Exploring Holy Perfection: A Journey with Dr. Renee Harmon

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we kick off our series on the virtues and holy ideas associated with each Enneagram type. I, Nanette Mudiam, along with my co-host Dr. Joe Howell, am thrilled to welcome Dr. Renee Harmon, our first guest, who identifies as an Enneagram Type One.

Dr. Renee shares her journey as a family medicine physician and the profound impact of her late husband Harvey's diagnosis with younger onset Alzheimer's disease. We discuss how this life-altering experience shaped her understanding of herself and her Enneagram type. Dr. Renee reflects on her initial reluctance to embrace her identity as a Type One, often associated with perfectionism, and how she has come to appreciate the concept of "holy perfection" as wholeness rather than flawlessness.

Throughout our conversation, we explore the importance of serenity in her life, especially in the face of challenges. Dr. Renee shares her love for hiking, which became a significant source of solace and connection to nature during her husband's illness and after his passing. We also touch on her advocacy work for Alzheimer's care, her writing endeavors, and her upcoming hiking challenge of Mount Kilimanjaro.

As we delve into the qualities of her soul child, Dr. Renee reveals how reconnecting with her inner joy and spontaneity has enriched her life. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of resilience, growth, and the beauty of embracing our true selves amidst life's complexities.

We hope you enjoy this enlightening discussion and find inspiration in Dr. Renee's journey. Don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with your friends and family!

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:  You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. And now, here are your hosts, Dr. Joe Howellll and Nanette Mudiam.

Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell. Hi, Dr. Joe. Hi, Nanette. Here we are again. It's good to see you again.

Joe: It's nice to see you. I'm excited about today's podcast.

Nanette: Yeah, I am too. So we're here today to kick off our series on the virtues and holy ideas of each of the types. And we're very excited to be welcoming students from the Institute for Conscious Being as our guest on each of the ego types. And we'll be discussing the holy ideas and virtues with our students. And the very first student that we have, starting with ego type one is Dr. Renee Harmon. We're so glad to have you here with us, Dr. Renee. Hello, thank you for having me. I'm excited. Renee, you are an ecotype one, which is what we're going to be talking about today. I have a special heart, a place in my heart for ecotype ones because I have a lot of them in my family. My mom, my daughter, there are other family members I have who are type one. So I really, I feel, and as I've said before, I think all nines kind of, we say that this is our dominant wing. You have a wing, yes. Mostly because we don't want to admit that we have one in an eight as well. But we feel like, you know, we will own the fact that we have a type one wing. So I think we really relate to you as well. So I'm excited to talk about this and to learn more about your story. So if you would just tell the listening audience, if you would just a little bit about yourself.

Renee: So I'm a middle-aged woman. I'm widowed. I'm single. I have two grown daughters, two grandchildren. I was a physician. I've now retired. I was a family medicine physician in Birmingham, Alabama for 20-some-odd years, almost 30 years, and retired 2019 after wonderful career as a family medicine physician. I guess the defining part of my life was when my husband Harvey was diagnosed with younger onset Alzheimer's disease. He was 50 years old at the time. We were in practice together. We shared a practice and he was diagnosed in 2010 at the age of 50 and that just turned my life upside down. Passed away 2018. So lots of things have happened to my life. through that. I had a pretty charmed, perfect life before his diagnosis.

Nanette: Well, that's saying a lot from an ego type one and I'm sure you really worked to cultivate the perfect life. You and I were on a pilgrimage. Well, we all were on a pilgrimage together recently and it was a marvelous time. I had the opportunity to get to know you a little bit more and I really enjoyed that. But you didn't always want to be a doctor, did you? I mean like or did you?

Renee: I came to it a little bit late. I always wanted to do something in health, so physical therapy, dentistry, but it was, yeah, I came to medicine during college.

Nanette: Okay, okay. And then you met your husband there?

Renee: In college. Okay. And when we were accepted at the same medical school in the same year, that clinched it for us as a couple. So, we did medical school together when we both decided on family medicine as a career for separate reasons and independent of each other. Did our training together, then came back to Birmingham and established.

Nanette: Did you know anything about the Enneagram during all this?

Renee: No, no, no. So, I guess I first heard about the Enneagram a good 20 years ago, but just peripherally. 15, 20 years ago and it was right after Harvey had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and I had no use for it. I mean, at the time, I remember thinking, this is not the time to delve into something this deep. But I came back to it toward the end of his illness through my friend Nan Hornsby.

Nanette: Okay. Yes. It was part of our staff. Yeah, definitely. So did you were you reading books? Were you did you attend a conference of ours? I don't I don't know the story. I came to us.

Renee: I attended a conference at Beckwith and I think before that I attended another conference at Camp McDowell. I can't remember. I know, I did the first virtual conference because of COVID. So that would have been my first and I knew that was just a taste as it can only be a taste when it's virtual. So I think I did another couple of conferences then. been signed up to be a student?

Nanette: Well, if she if she latched on Dr. Joe with with zoom, that's saying a lot. I mean, like we all did our best to survive during COVID. And that was a good connection. But I'm always amazed at the people who connected to us virtually first. So that's so great. Wonderful. So, was it an easy recognition that you were a one or did it take a little time to come to that?

Renee: It took a while. I mean, I had done some tests beforehand before being part of the conferences, and I was all over the place. And I remember thinking, this is nuts. How can I be all over the place? But it was pretty consistently testing out 1, 3, and 5, maybe some 4. But I did not want to be a 1. Nobody wants to be a perfectionist. It serves me well in some aspects of my life, but nobody wants to be known as a perfectionist.

Joe: Especially when you're going over other people's lab values. You want to be a perfectionist.

Renee: Yes, you would like your physician to be a perfectionist. Yes. So I came to it reluctantly, but embraced the knowledge.

Nanette: I don't think anybody wants to be. I think that maybe that's inherent in choosing your number is that you don't want to be the number that you are. You didn't want to be your number, did you, Joe?

Joe: No, I really didn't. I remember I had the opportunity to be with a lot of ego sixes and listen to them talk. And besides feeling very familiar with them and feeling very comfortable with them, I was disgusted.

Nanette: Yes, I understand. As an ego type 9, you really don't want to go to the table that is labeled lazy. Right.

Renee: Isn't that funny how we tend to group each number by the worst part of it, the darkest side, the unconscious side? There are beautiful things about each of the numbers. Why do we… concentrate or why don't we go to the most negative aspect of the number and go, I can't do that.

Nanette: But we do somehow. And so, you know, but this is one of the reasons why we have the Institute is because we believe that there is something redemptive in it all. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's been wonderful to have people come along and study with us and get to see their journey evolve. So, you've been studying, you are in?

Renee: I have graduated from Masters. Okay. Just did.

Nanette: Uh-huh. Oh, hooray. Then that means we may see you in Deepening Roots, which that's always exciting, too. So, we're here today to talk about holy ideas and virtues. We really believe that there is something deeper that can be mined out, just as we were just alluding to. and each of the numbers and that really the greatest gift to us is the virtues, it is the holy ideas. And so, your holy idea is holy perfection and holy growth and your virtue is serenity. I love the idea of serenity, especially for those, the ones I, yes, definitely. And I would like the ones in my world to be serene. Very often they are not, though that's not the experience that they have. So can you look at your life and see some areas where you've not had that and how those have grown in you as you've done the work?

Renee: So faced with obstacles and challenges, my go-to is Is panic and frustration and how am I going to get this done? This is too much. It's overwhelming. This needs to happen and this needs to happen. But how am I going to just take a breath and move on? That's what serenity means to me. It's going to be fine. It's going to be all right. Are you a list maker? I have been, but I have a lot going on. So, yeah, that's not quite as important as it was as much.

Nanette: Is it true that egotype ones look very often like everything is in order, but maybe they have a junk drawer too, you know?

Renee: Of course we have a junk drawer and a junk desk and a junk box.

Nanette: So it may just be tucked away.

Renee: It looks serene and peaceful to the outside world.

Joe: You just bought a house. I did. How did your perfectionism and your holy idea get involved in the big decisions about it?

Renee: That's a good question. So the perfectionism was, I knew what was wrong with my current house. There was a flight of concrete stairs to get to the house, which didn't bother me, but it bothered my guests, especially my octogenarian parents. I had on-street parking, and I got sideswiped by a hit-and-run driver. And I didn't have enough room to have Thanksgiving dinners and bigger gatherings. So I knew what was wrong, and I knew it could be better, and I knew what a new house needed to be to be better. But I think those things that needed to be better that I perceived as flaws I could come to with some sense of I'm doing this for others, not because I want a new house, because I want a bigger house. It felt more as if I were taking care of other people or

Joe: It was about the community.

Renee: It was about community.

Joe: And family.

Renee: Yeah. So holy perfection, when I first heard that was my holy idea, I just put up all kinds of roadblocks. No, now you're telling me I have to be perfect to be holy. And I had been fighting against this perfectionism because no one can be perfect. I can't be perfect. I can try all I want to really get it right. But now my holy idea is perfectionism. But it was you, Dr. Joe, in one of our intensive, who I heard a better translation of that word. Because growing up in Christian church, I would hear, be therefore perfect, strive for perfection, keep running the race toward perfection. And that just was an unattainable goal. And here I am sitting in an ICB conference being told that, well, your holy idea is perfectionism. So if you could explain that again.

Joe: All right. Well, it's very simple, and the reason it's simple for me is because I'm not a one. Ones do have, we all have difficulties explaining our holy ideas because we have forgotten them. When we disengaged from our soul child and our soul, we forgot how we perceived the world then. And our ego made up a new way of perceiving the world. They kind of imitated their vague memories of how it used to be. And those are our fixations. But the holy perfection, the way Oscar Echazo explains it, And I think he does a very good job. The divine idea of perfection includes everyone and everything. The handicapped, the poor, the unfortunate, the rich. the doctors, the nurses, the patients, even the lab technicians, and wholeness is perfection in the divine sense. But to a perfectionist, perfection is flawlessness. And there is quite a difference between perfecto-flawlessness and holy perfection, which is healing and wholeness.

Renee: And when you said that, it all clipped because that I can believe in, that I already do believe in and find peace and comfort and serenity in, in knowing that this world, this creation in its entirety, in its wholeness is perfect.

Nanette: You know, it makes me think of something, Renee. When I think of that and in holding that idea of holy perfection, I think about nature and how if we go just outside my doors behind in the wooded area that it's kind of really all messy, you know, like vines are growing out of their borders and trees are growing here and there and other bushes and undergrowth and wildflowers and but it's perfect. It all has its place. And I know that this is really important to you because one of your avid hobbies is that you are a hiker. What draws you to hiking that I know you do so much?

Renee: It's the beauty of nature. lessons I get from nature, just being alone in the woods because I prefer to hike alone. I prefer solo hiking.

Nanette: Did you hike all in your married life or has this been something that's happened in the last few years? Yeah, probably.

Renee: Now, Harvey and I were both very involved, very interested in nature and would take our girls to vacations in natural parks, national parks. And I grew up, my parents would take us on vacation into nature. But it was during COVID when it really kicked in for me. And Harvey and I would hike when he was sick because it was something that we could do together without having to converse and communicate when words had left him. We could just be in beauty and be in nature together. And once he passed away, COVID hit and I could just, I don't know, reborn in the midst of a forest. It's hard to put it into words, but yeah, I like your description of wild nature as being perfect. So animals are perfect just the way they are, and they eat each other, and they decompose, and do some things that we might just not be comfortable with.

Nanette: I always have this theory that life is really messy by nature and that is actually a sign of life. You know, when things are neat and organized, while my kids were growing up, their rooms were always a disaster. And my husband and I, of course, struggled with them about them, you know, clean their room. And Cy in particular would be really maybe a little harder on them for it than me. And I used to say to him sometimes, you know, one day their room will be clean. but then they won't live there anymore. And when my daughter moved out, I'll just never forget. She went to college, got married after that. And right after she got married, I walked into her room just as she had left it and was all clean. And, you know, it was all nice because the bed was made and, you know, there weren't towels on the floor or hair products everywhere, but she didn't live there anymore. And it was really sad. Yeah. So,

Renee: I have a little bit of experience with that. I have two new grandchildren. They're about to be three and one, and I babysit a lot. They live close by to me. And this almost three-year-old has hit her stride in who she is. And my gut reaction is to correct her. Now, I don't mean her language or what she says, because it's cute as can be, of course. when she is acting out, when she maybe unintentionally hurts her brother. This gut reaction is, no, you can't do that. If you do that again, you're going to go to time. And she is perfect the way she is. She's two and a half. She's going to learn it. But I don't have to be this perfection disciplinarian. And it makes me want to go back and apologize to my daughters because I know that's the way I was a parent.

Nanette: I too have grandchildren and I think definitely they're parenting their kids in different ways than we did. Gentle parenting is a real movement for which we're all pretty unfamiliar I think because that's not the way it happened for us nor the way we generally parent it.

Renee: It's beautiful.

Nanette: It's beautiful to watch. And I heard someone say not so long ago that really parents correcting their children really says a whole lot more about who the parents are than who the children are. You know, that it kind of spills out our own ego stories and narratives, you know, about how children should be, how families should look, how people should behave, you know. That's true. And I could totally see that. I want to circle back to something that you and I have talked about before. And just obviously, with your husband's passing, especially so early with such a devastating disease, and you will both were healthy by all imagination and career oriented, and you'd build this really beautiful life. And then all of a sudden, you get this terrible diagnosis, and then you lose him and then COVID happens. And How has it been to navigate grief using your holy ideas and virtues?

Renee: So if wholeness is holy perfection, then I feel like I have lived into wholeness for a large part of my adult life. I would have called it balance. This part of my life as a clinician, this part of my life as a parent, this part of my life as a friend, I was able to and I wanted to hold all of those in balance and wholeness. So when the disease hit, I knew I couldn't lose myself. I did not want to lose myself as a caregiver. So I really worked hard to continue to do things that brought me joy and adapting them to my new life. I continued to get in nature, I continued to create small works of art, I continued to play the piano, but it made me feel whole and balanced when I had this horrible thing going on in my life. That's really, I think, how I navigated that grief is just paying attention to what I needed to maintain wholeness and balance. Does that…

Nanette: And really, I know you've talked about this publicly on our podcast before, but I think it's important to say like you are a real advocate now in this area. You've written a book. What's the name of the book? Surfing the Waves of Alzheimer's. And you have spoken at conferences and on panels about caring for loved ones. I have.

Renee: And maybe that is kind of the other coin, the other side of the coin of grief and disease is making meaning or finding meaning. And I actually learned that that is actually now the sixth stage of grief. So we know Elizabeth Hula Ross's five stages of grief. A man that she worked with, David Kessler, has coined this sixth term, finding meaning. It doesn't have to be a grand gesture like writing a book or being an advocate. I like his definition is when you can remember the loved one with more love than sorrow.

Nanette: Interesting. And that's very beautiful. Both and. And it's important to say, I think, that you have taken this meaning, though, and to do, to really do something with it. This is important to you. And I've heard you speak to other people who maybe have family members with Alzheimer's, and you've just really become very encouraging and supportful of people who care take, which I think we need more of that. Are there some other ways that you're advocating for Alzheimer's and what other things are you doing in the future for that?

Renee: I don't know. maybe that season is coming to an end. I keep saying that to myself and others. And then I keep realizing that new people are being diagnosed all the time. So maybe, maybe it won't be at a season, but I'm continuing to write and work on working on some bodies of writing that have to do with making meaning with, you know, what's next? How do we move on from

Nanette: That's what I was going to ask you as well is just what are you working on as far? I know you're a writer as well. And so what are you working on and what's stirring in your heart at the moment?

Renee: Well, I like this new book I have preliminary titled Life Hikes, kind of playing on life hacks. So in hiking and just I think the pilgrimage to Greece will factor into it as well. Beautiful.

Nanette: We all got some pretty amazing stories out of that pilgrimage and it continues to give life to all of us, I know. You have a big hike next year as well. How are you preparing for that?

Renee: That is not a pilgrimage. That is going to be a challenge. I am going to attempt to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in October. So that I can say I did? I'm not quite sure why I signed up for this other than the challenge. And it's going to be beautiful. I shouldn't say that. It's going to be beautiful.

Nanette: And though you say that you like to hike by yourself, you do hike in groups. I mean, I know you've taken some group trips and that has also been fun for you. Yes. It's nice to see a type one have fun. My soul child does go to seven. And I fully embrace joy. How do you experience your soul child when in nature?

Renee: Just carefree, noticing everything, noticing the birds, song, the beauty, the toadstools, the bugs, and just being fascinated with everything I see.

Nanette: That's really beautiful.

Joe: So your soul child has a lot of qualities that maybe would not be on first glance have to do with the ego type one. Correct. But as you look at it, What of your soul child have you been able to be more aware of since getting into this study and therefore re-embrace as qualities of yourself that have always been there from day one?

Renee: I'm thinking of specific examples. When music comes on, I want to dance. The ego one would not want people to see me dance because it might not look really good. But the soul child is going to dance when those particular songs are played. That's one example. I don't care what other people may think of my dancing because she just wants to dance.

Nanette: Well, and I'm going to refer back to Greece because on the island of Ithaca, there was some reluctance, a reluctancy on many of our parts to dance. But once we got moving, it was just amazing. It's amazing how it's almost universal that soul children dance. You know, kids are uninhibited. And when we get back to that part of us, we are so liberated. from the inhibition that we normally experience in our egos.

Joe: Do you think your mother and father would say that they experienced you as in your early childhood as what we would call a seven? I am happy. I am happy. I am happy.

Renee: Yes, actually, and it was my mother saying to me, you were such a happy little girl. I don't know how you got so serious. And she would also say, I'm so glad Harvey came into your life when he did, because you were so driven and focused and serious, and he just kind of lightened that for you, didn't he? So, thank you, Mom, for noticing that and telling me that. It just kind of solidified, yeah, I do have a seven-year-old child.

Nanette: Yeah, that's really beautiful. Well, Renee, thank you so much for sharing your heart with us. Thank you. It was wonderful.

Renee: It was fun.

Scott: Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.

Nanette: Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.