Saint Monica and Anastasia O'Neil
Lately, I’ve been thinking about why I feel so connected to the dead people in my family. The most obvious answer is because most of them were already dead when I met them. The ones who were alive (at the time) didn’t talk about them much, if at all. For example, the assumption that all four of my grandparents died before I was born was undoled one July morning in 1973, when my mother received a letter detailing the final arrangements of her father’s burial. He wasn’t dead before then, at least not in the way the other three were. Dead to my mother? I’ll never know, but I could tell that at that moment, the letter made her sad. She didn’t dwell, she put the letter back in the envelope and got back to whatever she was doing. This was the way with all of the adults in my life, they just got on with it.
Time and life moved on, I grew up, and when my mother died just before my 30th birthday I became the custodian of the family photographs. Fortunately and unknown to me at the time, the universe gave me the foresight to sit with my mother and have her tell me, to the best of her recollection, who all the people were. She also left me a metal documents box, which went into my bedroom closet along with the photographs for the better part of ten years. The letter she received about her father’s final arrangements was in that box.
Exploring the contents of that box, I found an earlier version of my parents. Titles and deeds to all the homes they’d owned, scraps of paper with cryptic notes that became clues for later. One of my father’s sisters had drafted an application for US citizenship for my father, unaware that he’d already done. which documented many of the pertinent details I needed to begin piece together what I could of their life stories.
What I’ve learned in the 30 years since is that while the men labored as farmers (for the most part) and went off to fight wars, the women did the heavy lifting that kept the family together. In some instances, the men at least stuck around and contributed financially, but in others they disappeared and left the women they married alone and scrambling to keep a roof over the heads of their children. Sometimes it was a one-off, other times it became a pattern. From what I've learned, in many ways the women were better off without them.
My parents broke all those patterns. I think I’ve mentioned this before but I’m stating it again here for clarity. They were ahead of the curve on generational trauma and how to heal it. They did this by refusing to perpetuate it and my siblings and I were raised by two loving, and present, parents in a safe and stable relationship with them and each other.
Over time, I’ve been able to trace back more grandmothers through paternal lines simply because they assumed the name of their husband’s family. While they may have stopped being a Kavanaugh and became a Darlington, for example, their own family identity shaped their current generation. So, while the names changed, the family structure remained intact.
This is the unique power that comes from our line of mothers, and I suspect it is why my paternal great-grandmother has presented herself to me so strongly, while my maternal great-grandmother has still been mostly silent. Anastasia English married Dennis O'Neil who abandoned her and three small children first to the mercy of her own parents, and later her brother. They stepped up and took care of them as long as they were able, even though they had little to spare.
When building my family tree, I started by filling in names, dates, and locations. It was just data and children who died barely factored into my consideration. It was their mothers who carried the weight of those deaths, something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. The eldest son of Anastasia, mentioned above, died at the age of five years old, just around the time I believe Dennis disappeared. Was he broken by the loss? Was he mentally unstable because of that? Was it a convenient excuse, or did it not factor in at all in his decision to disappear (if it even was his decision)?
Whatever the reason, it was Anastasia who carried the weight, from that moment forward. My aunt told me she wasn’t a very nice person and treated my maternal grandmother and three daughters poorly after their father (her son) did his own disappearing act.
But later, reading how my grandfather and his sister were sent to separate orphanages at a young age while Anastasia worked as a live-in maid for a wealthy family, I began to give her some grace. She did what she had to do, which must have been an incredibly difficult decision.
My grandfather later repeated this pattern, leaving my then-blind grandmother to care for their three daughters. My mother, the oldest and named after Anastasia above, left school at the age of 14 to help support them. Family lore notes he had a second family in the same neighborhood, and my records and DNA research seem to bear this out. What I do know is that he brought trouble to their doors whenever he flitted back into their lives. My mother must have felt both sadness and relief when holding the letter confirming that part of her life was over.
I wrote about Dennis and Anastasia in an earlier essay. You can read it here if you want. https://the-mystics-parlour.ghost.io/saint-dymphna-and-dennis-oneil/ . I may have duplicated details since they are the same story after all, but I wanted to talk about the mothers, my mothers, in this letter. There are several and I don’t know as much about some as I do others, but I suspect they’ll come talk to me now that I’ve started.
And, when looking for a title that mirrored the one for Dennis, I discovered that Saint Monica’s feast day is in a few days. Another bit of alignment from the universe. https://www.nationalshrine.org/blog/st-monica-the-patron-saint-of-mothers/
Now, for the housekeeping segment of our time together:
I host live tarot readings and ramble sessions every Sunday at 10am CDT as part of the Trusted Tarot group on Facebook. You can join in (or just watch) here: Trusted Tarot
I am the Tableau Module Trainer for TABI’s Intermediate Tarot course that will be starting again in October. I also host the North American Time monthly zoom meetup. If you’re interested in either the course, or joining TABI, please reach out and I’ll point you in the right direction.
And I’m presenting The Dao of Witchcraft at WitchCon in February 2027. More information will be posted soon and I'll share here.
More events and offerings to follow but you can always reach me via email at themysticsparlour@gmail.com, follow me on Instagram as @the.mystics.parlour, or send me a friend request on Facebook.
If you would like to know more about my ancestral connection work, my Daoist path, or my other offerings such as tarot readings and classes, spiritual guidance, and mindset mentoring, you can find more detailed information by using the drop-down menu on my website: https://the-mystics-parlour.ghost.io
I appreciate your continued support and encouragement. See you sometime next week.