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Suzanne Stabile

• Website: suzannestabile.com
• Website: lifeinthetrinityministry.com
  
• Books: The Road Back To You, The Path Between Us and The Journey Toward Wholeness
• Podcast: The Enneagram Journey
• Instagram: @suzannestabile

How do we know when it’s time to release something we once said yes to with love, not bitterness?

In this episode of The In-Between, I sit down with Suzanne Stabile—spiritual director, master Enneagram teacher, and the co-founder of Life in the Trinity Ministry. Affectionately known as the “Enneagram Godmother,” Suzanne has helped thousands engage the Enneagram not just as a personality tool—but as a path to presence, self-awareness, and relational healing.

But before the bestsellers and podcast downloads, Suzanne walked through decades of layered transitions:

💔 adoption, trauma, and an early marriage that wasn’t right
🛐 mentoring under Richard Rohr and launching a ministry with her husband Joe (a former Catholic priest)
🏡 moving five times in eight years through United Methodist appointments
👵 and now, entering grandparenthood and older age with a renewed vision for what it means to flourish

This is a conversation for anyone holding vocational questions, grieving friendships that didn’t last, or simply trying to discern what’s yours to do in the next season.

In this episode, we talk about:

👉 Why Suzanne believes the golden rule is a myth—and how the Enneagram teaches us to love people as they want to be loved
👉 The cost of only using one intelligence center (thinking, feeling, or doing) through change—and how to reintegrate wholeness
👉 How ministry gets redefined when the old containers no longer fit
👉 Why Joe’s metaphor of “two rocking chairs on the back porch” reframes what prayer and presence can look like
👉 The hard truth that many of our friendships are seasonal—not transactional, but transitional
👉 The spiritual danger of holding on to every relationship as if it’s supposed to last forever
👉 Why every person needs a spiritual director, a therapist, and a contemplative practice
👉 What flourishing looks like at 74—and how letting your grandchildren be who they are can be its own sacred work

When the Role Changes, But the Call Remains

Suzanne Stabile and her husband Joe have lived through ministry transitions that would leave most of us spinning. They’ve shifted from local parish life to national teaching. From denominational frameworks to self-funded retreats. From being known in a specific, visible role to being quietly faithful in the unseen places.

These shifts weren’t just logistical. They were spiritual, emotional, and deeply personal.

We weren’t intended to believe that a call would be permanent. That’s something we made up.

That insight becomes especially poignant for pastors, spiritual leaders, and caregivers wrestling with identity after role loss.

Many of us have been taught to equate calling with position. But what happens when the position ends? Or evolves? Or when we choose to lay it down—not because we stopped caring, but because we had to become someone new?

The Gift and Grief of Changing Friendships

One of the most powerful threads in this episode is Suzanne’s honesty about relational transition:

We confuse transitional relationships with transactional ones. Just because it was real doesn’t mean it’s meant to last forever.

She shares how her orientation to the present moment (as a Two) led others to believe the relationship was deeper and more permanent than it was—and how adjusting her language and expectations became a key to relational integrity.

We expect relationships—and roles—to prove their worth by lasting forever. We assume that permanence equals importance. But that belief quietly undermines our ability to move forward with freedom and trust.

In naming the grief of changing friendships, Suzanne gives us permission to honor what was without forcing it to remain. That’s true of people. It’s also true of roles, communities, and even versions of ourselves.

Whole-Person Discernment: Why Enneagram Wisdom Matters in Transition

Suzanne explains how the Enneagram isn’t just about discovering your type, it’s about reclaiming the underused parts of yourself so you can move through transition as a whole person.

If you only use one center—thinking, feeling, or doing—through transition, the other two haven’t transitioned.

Let that sink in.

Many of us default to one center in times of stress. We feel our way through without thinking. We analyze endlessly without moving. We act quickly, without paying attention to what’s really happening inside.

But true transition—soulful, integrated, grounded transition—requires all of us.

Suzanne explains how understanding your dominant and repressed centers can help you slow down and listen to the parts of you that are underdeveloped or neglected. And why paying attention to these imbalances can unlock clarity where there’s been fog.

This isn’t just personality theory. It’s formation. It’s how we become whole people again after disorientation.

What Does Flourishing Mean Now A Days?

I flourish when I’m doing what is mine to do. Not what used to be mine. Not what’s someone else’s. What’s mine now.

In a world chasing productivity, output, and legacy, Suzanne offers something slower, smaller, more honest. She talks about her grandchildren—not as symbols of legacy, but as living reminders of presence.

This episode is for:

🧭 Ministry leaders discerning next steps or redefining “calling”
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Helpers and caregivers navigating friendship fatigue or burnout
🛐 People leaving church roles but still longing to serve God
💬 Anyone who’s ever felt guilty for outgrowing a relationship
✨ Those wondering how to live with more intention, simplicity, and clarity in this next chapter

There’s a thread running through this entire conversation—a quiet hope that even when the role ends, something sacred remains.

The spiritual leaders, caregivers, and helpers I talk to often fear that leaving their role means they’re walking away from their purpose. That if they’re no longer on staff, no longer preaching or directing or holding space in “official” ways, their calling is over.

Suzanne gently offers another vision:

• That you are still called, even if the container looks different.

• That friendships may shift—and that doesn’t make them fake.

• That your whole self is required to move forward, not just your productivity.

• That flourishing can look like less noise and more presence.

• That you’re not broken. You’re in transition.