About Anne

Author and Workshop facilitator

My Story

In all my writings and workshops I enjoy exploring the inner workings of the human heart. I wrote Ollie Ollie In Come Free: A Memoir of Swallowed Time in order to communicate the raw realities of a child’s secret inner world. The book, published in 2014, emerged out of eight years of intensive inner work, during which I unearthed my frozen grief over the childhood losses of my older siblings.

During the years 2015 to 2019, I published a blog on line, “Musings About What’s Really Real.” I adapted these twenty-seven posts, which explore the spiritual, psychological, and political depths of daily life, to create a book of essays, Fresh Springs Deep Down (November, 2020).

I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, as part of a large, lively, and high-functioning Catholic family. The first three children died at various young ages and through random circumstances. Though shy and sensitive, I appeared on the surface, like the rest of my family, to be undaunted by the repeated tragedy.

While new babies kept arriving, my mother, Mollie Bernard, founded the Stanley Clark School, a still thriving elementary school in South Bend. My father, Leon, taught history at the University of Notre Dame.  The family spent a year in France while he was on sabbatical in 1968-1969.

I studied at Indiana University, the Sorbonne, University of Pennsylvania (M.A. in French) and Fordham University (M.A. in Religious Education). In 1978 I took a position as a campus and parish minister in Cincinnati, and married Gerry Becker in 1981.

Our first child, Mollie, died at birth. The traumatic impact of this event, along with the near death of our third child, Daniel, launched me on a journey of psychoanalysis to explore the hidden lifelong effects of my siblings’ deaths. Meanwhile I stayed very active mothering my daughter Jane and son Daniel, and, after four miscarriages, we adopted our youngest child, Tony, in 1993.

I have a passion for environmental concerns, justice issues, and sustainable lifestyle. I have been a member for thirty years of New Jerusalem, an alternative spiritual community in the progressive Catholic tradition. I enjoy singing in Musica Sacra, a classical ensemble, and in Threshold Singers, a bedside ministry.

In 2006, I fell in love with Family Constellation Work. This healing modality explores the impact of our ancestors’ experiences on our everyday lives and relationships. It is a natural fit for me because it blends psychology, spirituality, history and family systems, all of which have always fascinated me. After my training, I began offering workshops in the Cincinnati area. This work has profoundly affected me. It transforms lives, opens up a deep awareness of our common humanity and nurtures compassion for the human condition.

From 2001 to my retirement in 2018, I worked at a private learning center as a reading specialist. I am an ordained minister and have performed many weddings and other rituals. I live with my husband Gerry in Cincinnati.