It usually starts like this: I decide I want to do something. Maybe it’s writing. Maybe it’s reading. Maybe it’s honoring the time I gave to work. Maybe it’s showing up at a meeting and holding back my opinion until I think it’s absolutely relevant. I am waiting, watching the energy in the room, inspiring myself to get the courage to be vulnerable or say what’s on my mind.

I identify as an Enneagram 9. One thing we 9s have a hard time with is owning our feelings and recognizing that we have an opinion that is worth hearing. If, for example, I appear to be lost in thought, as soon as someone asks me what’s on my mind or what my opinion of a thing is that might be happening at that moment, all those thoughts and conclusions I was drawing disappear with the interruption. It takes me, sometimes, a very long time to identify what I was feeling in a moment as I test out feelings, measure against experience, and see if that is right.

Some call Enneagram 9s the Peacemaker. At first, when I read that we 9s like harmony, it didn’t sit well. I resisted that thought. But, as it sat, as I rolled it around in my mind, I acknowledged that it does ring true. I don’t like to make waves. I want to be valued. I want everyone to be valued. And, I want conflict handled elegantly without too many raised emotions. Loud outbursts of anger, for example, make me withdraw. Unless it’s my own!

So, it starts with the formation of an opinion. And it often tracks where maybe I get interrupted. I raise my hand to speak, and someone speaks over me. I set up to write, and someone walks in the room and just starts talking. I voice an opinion in a group and someone contradicts it, in effect telling me that my opinion wasn’t just invalid, but not true.

And, I remain conflicted. I desire harmony. So this other, whomever it might be – a family member, a colleague, a friend, should be valued more than me. “I don’t matter” is the story I have told myself since I was small in the midst of large family gatherings where talking over one another was the norm, and I sat quietly at the table trying to make sense of it all wondering why no one would listen to me.

As an adult, one thing I struggle with is rewriting the story. It’s just a script, I am reminded by coaches and self-help gurus. And, the thing with a script is: it’s just words. You can change the words. Our human world is complex. We are messy. We all have an important point we bring to the table, coupled with a valuable fear that shapes our human existence.

I am writing this, harkening back to a comment a friend made how my blogs are very-diary like. Though that’s not my intent, I can see how it reads that way. Especially with a post like this. I am reluctant to post it. It feels too vulnerable. I can hear people chiding me for feeling this way. I can hear voices saying things like, “suck it up, life ain’t fair,” or similar. But, those voices reinforce the old script, that I don’t matter.

Here’s to a new script. Your voice matters, even if it’s expressing loudly and angrily. Your voice matters if it takes all the courage to speak up and you are still as quiet as a church mouse. MY voice matters because I am the only one that shares this perspective with my experience. I have something to add to the conversation, and some days, my patience wears thin waiting for my turn to speak.

Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.