The Enneagram for Adoptees: Untangling Who You Are From Who You Became to Survive with Jennifer Hiltebeitel
Aug 27, 2026
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Many of us as adoptees confuse who we are with who we became to survive. In this episode, I sit down with Certified Enneagram Coach and fellow adoptee Jennifer G. Hiltebeitel to explore how the Enneagram - held gently, not as a label or a party trick - becomes a map for seeing our survival strategies with compassion instead of shame.
Jennifer was adopted through the Pennsylvania county foster care system in the early 1970s. She was told she'd been taken in "on a trial basis" - language she carried for decades. She met her biological mother at seventeen, her biological father at twenty-one, and only claimed her original birth certificate in 2023, when another adoptee told her Pennsylvania had opened records. Her response: "It's mine. It belongs to me."
In this conversation, we explore:
- Jennifer's adoption story - abandonment at age two and a half, the foster system, and growing up in a home where adoption was taboo
- Why meeting biological family at seventeen didn't fill the hole she thought it would - and what that taught her about where belonging actually lives
- What it meant to finally hold her original birth certificate, and why she claimed it "for all adoptees"
- How the Enneagram found her in 2018 through her relationship with her daughters - and how it merged with her adoptee journey when she found adoptee community during the pandemic
- The difference between type and trauma - and why Jennifer always refers fresh trauma to therapy before typing
- Why adoptees so often mistype, especially under stress
- The pause: how the Enneagram stretches the space between stimulus and response
- Reparenting our inner child with the language the Enneagram provides
- The secondary rejection Jennifer was prepared for - and the love from extended biological family she wasn't
- The question that changes everything: not "what's wrong with me?" but "what happened to me?"
Key moments:
"Self-awareness without self-compassion is just self-judgment."
"Many of us as adoptees confuse who we are with who we became to survive what happened to us."
"I was prepared for the secondary rejection. I wasn't prepared for the love."
Resources mentioned:
- Around the Circles podcast - "Start Here" series
- The Aligned Soul Company Enneagram type deep-dive toolkit
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