send money back home to their families. And it broke my heart. You know, I hear people, and, you know, I'm not one to get into the right and wrong, good and bad binary thinking of how anyone else should think. I just recognize that some people who have opinions about things don't have experiences with it. And when you live in El Paso and you're driving down the highway and you can see the shanties, you know, the. Where people live on the kind of the side of the hill, right from where you're driving and traveling and going to your clean home and putting your car in a garage, and then you have the experience of young people trying to find work. I met so many young women who had children that they left back at home with their mothers so that they could earn some money to be able to support their kids. But what I recognized was that there was no runaway shelter in El Paso. That bothered me. I just felt like there was no sort of safe haven for young people. Even someone coming, say, from the east coast to the west coast because they're mad at their parents if they cross that border. We never know whether or not we would get them back or what might happen.
- [08:40]
Ann Roby
Right.
- [08:41]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
So I made that an actual sort of mission to get a runaway center. And I did. I was able to do that.
- [08:51]
Ann Roby
Fantastic.
- [08:52]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Opened a runaway shelter in El Paso, Texas. And as far as I know, last time I checked, it's still there.
- [09:00]
Ann Roby
About what year was this?
- [09:01]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
This would have been in the 1980s.
- [09:04]
Sheri Essig
So you're still a fairly young adult at this point. Right. Even though a runaway shelter is so radically different than a charm school, there's still this through line on being able to see at still a pretty young age, older than 10.
- [09:18]
Ann Roby
Right.
- [09:19]
Sheri Essig
But still a pretty young age of this is something important and necessary, even though such completely radical, different details.
- [09:27]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Absolutely. I can see it in every decade of my life. It took a different shape and form, but it was always there. I was in my 20s then, and during that time, I worked for a while as a consultant to the city of El Paso. And we had a CEDAR program. It was a government program where you actually educated young people to learn how to do a resume and learn how to be able to conduct themselves in a job interview. And I had this ratty old school bus that I had to drive, and it had a stick shift, and it was hilarious.
- [10:08]
Ann Roby
And again, the New York City girl.
- [10:11]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And listen, when it would be cold in the mornings or late at night, when I would have to drop the kids off after working with them, I would have on a fur coat, and I would be driving this school bus, and I was a tiny little thing back then. It had the clutch, and I would literally have to stand up on the clutch, press it to get the bus in gear, and driving this bus down these little narrow streets to be able to drop these kids off so they could get home safe. But I love them, you know, I love them. The turning point for me with that work, though, was I threw everything into it. I was gonna save these kids. I was going to change the system. A lot of the young Mexican American girls at that time were actually victims of sexual abuse, sexual assault, sometimes incest, and cases would go to court, but the kids would end up back in those homes. And I was devastated by that to the point where ultimately my first husband and I divorced, and I met my now husband of 41 years, which she.
- [11:37]
Ann Roby
Says with this huge, beautiful smile on.
- [11:39]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Her face, I can't lie. Adored man. Also an army doctor, but he had the right specialty. He was a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist. He would do the physicals for the kids because they had to have a physical before they could be admitted to the shelter. And Gene, at the time, my husband was a young intern when I met him. He'd never been married and had never had children. I had two children by my first marriage. My children fell in love with him first, and, you know, it was sort of like, okay, well, they like him. Maybe I'll check him out and see if I, too.
- [12:24]
Ann Roby
Actually, kids, I think, have some of the best radar for.
- [12:27]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
This they really do. My middle child, who identifies as non binary now, but Tiffany actually has said, mom, you stolen from me. I loved him first.
- [12:42]
Ann Roby
I love that.
- [12:45]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And we laugh about it all the time, but this wonderful man came into our lives and I would go up and watch him when he was on call in the newborn intensive care nursery. And when I would go up to take him dinner, he'd have like one preemie baby on one arm and one on the other arm and his arms crossed, and he'd be in the rocking chair. All three of them would be asleep. Nurses and I would say, aren't you afraid he's going to drop them? The nurses would always say, no, he never takes a nap without taking the babies with him, you know. So I looked at this man and I thought, we're gonna have another kid.
- [13:31]
Ann Roby
You may not know it yet, sir.
- [13:33]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
But there's a long backstory to that that I won't even go into. Wasn't even possible for us to have a kid. But anyway, I did get pregnant, and I was still doing this work with the runaway shelter, and I was throwing so much of myself into the rightness and the wrongness of it. My little enneagram oneness was in overdrive.
- [13:59]
Ann Roby
Yeah.
- [13:59]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And ultimately I miscarried our first child.
- [14:04]
Ann Roby
And because of the stress, you think, oh, yeah.
- [14:07]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And, you know, talking about something that you feel like you can't come back from, it was dicey that I was going to be able to have a child at all. I had gone through a procedure to be able to get pregnant. And after we lost that child, the doctor actually said, I don't think this is going to happen. I just felt like, God, why would you do this? Why would you let this happen? This wonderful man who loves my children, and he actually had always said, don't talk about a child of my own. These are my children. But I was determined that I was going to have a child where he could see his face, where his family line would go on. Even though my children have never called him stepdad, you know, he's their dad, and that's it. So I had a lot of healing to do. I had a lot of going in to look at how you can just put so much energy out and be. I mean, be such a zealot for something that you're going to forest into existence.
- [15:25]
Ann Roby
Zealot. But in a. I mean, you know, I think sometimes that word gets kind of a bad rap. You were a force of nature. I mean, what, 20 something, like dreams up and creates a runaway shelter and makes it happen and then finds herself driving a rickety old school bus down a dirt road. Right. And yet I think part of what you're saying is that sometimes that zealousness then can flip to the other side.
- [15:49]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Absolutely. As much as what I was doing was for a good cause, the effort and the energy that I engaged it with was not healthy for me. It was over the top. It was, nothing's going to stop me. And it was just all consuming. I had to look at that. I had to look at. At how my core theme of doing the right thing that ran through my life and saving the world, what happens when it gets out of control? You know, I had to mourn the loss of that child. I had to recognize that my faith sustained me through that because I do consider myself to be a woman of faith. And I felt like there was no way that the God that I knew that sustained me would let that be the end of the story. So fast forward a year later, I gave birth to a little boy born on Valentine's Day. He was supposed to be born in March. He came a month early so he could be born on Valentine's Day.
- [17:07]
Ann Roby
He was ready.
- [17:08]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
He was ready, and he was my husband's Valentine's Day present. I told him the day that Blake was born. I said, this is the last Valentine's Day present you ever get from me, because I can't compete with. But, you know, I came home one day from the runaway shelter, and I looked at my husband and I said, I don't think I can do this anymore. And he said, why? And I said, there was a particular case of a young girl that we had sheltered several times, and the system had sent her back home again. And I said, I can't. It's just breaking my heart, and I can't go through what I went through before. I'm still raising three children. I was in graduate school then, working on my master's, and I said, I just can't see another child put back into this system. And he looked at me and he said, you won't have to. We have orders for Germany.
- [18:06]
Ann Roby
Wow.
- [18:07]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Yeah.
- [18:08]
Ann Roby
That was amazing timing.
- [18:10]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And that is another thing that runs through my life and something that I like to share with people, because if we're present to what's really going on, it's like that next step actually appears. Just don't ignore it. Sometimes it's time to make a transition in your life. Sometimes what you're doing no longer serves the people that you're trying to serve. And it no longer feeds you.
- [18:39]
Ann Roby
That's right.
- [18:40]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
So we went to Germany and lo and behold, I get to Germany and I end up working as a high school teacher. I taught psychology and I also ran what was called the Cooperative Work Experience program. So that meant I had to go out and find jobs on the German economy for high school American students to be able to have sort of the cultural exchange in Germany. And so that was a blast. Until it wasn't.
- [19:16]
Ann Roby
It just strikes me that, and I'm going to make a huge generalization here, but neither Texas nor Germany strike me as a place particularly warm and welcoming for a black woman. I'm curious how. I mean, again, I'm just awestruck by your ability to open up a runaway shelter to start this amazing program in Germany. In both those scenarios, it's not like you were probably completely welcome with super open arms. And so I'm curious how you were able to overcome what I imagine was some of those difficulties.
- [19:50]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
I think for most of my life, I very clearly and strongly identify with and call out the fact that I am a black woman. I am proud of, and I love my heritage. You know, I love my people, I love my culture, and I love sharing that with people. And I enter with the spirit of acceptance. I walk into spaces like I belong there because I believe I do. And for me, if you don't think I belong there, that's kind of your loss.
- [20:28]
Ann Roby
For sure it is.
- [20:30]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
You know, and that's a little bit of the New Yorker in me. Sometimes I think New Yorkers get a bad rap because people say we're rude and we're loud, we're obnoxious, blah, blah, blah. But I think there's a confidence that you develop when you grow up in a big city. I did not ever expect to be turned away. But let's drill down into that a little bit. In El Paso, Texas, I was not the ethnic group that was largely targeted for the racism. And when people look at me, sometimes they're confused and they're not sure what label to put on me, I was able to actually enter the system and do the things that needed to be done without being hindered. A lot of what happened, recognizing that I came from the east, that I had very forward thinking ideas, that I had this attitude of anything's possible and I was able to be the force of nature that I was there, I think that I worked at a much higher speed and demanded more of myself than was demanded or expected in a city like El Paso. I was there for many Years. I loved the people. I had an amazing journey there. But I. I didn't get a lot of pushback in El Paso from the dominant white majority culture that sat in a lot of the seats of power because the label that would have been attached to me being a black woman wasn't clearly identifiable. Gotcha. And we just have to call that out for what it is. That's just real. Same in Germany. I have understood how people have been sometimes confused about my ethnicity. When you look at, at, you know, Latin culture or you look at certain ethnicities where we're sort of brown and some people just see sort of brown and don't know what brown, what it is.
- [22:45]
Ann Roby
Right.
- [22:45]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And so I've been Hawaiian, I've been. I've been Mexican, I've been Colombian, you name it. But interestingly enough, when people would come up to me in Germany and start speaking German as if I were German, that really confused me. But what I found out was I looked like German war babies. So, you know, when we were in Germany and still were in Germany for many years, there were a lot of people that looked like me because they were biracial mothers and perhaps a American black soldier. And there you get. So it was confusing to me. Why do people expect me to speak German? Thank God my children learned to speak me, you know, but once again, I was able to walk in and get a level of acceptance that I might not have able to receive if I were a darker skinned black woman, if I were actually not ethnically ambiguous. And it's not something that you think about or that you quote, unquote, use to your advantage, but it's something that you recognize almost in hindsight. How did I get through that door? Ah, I see it now.
- [24:19]
Ann Roby
Yeah.
- [24:19]
Sheri Essig
If I could just interrupt for one second. There's something also about the way you just said that you don't use it to your advantage, but also recognizing that it accrues to your advantage.
- [24:29]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Absolutely. I think it's incumbent upon every human being to recognize what you have that accrues to your advantage.
- [24:39]
Sheri Essig
Absolutely.
- [24:39]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And to use it responsibly and to be aware of when I have been able to open a lot of doors for people who are African American and I would say for all people who identify as bipoc, that's a responsibility that I take very seriously. I'm not necessarily thrilled with the fact that some people might be happier to open the door for me than for someone, than for my husband. The, you know, the things that I've been through with my, my husband and my children. I, you know, there's this. We used to go up to Martha's Vineyard when my husband was the brigade servant at West Point. And I used to worry about whether or not we would get stuck in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where you get on the ferry. One of the reasons was because there are not a lot of places that you can stay if you miss the ferry. And it would be very uncomfortable for me because I would have to say to him, let me go in and see if we can get a room. Because when my black husband walked in, there was no vacancy at times. Right. So, you know, incidents like that, you know, throughout your life, for me, they made me stronger. They made me more actually more intentional about looking at how to help open doors, which is how the Enneagram work became such an important thing for me to put into this space.
- [26:31]
Ann Roby
So you've referenced a couple times now, you being an Enneagram one. So I want to explore that a little bit. And then we've talked about Enneagram a bit on the podcast before, but not a lot. So it'd be great to just do a little bit of a refresher for folks. But I think that you are bringing a very unique perspective, a very unique sort of specialization, if you will, and really marrying anti racism work with Enneagram together. So I don't want to leave the great story in Germany, but I would love to hear a little bit more about how. Zoom forward a bit, how you got into the Enneagram and then just sort of this beautiful marriage that I'm seeing between all of your great diversity work and Enneagram.
- [27:13]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Well, we can continue the story because we back from Germany once again. There I was working with the high school youth and doing what I could to create opportunities for them. But when we came back from Germany, that's when my husband was assigned to the cadets at West Point and I went on staff at the State University of New York at New Pals. It was a great place to be, beautiful location. I also had something called the Scholars Mentorship Program then. And I was a therapist, short term therapy for college students when they were in crisis, especially right before they got their grades and they realized that they were going to have to tell their parents that they had blown all the money that they had put into the technology.
- [28:04]
Ann Roby
That's when you really need some good counseling then.
- [28:08]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
But I had a lot of students from underrepresented communities. And once again, there's therapy and then there's life. And I hold these two things with delicate Balance. Because there are times when, as a therapist, I'm taking people on a deeper dive into looking at where did this begin and why is it still here and where is it going. But then there are other times when what I'm really doing is I'm looking at your real life urgency, what's happening in the moment that's creating a need for relief. For a lot of these students. It was my mom and dad got busted for drugs and I have three brothers and sisters at home. And I don't know whether I can stay in school or if I have to go home and take care of them. It was something in their immediate environment that was such a stressor that they just needed someone that could help them get to a solution. Solution oriented. As these students would walk out sometimes, I just felt like they needed something that they could connect to that helped them to understand their own journey. When you're in college and you go to a therapist on campus, it's short term therapy. You know, it's only a number of sessions. You're not in there for a couple of years to let them go without them having some sort of tool mechanism, Mac guidance to be able to continue their own journey. That just bugged the hell out of me. I started looking for resources, things that I could plug them into that would allow them to continue their own journey. And that's where the Enneagram came in.
- [30:12]
Ann Roby
Oh, wow.
- [30:13]
Sheri Essig
And what year was this?
- [30:14]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
This would have been. This was in the 90s. Yeah.
- [30:18]
Sheri Essig
So very, very early adopter of the Enneagram.
- [30:22]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Very, very, very, very, very early. And this was just, you know, doing my own reading then, you know, just trying to help them understand how to do inner work, how to drop down in and see what's going on inside. And so even when I speak about the Enneagram, my discussion of the Enneagram is very down to earth. It's very meet you where you are language that you understand. Because I want you to stay on this journey. I want you to learn how to be able to see what you're really up to. And that was delicious for me, but I realized I needed to really be on that journey myself.
- [31:09]
Ann Roby
Yeah. What is the Enneagram? At a super high level.
- [31:12]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
At a super high level, the Enneagram is a personality archetype that helps you to understand what your core motivation is, why you do what you do. And not only does it help you understand why you do what you do, but if you study long enough and deep enough, it lets you know what you're up to, in other words, what you're avoiding, what you're fooling yourself about, what you are not owning. And so it's just this amazing journey of, you know, how people talk all the time about, I want to be the best version of myself. I happen to really dislike that phrase because I always say, why do you want to be a version of yourself? So the Enneagram, to me is an opportunity to have a roadmap to actually getting to your authentic self, to who you really were created to be, and coming home to that person without the pressure of conceding to what society thinks you should be, what your mother thinks you should be, what your best friend is telling you you must do. It's finding you and being happy with that.
- [32:31]
Ann Roby
You know, that is beautiful. So I really do want to hear about this linkage to all your great diversity work. But what did it mean for you specifically when you found it? I mean, you talked a little bit about your over rotation towards getting it right and, you know, and really wanting to do the right thing for other people. And 80% is never good enough. You didn't say those words, but that's what I kept hearing every time you talked about any project you did. And so in your own study, for your own development, what did that mean for you?
- [33:03]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
It was heartbreaking for a person whose focus is on doing the right thing and trying to make the world a better place. For me, when I started studying the Enneagram, I could see all of the places where I had over exerted myself or inserted myself in a way that might have been too much for the people that I was trying to help. For me, when I started studying the Enneagram, it was like my life began to flash in front of my eyes. And I could see because of the inner critic of the One. But what I could see was ways that I had done good, but also ways that I did harm. I could see that my mission to make things better or to fix something might have left people feeling like they were broken.
- [34:06]
Ann Roby
Painful.
- [34:06]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Yeah, it was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. You know, I tell people all the time, the Enneagram will be the best and the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life. If you're willing to do the work. It is amazing what comes out on the other side, but you're gonna get your butt kicked along the way.
- [34:29]
Sheri Essig
And this is such a beautiful example of why this kind of inner work is so important and why the Enneagram. I run around saying, it's like magic. It's like magic. Because it does give this window into all the things that, that make you powerful and unique and impactful are the same things that without awareness, are the double edged sword. And your story is just such a great example of that that. So you are a type one and there's eight other types and all nine types have their own lovely, unique way of being great and getting in their own way. But it is such a great example of how that work helps you get better and better and better at noticing and using your superpowers for good. To say it in kind of a lighthearted way.
- [35:27]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Exactly. Well, and you know, when I integrate it with particularly the anti racism and anti othering, you know, whatever it is that people are doing to marginalize other human beings, what I find is that for each type, if you really start to look at what you're up to, if you are actually actively othering based on someone's ethnicity, based on their sexual.
- [35:58]
Ann Roby
Orientation, can you give us an example of othering, what that actually means?
- [36:03]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Okay, so othering is when you look from outside of what is the dominant norm and the people that don't fit into that or others. So there's the dominant norm. So in the United States of America, we would say the dominant norm is the white cisgendered male. If you're not a white cisgendered male, cisgendered meaning you identify with the gender assigned at birth than if you are actually marginalizing or discriminating against any other group that's othering. And we use othering now so that we can really start to look at the large bodies of humans that we are pushing out into the margins of society. So if you're not fitting into the dominant white norm than everything from every other ethnicity. And in the United States, we have a particular problem with black and brown. We saw an uptick in violence against Asian people during the pandemic. This kind of hatred and bigotry is destroying the very fabric of our society, not just here, but all over the world. To people of color. You know, this is something that just rips at my soul.
- [37:42]
Ann Roby
Yeah. You know, I can feel it in the way that you talk about it.
- [37:45]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Yeah, I share this with people all the time. My parents migrated to New York from the south because they wanted to get away from sort of the racial inequities and they knew there were no opportunities for them there. They came to New York, they had me, my brother, and my parents gave us lots of lessons as we were growing up about how to keep ourselves safe and how we were to show up in the world. None of this showing up in any other way other than perfect. We were to do well in school. We were to be well dressed. We were to be clean. We were to speak a certain way. The culture then was of such that if you want to be safe, you show up appropriately. You get your education, you do everything that you can to get ahead, but you do it the right way. We got the talk and we got the talk over and over and over again. When I talk about the talk, it's the talk that black people, people of color, give their children in order to keep them safe. So we got it. My husband and I gave that talk to our kids. This is what you have to do to keep yourself safe. You be respectful. You make sure you look a certain way. You say, no, sir. Yes, ma'am. If you get stopped by the police, on and on. Just things to keep them safe. I have seven grandchildren to watch. My children give my grandchildren this talk. It's too much. It's got to stop. That's what led me to write the book no justice but K N O W. No justice and no peace in your heart. Yeah.
- [39:42]
Ann Roby
When does that book come out, Deborah?
- [39:44]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
It comes out in the fall. Should be out in September. Yeah, I think it's available for pre order. But when we start to look at why racism, bigotry, all of these things that are so harmful, why they exist, it's all ego stuff. And there are so many people who will never recognize or acknowledge or do any kind of ego work. I can remember coaching clients saying to me, yeah, I got a great ego. I got enough ego for 15 people. And that's how I get my stuff done. My ego just pushes me on believing that that's a great thing.
- [40:27]
Ann Roby
Everything that you're saying about the issues that we still face today, the issues of ego. I mean, to me, that really feels like the marriage between Enneagram and anti racism work. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you bring those two things together. And I very, very much believe what I said at the beginning about how safe you make people feel even in having really, really difficult conversations. And so we don't have a ton of time left. But I want to hear just a little bit about that marriage between Enneagram and anti racism work. Because I think it's so critical.
- [41:09]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Well, in the marriage between Enneagram and anti racism work is that the Enneagram strips us down to bare nakedness. I don't care if you're a CEO of a, you know, Fortune 100 company. Or if you are a garbage man, if you've got the same personality archetype, you stand at the same point on the Enneagram. There are similarities based on the way you navigate through the world, the way you see the world, the way you are trying to keep yourself safe, or the way you're trying to make yourself understood. What you need in order to feel like you're in your comfort zone or you're being your best self. I actually have circles that I operate inside organizations. I call them candle circles. Where people come together and they talk about themselves and their types. And when you see people from all levels of an organization able to have a conversation on that day because they're having the same struggle with wanting their kids to be better.
- [42:25]
Ann Roby
That's right.
- [42:26]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
And they use the same techniques to try to get their kids to be better. Because it's all grounded in their own, you know, sort of Enneagram archetype. It's Right.
- [42:36]
Ann Roby
Which has zero to do with the color of your skin.
- [42:38]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Absolutely.
- [42:40]
Ann Roby
Who you pray to, who you love. None of that.
- [42:43]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
So it is. That piece is important. But the other part of it that is important is getting people to understand the true value of the purity of love, the true value of getting back to essence. Because if we're not connected to that in a really powerful way, that's what allows people to other distance, marginalize. It's not respecting the reality that we're all connected. So the deep Enneagram work brings people back to remembering and looking at someone who doesn't look the same as you, doesn't have the same background as you, but understanding that your pain is my pain. I'm not from Ukraine, but watching what's happening there is heartbreaking. I have a bigger question. If we're watching this happen and we have seen it happen in Africa, has there been the same response? Right. Right.
- [43:55]
Sheri Essig
The answer is no.
- [43:56]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
The answer is absolutely no. So this thing about marginalizing and pushing people of color out into the margins, the bigotry of that, the bias of that, the hatred in that, the ugliness of that. It takes something like the Enneagram to crack you wide open, to really look at how you are showing up in the world and what allows you to be able to treat people the way that you treat people if you're actively being a racist. But what worries me more are the people who are passively being racist or who are passively marginalizing others. Because this is a large majority of a body of people who will not.
- [44:53]
Ann Roby
That's Right.
- [44:54]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Who just won't look at it. These are the people we need to wake up.
- [44:58]
Sheri Essig
And I know if we had infinite time, we could keep this conversation going for hours and hours and hours. But I have one last question for you, Deborah. Through this lens of having seen how you were moving through life, not knowing you were a type one and having done all this work and moving through the world so very differently now, if you could go back in time and have a conversation with your younger self, that little girl who was teaching all her friends how to hold a teacup.
- [45:30]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Right.
- [45:30]
Sheri Essig
And how to properly walk, what advice would you give her?
- [45:35]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
I would tell her to relax. I would tell her to recognize that God's got you and God's got this. It's not yours to fix. Just let love be your guide. Enter every space truly in love with yourself and with the people that you're interacting with so that everything that you do will be equally as effective. And you can be gentle with it and you can be gentle with yourself. Don't push so hard. Just chill.
- [46:21]
Ann Roby
Just chill. That's beautiful. Well, especially coming from somebody who doesn't chill a lot, I think this is beautiful advice. And speaking of not chilling, I know you've got a couple of interesting things kind of coming up on your horizon. Anything you want to share with our listeners on ways that they can find you?
- [46:39]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
Well, let's see. First of all, it's very easy to find me@debra egerton.com and you can sign up for my newsletter there. I send one out every week and has all kinds of resources about what's going on in the world and being able to educate yourself about anti racism and inclusion and diversity and equity. I will be teaching at Esalen again, I think three more times this year. So that'll be coming, I would say June, August, September. So that'll be up on my website. And of course, the book no justice, no peace, but no justice in your head and no justice in your heart so that you can operate in this world in a smooth and loving and connected way.
- [47:29]
Sheri Essig
And when will your book be hitting the shelves?
- [47:31]
Dr. Deborah Egerton
In September.
- [47:32]
Sheri Essig
Well, Deborah, thank you so much for joining us today. This has just been an amazing conversation and just we appreciate it so very much. And that wraps up our episode for today. We really hope you enjoyed it and would love if you would share our podcast with a friend, give us a rating on itunes or post it to your own social media. You can find info and previous episodes@flowingeastandwest.com please join. Join us next time for flowing east and west, the perfectly imperfect journey to a fulfilled life.