Monthly Family Constellations
Calendar
Redefining Our Relationship to Work
What does work mean to you? And where did that meaning come from?
For so many of us, our relationship to work was formed before we ever chose a career. It was inherited — from parents who worked to survive, not to thrive. From cultures that taught us to justify our existence through productivity. From systems that told us to be grateful for a seat at the table, even when that table was never designed to honor us or our people.
And so we work. We over-work. We confuse exhaustion with dedication and busyness with belonging. We carry the labor of our ancestors in our bodies and call it ambition. We forget — or were never taught — that we are worthy before we produce anything…
Leadership Hang-Ups & the Family Story Behind Them
Your leadership didn't begin with your first job title. It began long before — in the family system you were born into, in the stories you absorbed before you had words for them.
The way you hold power — or avoid it. The way you over-function, over-explain, or over-give. The guilt that rises when you succeed beyond what the people you love had access to. The fear of being seen, or the exhaustion of performing visibility. The voice that says: Who do you think you are?
What Fathers Could Not Reconcile
The father represents more than a person. He is the first map of the world — teaching us what is possible, what is safe, how to move with purpose, and whether we are worthy of protection and care.
From the paternal line, we learn how to take action. How to set boundaries. How to enter a room and believe we have the right to be there. The father figure is the one who looks at us and says: your vision is worth pursuing. You have permission to go. You know how to return to yourself…
What the Mothers Carried Quietly
The maternal line holds the keys to everything — how we flow, how we grieve, how we give and receive care, how we belong to ourselves and to the living world around us.
From the mother line, we learn how to be in relationship to everything and everyone around us. How to attune to nature, to others, to our own bodies. How to move through the world with compassion and intuition as guides. This is the original inheritance of the maternal — a deep and ancient intelligence passed through the DNA of every woman who came before us…
Breaking Through the Silence
Some things were never said out loud. Not because they didn't happen — but because silence was the only way through.
In so many of our families, quiet was survival. Don't ask. Don't tell. Don't stir what's already settled. But silence doesn't disappear — it moves through the body, through the generations, through the way we shrink in certain rooms or lose our voice at the moment it matters most…
If you've ever felt like there are words living inside you that never found their way out — words for grief, for anger, for love that was withheld or never received — this constellation circle is for you.
Come Back to Yourself: A Constellations Intensive on Power, Intuition & Inner Authority
A 3-hour immersive family constellations workshop for leaders and caregivers ready to reconnect with their center, reclaim their power, and trust their intuition.
This experience explores how family and ancestral patterns pull us off center — shaping how we lead, decide, and show up in the world. Through guided constellation work and embodied practice, you’ll reconnect with your inner authority and intuitive knowing.
Come as you are. Leave more grounded, clear, and aligned.
No prior constellation experience required.
Still Rooted: Wintering With the Ancestors
Winter asks us to slow down.
But many of us were never taught how to rest without fear.
And the world is giving us all the material to challenge our relationship with our inner wisdom.
If rest feels uncomfortable…
If slowing down brings guilt or anxiety…
If your body stays tense and anxious even when nothing is “wrong”…
This constellation circle is for you.
For many leaders and caregivers — especially women of color — survival wasn’t just personal.
It was inherited.
Our ancestors stayed alert, useful, productive because they had to.
And that survival energy didn’t disappear — it lives on in our nervous systems and is passed down generation after generation.
Still Rooted is a 2-hour family constellations circle devoted to honoring winter as a necessary pause — not a problem to fix.
Preparing the Soil — A Ritual of Rest and Renewal ✨
January invites us not into urgency, but into softness—into wintering. Before new beginnings take shape, the soil needs time to rest.
Join us for a gentle yet transformative Family Constellations circle focused on honoring cycles that need rest, closing what has run its course, and grounding your energy for the year ahead.
In this 2-hour circle, we will:
The Threshold Ritual — Completing the Year’s Unfinished Business ✨
As the year comes to a close, we often feel the weight of the stories, responsibilities, and emotions we’ve carried—some that are ours, and some that were never meant for us.
Join us for a powerful Family Constellations circle designed to support you in closing 2025 with clarity, gratitude, and spaciousness.
In this 2-hour session, we will:
Reclaim Connection: Family Dynamics during the Holidays
Family and Systems Constellations is a tool to help us understand the unconscious motivations that limit our hearts and minds from living freely and openly. This process allows us to explore how our unconscious commitments play out in relationships to people, archetypes and experiences in the world. Participants will have an opportunity to constellate issues related to family dynamics, money, health and other issues important to them. We will look closely at how family dynamics repeat themselves in our daily lives and in our collective history.
Ancestral Echoes, Liberated Futures: Leading through the lens of family and systems constellations
“To lead through the lens of liberation is to remember that leadership is not separate from lineage. It’s an inheritance — one carried in our families, our bodies, and our collective movements.”
To center a liberatory leadership practice is to acknowledge the symmetry of love across a cosmic order between our living and deceased ancestors who have led our families, communities, and movements. The hidden symmetries of love between our personal leadership and our family system represent a hidden treasure map of wisdom to help us make visible unconscious patterns tied to how we lead with others.
In this 90-minute session, you will learn how belonging, balanced exchange, and respect for the order are necessary to uncover how the unconscious patterns of our family dynamics influence how we lead with love inside formal and informal networks, organizations, and movement spaces. Born from the echoes of collective trauma of fascism during Nazi, Germany, various group dynamic – therapeutic practices and the living belief system of the The Zulu Nation, connecting an ancestral chain that is very much alive between the Earth, the Sky and the Ancestors, family constellations came into existence through the head, hands and heart of Bert Hellinger (1925-2019).
The Facilitator: Ana Mercedes Polanco is an ancestral coach, family constellations facilitator, and former movement strategist who supports women of the global majority in reclaiming their power, healing generational wounds, and stepping into leadership rooted in ancestral wisdom.
Host: Network Weaver
Exchange: Free. Not Recorded | Time: 1pm ET
NOTE: This session will not be recorded. Participants who attend the full session will receive a free gift to attend a family constellations session for the month of November, led by Ana Mercedes Polanco.
Family Constellations: Relationships and Intimacy
Family and Systems Constellations is a tool to help us understand the unconscious motivations that limit our hearts and minds from living freely and openly. This process allows us to explore how our unconscious commitments play out in relationships to people, archetypes and experiences in the world. Participants will have an opportunity to constellate issues related to family dynamics, money, health and other issues important to them. We will look closely at how family dynamics repeat themselves in our daily lives and in our collective history.
Family Constellations: Reclaiming Balance in Giving and Receiving
Are you tirelessly pouring into others, leaving yourself depleted and overlooked? Or perhaps you're standing by, watching someone you care deeply about caught in a relentless cycle of giving, unable to receive the support, rest, or recognition they desperately need?
This isn't just about personal habit; it's a profound pattern often rooted in deeper family, cultural, and systemic influences. If you resonate with being the constant giver, or if you're in a relationship with someone who proudly carries every burden alone, this Family Constellations workshop is designed specifically for you.
In this powerful two-hour session, we'll dive beneath the surface of this overgiving dynamic. Through the insightful lens of Family Constellations, you'll gain a profound understanding of the unseen loyalties and inherited patterns that drive the need to do it all. We'll explore:
The hidden burdens: Uncover the unconscious reasons behind the struggle to receive.
Systemic influences: See how family, community and cultural expectations contribute to overgiving.
Pathways to freedom: Begin to gently release the shame and apology associated with needing support.
You'll walk away not just with a new understanding, but with the initial steps to begin shifting these dynamics. It's time to break free from the cycle of depletion and step into a more balanced, reciprocal way of being.
Ready to reclaim your capacity to receive, or support someone you love in doing the same?
Secure your spot today. All bodies are welcome.
Exchange: $85
Awaken the Divine Feminine: a journey into maternal repair and your authentic voice
A half day retreat through family constellations and sound healing to reconnect with your maternal line.
Ancestral Healing Retreat - Sacramento
a one day women’s retreat for BIPOC and femmes, focused on ceremony, cacao and family constellations.
Ancestral Healing Retreat - family and systems constellations
This Saturday, February 3, 2024, we will have a one day family and systems constellations retreat with Ana Polanco at the Marydell Faith and Life Center in Nyack, New York.
Family and Systems Constellations is a tool to help us understand the unconscious motivations that limit our hearts and minds from living freely and openly. In this one day retreat we will explore how our unconscious commitments play out in our relationships to people, archetypes and experiences in the world. Throughout the day participants will have an opportunity to constellate issues related to family dynamics, money, health and other issues important to them. We will look closely at how family dynamics repeat themselves in our daily lives. We will also do some somatic exercises and guided visualizations in small groups to help learn more about the shape of our habits and patterns and how to begin to interrupt them so we can start to feel freer and more capable of leading change in our own lives.
AGENDA | 10AM-5PM
Welcome, Acknowledging the Land & Orientation
SomaticsFamily Constellations
Lunch on your own*
Family Constellations
SomaticsDigesting, Reflecting and Journaling
Departure
*This event will include coffee and tea. There will be time for you to order lunch and have it delivered to the center or you can bring your own lunch. We encourage you to bring your favorite snacks and a reusable bottle for water.
About the Facilitator
Ana Mercedes Polanco is an ancestral coach and family and systems constellations facilitator. Ana accompanies others in their desire to resolve family, ancestral and day to day systemic issues that form a part of their patterns, habits and everyday life experiences. Ana is a fourth generation healer who has studied, trained and taught a range of human and leadership development tools like coaching, yoga, herbalism, courageous conversations and a range of somatic practices. The roots of her work come from supporting leaders and organizations to develop practices and communication skills that decolonize our hearts, minds and experiences with love and compassion. Ana identifies as a person of afro-indigenous descent. She lives in Chiapas, Mexico with familial roots in New York, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
For questions about the event, please email us at hello@anapolanco.org
Wild Dreams
Wild Dreams
A 10-week space for all people of the Global Majority to untangle from the colonial systems that leave us stuck and depleted and root into our ancestral wisdom in order to lead a life with liberated purpose.
We begin in August 2025.