Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anne Sexton Bryan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Anne, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back at internships and apprenticeships can be interesting, because there is so much variety in people’s experiences – and often those experiences inform our own leadership style. Do you have an interesting story from that stage of your career that you can share with us?
At the end of seven intensive years of energy healing training, Barbara Brennan, our esteemed teacher and energy healing pioneer, said, “Always remember, it is your presence that heals.” While I had learned alot about the human energy field, the human body, and developed many healing skills under the watchful eyes of our teachers, how my healing presence would be expressed in the world was an uncomfortable mystery. I wondered, “Do I really have a healing presence outside of school?” What does ‘healing’ really mean? What is ‘presence’ and what is ‘my healing presence’?
Since that day, living in those questions has informed how I help and how healing happen in other’s lives ~ either with or through or around me. I learned that one’s healing is up to the person seeking help, and to something Greater ~ The Mystery or God or whatever power lies beyond this word for you. As we time passed however, I noticed consistently that people went just so far in their healing, and the root of the issue, distress, dis-ease was very difficult to reach. I needed a larger lens to understand what was happening to people and if there was a way to help them release and re-member more of who they really are.
What was missing revealed itself through my own healing process. As I grieved the loss of my father, and found it hard to function, I stepped deeply into family and systemic constellation work. Family and systemic constellations are based in an individual’s connection to a greater Knowing Field ~ primarily that of one’s family and ancestors. I learned that most of one’s issues and struggles are anchored in the family field. The process of constellations helped me heal my own imbalances or interruptions in love with my father, and in time, cultivate a healing presence that shined through in the most unexpected of circumstances.
A healing presence is innate in each of us, and it is not static. I have continued to grow as a practitioner through experiences, practice, mistakes, more teachings, more learnings. The process of developing a healing presence has required opening up to the unknown in ever deepening and often unexpected ways.
At the North American Systemic Constellations conference in 2021, I presented a seminar entitled, Returning Home: Constellations to Connect to Our African Ancestral Wisdom. Bringing together my love of and deep connection to Africa, family constellations and healing, I planned 3 exercises. I combined family constellations pioneer Bert Hellinger’s Three Orders of Love: Precedence/Right Order, Inclusion/Belonging, and Balance of Giving and Receiving and the work of Elder Malidoma Some, a West African Elder and Healer who taught and lead relational healing practices to keep his community healthy as a whole and individually.
As Bert Hellinger’s passing had left a vacuum of power and place in the global constellation community, and many constellators were claiming leadership status, placing themselves at the front of the line so to speak, even though there were others with more in-depth experience. I invited our group to stand in right order of when they came to constellation work ~ Hellinger’s First Order of Love ~ to know and to show who our elders really are, which is Elder Malidoma Some’s teaching. Those who worked with Bert Hellinger would be at the beginning of the line, and proceed by year to the present day.
I did not know the first woman who stood at the head of the line. She was followed by my teachers, the wife and then her husband. The line formed quietly and extended around the room. Our group was now in right order. I then asked the first one in line to offer a few words of truth to the next person in line. The first person in line would say to the next person “I came first, you came after.” The receiver then said back to the person before them, “You came first, I came after.” This would continue until the last person spoke and was included.
It became time for the woman at the head of the line to offer her truth of coming first ~ of being an elder, this hidden truth to most of us, and be heard. She looked at her colleague facing her, and then at the ground. No words came. She began to tremble and fold over. Quiet sobs emerged. Silence. When the wave of emotion passed, the woman stood upright slowly, and said clearly, “I came first, you came after,” finally owning her right place in the constellation field after decades of exile. The next woman repeated back her words of acknowledgement with affection, respect, appreciation. Then she turned to her husband, and again, quiet. The words waiting to be said got stuck. Then more tears. Then a clear statement, “I came first, you came after.” Her husband, now also in tears, acknowledged his wife came to constellations first, and he came after, with love, appreciation, respect.
Precedence, right place, right order ~ it matters, not just in our families, but in our lives and communities in myriad ways.. The movement establishing right order was restored. With precedence and right order, it is clear how each came to their right place because their place was possible only because the ones before them had done their work.
At the end of the exercises, I asked the group to come to the ancestors altar at the head of the room to offer their gratitude or ask for prayers or wisdom or blessings. It was their moment to be with their and our deep ancestry. The first woman in the line who came first began. (I did not ask anyone to come in right order, they just did it.) The woman walked straight over to me before going to the altar. She said, “Elder Malidoma Some has been my teacher for the last 12 years, and today, he spoke to me through you. Thank you.”
Two weeks later, Elder Malidoma Some passed away. The woman, who had been in the shadows and in exile, stepped into the limelight. I have had the pleasure of watching her step into her greatness as a constellatory and teacher in an extraordinary way. My teachers who came next have moved on with exciting projects as elders. As I have watched them blossom in new ways, I too have felt moved to expand and share from my right place in the field of family constellations now that I know clearly who my elders are.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I offer family and systemic constellations individually and in groups, in person, and online. I help people find more of who they truly are by exploring how they carry their challenges, and look for a source of the challenges. The constellation helps them unpack their challenges and often, what emerges is what they don’t know, that they don’t know. Through constellations, they have a possibility to reshape the stories they live out and want to change. Because of the process, we can reach blindspots that have often been missed for years.
I am focusing now on using constellations to help people, in particular fellow healers and individuals committed to answering what is calling their souls forward now, step fully into their wisdom and their purpose now. Some are aware of, and welcoming an unfolding of their Elderhood. The wisdom of the Elders, still revered in indigenous cultures, is needed to help the younger ones now challenged with the great issues of our times. Elders can support them in approaching and solving with conscious awareness, respect, strength, courage and full, open hearts. We need all hands, young and old, on deck, working together.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
‘Keep going. Just keep going.” Or, ‘Wait five more minutes for the miracle.’ Persistence and patience and I are lifelong friends, finally. I have uttered these timeless words of wisdom to myself, and sometimes others, again and again. During the crazy times we now find ourselves in, and throughout my life, these words brought the hope of a better time ahead, a moment of peace, or perhaps needed strength to face the unfaceable. In truth, we can rise and just keep going through nearly anything. Or at the least, we can wait five more minutes for a miracle or something new to unfold. Our humanity has demonstrated it again and again over tens of thousands of years. We all have it in us to keep going, even when it seems otherwise.
In my early 20’s, life looked good ~ a job that sounded cool, a great boyfriend, friends, activities. On the inside, however, I felt imprisoned by illness, frozen emotions and unprocessed experiences. Secretly, I wanted out of life by my 30th birthday. I had alot to face… depression, my addictions that I needed to recover from, and grief over the loss of several dear people including my boyfriend, the first love of my life. When he died, I thought, “My life is over. Why bother? Life is just too painful. ‘ A few days after his funeral, I heard a voice within say, “Choose.” In essence, choose to live or give up. I chose to stay and figure out how to heal what to me felt like a dark and stormy life.
A new job opportunity that seemed promising uprooted me and I began a decade long period of near constant movement. The job took me all over the world as a tour leader and tour creator for educational groups including prominent alumni associations, museums and organizations like National Geographic. How exciting, exotic, daunting, unpredictable! In many ways, I shined as a leader, as one who could handle challenges in strange circumstances, and was trusted to ensure difficult global adventures unfolded well. My dream to see and experience the whole world in a fresh and unique way unfolded.
Upon turning 30, I realized I had made it. I was alive, and yet, a deep pain persisted. How could that be? Why didn’t the outside circumstances make my inner world happy? Where and how will I ever find peace, joy, true purpose, love? Why do I have to do all of this inner work? Why is my life hard when others seem to have it easy? Am I every going to get ‘anywhere’? I was angry at Life. I learned that the only way out of the pain was to go into it to heal, so I dove into meditation and new practices. Some sanity returned, and after ten years on the road, I needed a change.
One day, my adventurous soul said it’s time to land and find a new home. Having looked everywhere around the globe for ‘the’ place, I moved to Bozeman, Montana on a bit of a whim to start anew in a tiny rental home with a big yard. I spent a year and a half learning how to live in one place. Home. I was finally home. New friends and adventures in the mountains, rivers and valleys enlivened me, a Rhodesian Ridgeback surprisingly entered my life settling me further.
Within a year, the revolving door of life turned very unexpectedly. On the same day, I lost my job, got into a car accident, and met my husband of to be. A few days later, a new job opportunity arose that would take me to Kenya for a month. At the end of that month, they hired me full time to run large group safari operations in East Africa. But now, I was commuting from Bozeman to Nairobi, South Africa and India. Life was once again all consuming, exciting, on the go, and while I loved the challenge, it also took its toll on my health. After eight years working for the safari company, I left to to find a better life balance, restore my health, nurture my marriage, and rest.
Instead of children coming into our lives, which was a difficult decision to accept, that choice opened the way for me to attend two energy healing schools, family constellations training, a healing practice in Connecticut for four years and an ongoing practice in Montana for 20 years. I still live and practice in Bozeman. Our home is a healing home, for ourselves and those who come into our lives. We continue to dive deeper into ourselves to find more loving consciousness to bring forward, each in our own ways. We keep going. We just keep going.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Just when everything seemed to align and be going well on the outside, at age 41, life started sinking me. Recently married, in a job I loved (and also struggled with), and building a new home, I was over extended. Life felt out of control. A root feeling of despair and hopelessness persisted. All of the great blessings of my life didn’t ‘make’ me happy the way I thought they would and something needed to change.
After 25 years in the travel business, a series of incidents lead me to quit what I thought was my dream job as director of safari operations for a safari and tour company in East and Southern Africa, and India. I was bone tired and had no energy. None. Western medicine had few answers to help we recover so I explored various alternative modalities. I reached out to a woman I had met when our dog was dying ~ she was an energy healer. What she told me about the dog that day stunned me. How could someone know what was going on inside of that dog and about his being, and be so accurate? I was fascinated, stunned, and knew I needed to work with her. My personal relationship quickly lead to a professional training with that woman, Bear McKay. When I wanted more than she was able to offer due to her busy life, I attended the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, a 4 year, 5 times a year intensive personal energy healing program. I felt like I was home and with my tribe.
When I left healing school in 2008, soaring into the energy healing profession did not happen as I had planned and hoped to do. Instead, I was brought to my knees with the sudden death of my father shortly after graduation. That event, compounded by the onset of menopause, turning 50, and the loss of my beloved healing school community revealed a ‘me’ I was very uncomfortable with, and could not escape. I needed more healing presence than I had to offer.
My father, with whom I had a challenging relationship for many years, and I had come to peace. In many ways we had made peace. And…. there was more. There were layers to attend to and the wound that needed healing brought me to family constellations. A constellation reveals the way we relate in relationship to our family, our community, our job/work place, our country and our world. it is a powerful tool to gain insight into what we know, and what we don’t know that we don’t know. That was a stunning concept…. What we don’t know, that we don’t know.
Constellations helped me unpack deep layers of pain, entangled relationships with other family members, misunderstandings and misperceptions about the root cause of my or the problems. Constellations widened my lens of life and healing, of awareness and consciousness. They reconnected me to my ancestral and deep ancestral ~ African ~ roots, a place I had lived and worked for many years prior to healing school. (It was also the place I returned to for my healing school thesis ~ Returning Home: A Healing Journey to Africa. I lead 12 healers to the Cradle of Humanity of the Serengeti during the migration, and Ngorongoro Crater, and to visit the Hadzabe tribe, our deep ancestors and one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes of Africa.) In truth, all of us have African roots as National Geographic’s Genographic Project concluded.
From traveling around the globe to traveling deep into my own, my family’s, and my ancestral consciousness, and then helping others do the same has been an unlikely route to finding peace, and helping create peace, in a world in chaos. My insides and outsides are aligned in ways I couldn’t have expected. While not easy or comfortable, at all sometimes, the changes that have unfolded that could have sealed a very dismal fate, has brought me to an exciting destiny.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.annesextonbryan.com
Image Credits
Denver Bryan