Michelle Cromwell

I mistyped myself for years.

I had a persuasive case for Type One — high standards, a semi-loud inner critic, real discipline, the kind of self-correction that runs whether or not anyone is watching. I read the description and thought, obviously.

I'm really an Eight.

What corrected it wasn't a better description. It was a better question: not what am I like, but how do I leave. Eighteen years in a corporate career ended in a single decision — no case built, no gradual taper, no looking back. That is not how a One departs anything. A One builds the justification first, sometimes for years, because leaving without one feels irresponsible. I have never built a case in my life.

The behavior looked like One. The motive was always Eight — and motive is where the Narrative Tradition actually lives.

That mistake shapes everything about how I teach. I work with pattern rather than trait: what a person does under real pressure, at thresholds, when the strategy that carried them for thirty years stops working. Panel-based inquiry is the reason I trained where I did. Nothing else I have encountered surfaces motive as reliably, or shows a room so quickly that nine people can share a behavior and not one of them is doing it for the same reason.

My broader practice is with women in midlife transition — career change, menopause, and the reorganization of identity that arrives with both. Alongside the Enneagram I work with whole-food plant-based nutrition, Chinese and West African herbal medicine, breathwork, hypnotherapy, menopause coaching, and African . My particular interest is where type meets terrain: why self-knowledge so often fails to produce change in a body that is depleted, inflamed, or in hormonal transition. A woman can name her pattern with complete accuracy and still run it, every time, because the body running it hasn't changed.

I also spent eighteen years inside organizations, which informs the work I do with employers on stress behavior, team dynamics, and retention among women in the second half of their careers.

I founded Soeur du Sol, an herbal tea company blending West African and Chinese botanicals, in Mesa, Arizona.

Certified Teacher, The Narrative Enneagram · PhD- Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Nova Southeastern University Florida ·RYT 500-ERYT-200

I offer: typing interviews · individual work · group teaching · organizational consulting

Chandler, Arizona · available virtually