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Authors and book reviews … we try to tell ourselves to take bad reviews with a grain of salt because not everyone is going to resonate with our work … but if bad reviews are taken that way, then it’s only fair that good ones are as well. Right?
Wrong. It’s easy to be a hater. It doesn’t take much creativity or effort to spew mean things. But for a stranger to be moved enough to take time out of their life to craft glowing paragraphs about your work, they must mean it.
I just read a review of my latest book, Castle Gate, that took my breath away. This review—written by someone I don’t know and didn’t pay to say nice things—was beyond anything I ever expected but was everything I ever hoped for.
Castle Gate by Lisa Bonnice masterfully weaves together historical events across continents in a rich tapestry that illustrates the profound impact of the past on succeeding generations and the marks that historical occurrences leave on our collective consciousness. The author’s ability to evoke emotion resonates. The deeply human and relatable characters explore themes of trauma, healing, transformation, and the search for purpose and meaning while deftly navigating human complexities. The town of Castle Gate in Utah no longer exists but the story does magical justice to this historical happening in 1924. Bonnice’s storytelling is engaging and thought-provoking. Her vivid imagery and metaphor bring the story to life and prompt reflection on deeper themes and implications.
The narrative arc is expertly crafted. The conflicts and challenges faced by the characters illuminate broader truths about human experiences and our place in the world. Overall, the author’s writing is nothing short of brilliant. Lisa Bonnice has crafted a masterpiece that not only entertains and engages but also provokes profound introspection. While scholarly rigor is evident in the meticulous attention to detail, Bonnice’s tale invites the reader into a realm where history and mystery intertwine in a brilliant blend of fact and fiction. Her writing is evocative and immersive, transporting readers to the harsh realities of early 20th-century coal mining in Utah. Bonnice’s research shines through in vivid detail, bringing her ancestors’ stories to life with unflinching honesty. The plot is expertly developed, filled with compelling conflicts and unexpected twists that keep readers riveted from beginning to end. Castle Gate is a testament to Bonnice’s deep love for her family’s history. This book will leave you captivated and wanting more.
Overall, the author’s writing is nothing short of brilliant. Lisa Bonnice has crafted a masterpiece that not only entertains and engages but also provokes profound introspection.
There are no words for how this makes me feel (a rarity for a writer) so please allow me to express myself with this stock photo of a shiny little girl joyfully covered with colorful evidence of her artistic effort.
On March 8, 1924, over 170 men were killed in Castle Gate, Utah in one of the most devastating coalmine disasters in American history. Three of those men killed were my ancestors from one branch of my family tree. Another branch included the men who ran the mine.
The story was so big that it was covered by international news outlets. The antique newspaper on display this March was purchased by me in 2021 during the writing of Castle Gate, as part of my genealogy research. I soon donated it to the museum due to the fragile state of the relic. I didn’t have the expertise to preserve something like this … it would have ended up in a drawer or box instead of receiving the care it deserved.
Castle Gate is now a ghost town—the only things remaining are the cemetery where many of the miners are buried and the barred entrance to Mine #2, where the explosion occurred. (See images in The Gallery)
The Helper Museum will be displaying the newspaper during their centenary commemoration of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster on March 8, 2024. That same day, next door at the Rio Theater (owned by Historic Helper City), a short documentary called Remembering Castle Gate will premiere.
I was interviewed at my home here in Phoenix last January to be featured in the documentary and be will present at the premiere, signing copies of Castle Gate. Additionally, and more importantly, I’ll be visiting and honoring the site where this horrific event occurred 100 years ago, changing the lives of so many people … including my family.
Based on years of exhaustive genealogical research, Castle Gatetells the story of a coal mining town shattered on that fateful day in 1924, and the Littlejohn and Garroch families who ran the mine and worked underground. Lisa Bonnice is a descendant of both families.
Castle Gateis filled with stories of those who lived and died that day, some of whom stayed home due to premonitions, and many more who ignored those warnings. It explores life in a rugged mining town during Prohibition, which was largely ignored … especially in nearby towns which were filled with saloons and brothels.
Lisa Bonnice is the author of Fear of Our Father, a best-selling true-crime novel which has been featured in television and radio programs in the US and the UK. She also authored a metaphysical comedy novel entitled The Poppet Master. A former associate producer for MSNBC.com, she is a popular program host with The Shift Network, hosting their annual Ancestral Healing Summit and Beyond the Veil Summit.
Even if you don’t desire to be a professional medium, perhaps you want a more robust relationship with your kin on the other side. Join me at the Shift Network’s Beyond the Veil Summit as I explain how—during this big awakening that humanity is collectively experiencing—we’re learning to walk with one foot in each world and our family across the veil can help.
Genealogy research is a fascinating and fulfilling way to reach our folks in spirit and begin real communication. My session airs on Thursday, November 2 .
In this session, you will:
Learn to call forward those who came before us by digging into their life stories;
Discover how to collaborate on creating an interpersonal language, a set of signs and symbols that make communication easier as you build relationships with your kin;
Explore the communication with your ancestors that can lead to discoveries about who you really are, explain your bubble of family influence, and how to get beyond dysfunctional familial habits.
I’ll also talk a bit about my newest book, based on actual events found in my family tree, Castle Gate—and how it was written with the help of my ancestors, as strange as that may sound.
Castle Gateis the true and tragic saga of my Scottish ancestors whose dreams of finding their fortunes in the bountiful coal mines of Castle Gate, Utah, during the Prohibition era explode in one of the most devastating mine disasters in American history.
The big question is, is their presence there in Castle Gate just bad luck, or is it due to a generational curse dating back to their ancestors’ involvement in a grisly witchcraft trial in the 1600s?
Based on extensive genealogical research, Castle Gate tells the story of one family destroyed by a documented curse which has been wreaking havoc in countless lives, all over the world, for centuries.
I’m hosting, along with my guest-host Scott Taylor (who interviewed me and we had a great conversation!). Here is a small sample of who I got to talk with this year:
Anita Moorjani will reveal her near-death experiences in the other realm, and what it was that finally saved her life and brought her back from death’s door.
Bill McKenna and Liz Larson will offer a beginner’s approach to establishing clear and direct communication with the other side.
Dr. Cassandra Ricks will take you on a deep dive into the world of near-death experiences and mediumship, and their powerful potential for healing.
Eben Alexander, MD, and Karen Newell will impart how relationships do not end with physical death — and how the binding force of love continues to connect us.
Sheila Vijeyarasa will describe the top 3 tools needed to channel your spirit guides, and how you can embody their wisdom.
James Van Praagh will talk about the basic mechanics and groundwork for creating a successful mediumship experience.
Suzanne Giesemann will reveal that you’re already home, already whole, and eternally connected to Spirit.
Dr. William Bloom will describe the characteristics and purpose of the various subtle beings — including fairies, nature spirits, angels, and archangels.
Brian D. Smith will unveil how experiencing unimaginable tragedy can lead you to discovering your life’s true mission.
Helané Wahbeh, ND, will share 12 Noetic Signature characteristics that show how you receive and express information and energy beyond your five senses.
Sherrie Dillard will explain how the earthly challenges and issues between you and your departed loved ones continue to benefit you.
Lots more conversations await. Check it out and watch for free (the only cost is if you choose to purchase the upgrade package to keep all the recordings and bonuses in your digital library).
During many of the summits I host for The Shift Network, I am also interviewed as one of the experts in the summit’s topic. Afterwards, I always feel like I’ve overshared. I’m afraid that, to the mainstream world, I’ll sound airy-fairy and woo-woo, if not downright nuts. This is my most personal and vulnerable summit session to date, and I almost let my fear of judgment win.
I’ve hosted five annual summits on the topic of ancestral and inter-generational trauma/healing and I’ve been doing ancestral work myself. In fact, that’s one reason I suggested this topic to The Shift Network all those years ago, because I wanted to have conversations with experts and others who are doing the work. Countless people have been helped over the years with these free summits. Where else can you access so much wisdom, packed into one week?
Before the interview, I was excited to talk about what I’ve learned. After many years of dedicated focus on my ancestors, my life has dramatically improved. I wanted to share tips and anecdotes to help viewers better understand how to not only heal ancestral trauma but also tap into the strengths and skills mastered by those who came before us, because it’s not all pain and suffering — there are a lot of juicy talents that can be passed down, but only if they’re not being blocked by all the damage done over the years by people just being people.
Because I was safe in my own home, just me and Vanessa chatting over Zoom, I allowed myself to forget that strangers will be watching this. I shared personal stories and private discoveries made while using tools like shamanic journeying, generational regression, genealogy research and divination. I think I even said something like, “I know this will sound crazy, but …” and kept plowing onward.
At about 3:30 that next morning, I was wide awake, worrying about it. “What did I say? Did I embarrass myself? Why can’t I just shut up?” I reached over to my nightstand and picked up my phone, and quickly sent a message to Amanda, my Summit Manager at Shift, saying that I wanted to cancel it. Please delete the recording. I don’t want it to air.
Fortunately, Amanda (one of my favorite people) suggested that I watch the recording and think about it, so I did. It’s funny how I didn’t look at all like I felt inside, like I was screaming at myself “Shut up! Shut up! STFU!!!” So I changed my mind about letting it air and decided that I just won’t promote it publicly. The Shift Network audience is like-minded. They’ll get it. I’ll keep it between us.
But here’s where some of that ancestral healing comes in. One of my dysfunctional ancestral patterns was that voice telling me to shut up: “Don’t air family laundry in public. Don’t attract anyone’s undivided attention. For God’s sake, just shut up.”
Out of respect for the person who pounded this into my psyche, I won’t name who it was, but she knows. I’ve spent the past several years making peace with what she taught me (which she was taught by those who came before her).
I’ve realized that this inner voice has been holding me back my entire life. For crying out loud, it’s in my astrological and numerological makeup to write, speak in public, and put myself out there. It’s not out of a vainglorious need to be seen, it’s just who I am. And this “STFU” voice is the absolute antithesis of who I am.
Because I’ve been doing the work — diving deeply into the stories of those who came before me, without whom I wouldn’t be who I am — I’m able to take a chance on me, and I feel one specific ancestor’s pride in both of us, for the healing work we’ve done together.
I’ll be in the chatroom, live, if you want to say “Hi!” I hope to see you there!
***
P.S. Here’s a sample of what the illuminating speakers will be sharing with you in the Ancestral Healing Summit…
Thomas Hübl will explore how you can tap into your ancestors’ strengths while also acknowledging and healing the intergenerational trauma and patterns that have been passed down through your DNA
Jill Purce, known as a pioneer of ancestral healing work, will explore how to set yourself, your family, and future generations free from inherited traumas, transforming clamorous ancestors into supportive allies and powerful guides.
Renowned international shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman will offer tools to reverse karmic ancestral curses that may have been passed down through your family lineage, freeing you to live out your own destiny.
Dr. Velma Love will discuss how basic ancestral healing practices might be combined with the design justice approach to generate strategies for cultural healing.
Mayan elder, midwife, and shamanic healer Grandmother Flordemayo will talk about the sacred placenta fire ceremony, her family’s Uterus pot, and the womb’s wisdom connection to female ancestors.
Join Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone for an experiential journey into the ancestral realms to encounter and receive guidance from your spiritual allies there.
Masami Covey affirms that unhealed, painful family trauma legacies that lie dormant inside your connective tissues can be processed and released from your fascia.
Dr. Arielle Schwartz will introduce you to an integrative, mind-body approach to working with generational wounds that highlights the strength of the human spirit and cultivates transgenerational resilience.
As Christina Caudill will share, it’s important to establish and build trust with our ancestors, building a 2-way line of communication by treating them with respect, reverence, and humility.
Join ancestral healing practitioner Langston Kahn as he shares how ancestral connection and healing increases your capacity to experience joy.
Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona will explore the Indigenous North American concepts of honoring ancestors and our relationships with them, including how we connect with them and why they would want to connect with us.
Lisa Bonnice is an award-winning, best-selling author whose “day job” is as a Program Host at The Shift Network, where she hosts summits on ancestral healing, life after death, and intuition and medicine.
Her current passion-project is a series of metaphysical comedy novels. The first is entitled The Poppet Master (previously published as Be Careful What You Witch For!, now revamped and with a new ending). The Poppet Master is a modern-day fairy tale about Lola Garnett, a bored housewife and office drone who wakes up with unexpected psychic abilities, and no instruction manual, and Twink, the reluctant, sarcastic faery assigned to assist and educate her. The Poppet Master is available wherever books are sold. Its sequel is in the works.
Lisa is also writing The Maxwell Curse, a fictionalized version of a story she found in her own ancestral lineage about a witch trial, a generational curse, and massive mine explosion, all of which left ripples of destruction in their wake, devastating one family’s tree.
Research shows that our very DNA can hold the traumas of our ancestors. Unresolved inherited pain can play a prominent role in anxiety, depression, hereditary diseases, and a range of physical and emotional challenges. The good news is that there is something you can do to mitigate inherited patterns and ease ancestral traumas that are affecting your life now. You can bring peace to painful relationships, legacies, and events, and live a happier, healthier life with a deeper sense of belonging and connection.
No matter who you are, you walk through life carrying ancestral ripples of energy — the burdens and blessings of your lineages — within you. Through the practice of Genealogical Regression, you can meet with your ancestors, send healing energy to everyone in your family (whether they’re living or they’ve passed on — even if you were adopted), and dissolve distressing patterns that have been carried in your lineages for lifetimes.
Check it out on Saturday, February 19, for a soul-nourishing event, as the creator of Genealogical Regression, Dr. Shelley Kaehr — a world-renowned past-life regressionist and a pioneer in mind-body wellness — introduces you to her unique healing modality.
Explore what Genealogical Regression is — and how it can help you heal family trauma, break free from deep-seated burdens, and send healing blessings up and down your lineage
Be guided through a powerful visualization journey to connect with your ancestors and send them healing light… to raise the vibration of your entire family — past, present, and future
Understand the difference between Genealogical Regression and past-life regression
Discover why it’s key to connect with your ancestors at the level of their higher selves, transcending difficult patterns and talking soul-to-soul
Find out why healing your inner child is the first step to gently resolving suffering from past events, lingering pain, and difficult emotions
Raising the vibration of your lineage can benefit not only you and all those in your family’s past, present, and future — but everyone who comes across your kin in daily life. As your positive intentions ripple outward, you become part of the solution that all of humanity needs so much right now.
When you start breaking free from painful legacies, you’ll feel lighter, be better able to fully express the gifts you’re here to share, and be empowered to make enormous positive transformations in your life and the world.
… you’ll experience a powerful guided journey to send your ancestors healing light and raise the vibration of your entire family — past, present, and future..
I hope you’re able to catch the event as scheduled. But if you register and miss it, you’ll receive a downloadable recording as soon as it’s available.
Lisa Bonnice is an award-winning, best-selling author whose “day job” is as a Program Host at The Shift Network, where she hosts summits on ancestral healing, life after death, and intuition and medicine.
Her current passion-project is a series of metaphysical comedy novels. The first is entitled The Poppet Master (previously published as Be Careful What You Witch For!, now revamped and with a new ending). The Poppet Master is a modern-day fairy tale about Lola Garnett, a bored housewife and office drone who wakes up with unexpected psychic abilities, and no instruction manual, and Twink, the reluctant, sarcastic faery assigned to assist and educate her. The Poppet Master is available wherever books are sold. Its sequel is in the works.
Lisa is also writing The Maxwell Curse, a fictionalized version of a story she found in her own ancestral lineage about a witch trial, a generational curse, and massive mine explosion, all of which left ripples of destruction in their wake, devastating one family’s tree.
If you, like so many others, are wondering what you can do to help humanity find its way through these strange and transformative times — especially if your skill-set doesn’t include inventing new ways to adapt to climate change or running for political office — Ancestral Healing is something you can do to help.
Our current world’s condition is the culmination of centuries of built-up, unhealed traumas and our ancestors are clamoring to us to help right their wrongs, before it’s too late.
It’s time for The Shift Network’s fourth annual Ancestral Healing Summit, a free online event from January 18-21.
Many of us are finding that this powerful and important work is exactly what we’re here to do. We are, as Heather Dane calls us, Generational Pattern Shifters. We feel an urge … we hear a calling … to work with our ancestors to heal not just our own dysfunctional family patterns, but global damage done to and by generations past in the forms of plagues, diasporas, holocausts, slavery, colonization, wars and other extreme traumas that are still causing ripple effects today.
This year’s summit includes powerful conversations with luminaries like Thomas Hübl, Sandra Ingerman, Christina Pratt and Jill Purce. We discuss the big picture and our places in it, and what our contributions to global healing can be.
Even more conversations include practical tools we can use to communicate with our ancestors to ask for their help and work with them, hand in hand.
Shelley Kaehr talks about generational regression, which is similar to past-life work, except that we can be regressed into ancestral storylines. Masami Covey shares how our bodies demonstrate ancestral traumas, and how to interpret the stories they’re trying to tell us. Kelly Sullivan Walden offers an excellent method of tapping into ancestral messages via our dreams.
Carrie Paris offers a practice using phases of the moon to release ancestral family patterns, and Nancy Hendrickson talks about how we can use the Tarot to divine messages directly from Spirit, and our kin, to help us along our path. Fern Vuchinich and Christina Caudill both offer information about how astrology can help us dig in to our stories and untangle snarled webs.
Dr. Velma Love offers a beautiful and empowering reframing of the experience of enslaved peoples. Liza Miron discusses the repercussions we are all feeling due to generations of our grandmothers experiencing painful loss of pregnancies and difficult childbirths, and Langston Kahn offers a perspective on healing the “father wound”.
Ancestral Healing is breathtaking in its scope — once you’ve experienced the power of this work, you’ll never look at life the same way. You can see for yourself when you register for the event and check out the power-packed lineup of speakers for this year’s Summit. I promise, you’ll be glad that you did. And, it really is free to watch while the Summit is live. The only cost is if you purchase the upgrade package to add this collection, and its gorgeous selection of bonuses, to your digital library.
I do hope you’ll join us for The Ancestral Healing Summit, a FREE online event from January 18-21. I’ll see you there!
Lisa Bonnice is an award-winning, best-selling author whose “day job” is as a Program Host at The Shift Network, where she hosts summits on ancestral healing, life after death, and intuition and medicine.
Her current passion-project is a series of metaphysical comedy novels. The first is entitled The Poppet Master (previously published as Be Careful What You Witch For!, now revamped and with a new ending). The Poppet Master is a modern-day fairy tale about Lola Garnett, a bored housewife and office drone who wakes up with unexpected psychic abilities, and no instruction manual, and Twink, the reluctant, sarcastic faery assigned to assist and educate her. The Poppet Master is available wherever books are sold. Its sequel is in the works.
Lisa is also writing The Maxwell Curse, a fictionalized version of a story she found in her own ancestral lineage about a witch trial, a generational curse, and massive mine explosion, all of which left ripples of destruction in their wake, devastating one family’s tree.
Priceless heirlooms or burdensome dust collectors? How you feel about family heirlooms can tell you a lot about yourself and your ancestral history.
I saw an article online recently about how the younger generation isn’t interested in family heirlooms. I’m both scandalized by and understanding of that attitude. I think that’s something that evolves if you manage to live long enough. From the perspective of ancestral healing, the question takes on a new depth.
When you ask yourself how you feel about heirlooms, it can tell you a lot about family behavior patterns that you might not have considered before. So ask yourself, depending on which side of the coin you favor:
Why do you feel that heirlooms must be passed on? Do you feel that your ancestors’ stories can be kept alive by bequeathing the items they owned to their descendants? Or, are you more interested in their value as antiques? If your heirlooms were destroyed or stolen, which flavor of loss you would feel?
OR
Why aren’t you interested in taking on the responsibility of family heirlooms? Is it about not cluttering up your house with relatively (no pun intended) meaningless stuff? Do you see it as a bunch of old crap that belonged to people you never knew (or cared about)? Do you move too often and don’t have a stable place to store or display them? What are your thoughts?
When I asked myself about my family’s heirlooms, which I now treasure, here’s what I realized:
When I was a kid, I was interested when family lore was shared, but that didn’t happen often. I didn’t feel a great sense of connection with my ancestors. All I knew was my mom’s dad immigrated from Scotland and my dad’s dad came from Malta. Both of my grandmas were born in the US and I didn’t know their nationalities. I don’t recall any heirlooms on display in our house. I learned years later that they were stored in a box in the attic.
As I grew up, as the only girl, my mom started talking about passing her china and silver down to me. And, as my mom grew older and more affluent, she began collecting things of her own that would be heirlooms for future generations. She had an exquisite collection of trinket boxes and Royal Albert style bone china teacups that she wouldn’t allow anyone to touch. They stayed behind glass in lighted display cases.
Mom would get mad at me because, in her eyes, I was too irresponsible to take care of all these things if she suddenly died. I was young and moved around a lot, I struggled to make ends meet, and the last thing I wanted to think about was taking care of a bunch of meaningless stuff that would someday be foisted on me. To worry about teacups and trinket boxes seemed almost insulting when I couldn’t afford to get my kids vaccinated to prevent them being expelled from elementary school. The guilt trips I received over my inability to take care of things I didn’t want or ask for were insane (I took the guilt trips to heart at the time … I only see the insanity now, in retrospect).
There is almost nothing from my dad’s side of the family. I didn’t know his parents well, as we lived in another state, and we called them by the formal names Grandmother and Grandfather. As far as heirlooms go, there’s only a decorative plate that belonged to Grandmother, who gave it to my mom as a thank you gift for doing her hair for a special occasion. Grandmother died when I was six and we didn’t visit Grandfather often. My most vivid memory of him was his gorgeous Maltese accent, which he never lost after seventy years in this country, and he called me “Leeza”. Oddly, just remembering the sound of his voice brings tears to my eyes.
As Mom got old, after Dad died, I knew that I’d be inheriting these things sooner rather than later. By this time, I had become keenly interested (obsessed, actually) with genealogy and starved for information about my ancestors. I wanted to know the stories behind the heirlooms. Who did they belong to? Where did they come from?
For reasons known only to her, Mom clammed up. I would say to her, “How about if you and I spend some time together cataloging your collectibles? I’ll take pictures of everything and you tell me their stories. That way, the information can be passed on for generations.” She always put me off, and refused to tell me.
This is the cup and saucer that my grandma smuggled into the US, one of my favorite stories about her.
She took that information with her when she died. The only story she ever shared was about a teacup and saucer that my grandma smuggled into the US from Canada. She hid the saucer against her belly, beneath her girdle, and the cup beneath her bra. I thought this was a marvelous story and I treasure it and the cup and saucer.
When I’d ask, as a youngster, to use one of the teacups she’d say in a reverent tone, “No, that’s veryexpensive!”
In reality, they weren’t very expensive. Yes, Royal Albert was a grade or twelve above what we used in daily life, but what she was saying was she didn’t trust me to not break her valuable things. She continued this distrust when she got so mad at me for not settling down into the kind of life she lived, with her house in the suburbs and a safe space to store stuff.
I still don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me the history of the items. I suspect it’s because, in her elder years, she became miserly and felt like everyone wanted to take her things. She felt put upon and taken advantage of, which was truly not the case. No one in the family deliberately did this to her. Everyone was respectful of her things and her fears. I can only assume that this was a buried psychic pattern, an ancestral wound.
Mom valued things for their monetary value and I treasure them for their stories. It breaks my heart that I’ll never know the origins of many of the items.
I’ve chosen to explore this aspect of my mom’s psyche because if she had this bent perspective, so do I, even it’s expressed in a different way. She expressed the dysfunctional pattern as a fear of people taking her things, but it expresses in me as “I’m not good enough, mature enough, responsible enough to take care of very expensive things.”
Perhaps that’s why I choose to look at these very expensive things as stories, instead. I’m a great caretaker of stories. Maybe that’s what made me the family historian. It’s not about the money spent, it’s about the people who spent it.
Now that I’m in possession of a portion of Mom’s collectibles, I keep her teacup collection in her display case, which I inherited. I make a deliberate point of inviting my kids and grandkids to carefully choose a cup for a spot of tea, which I make in my own teapot that I hope someday my kids will fight over inheriting, instead of dreading having to store their mom’s old crap.
My way of breaking this pattern, aside from allowing the kids to respectfully use the teacups, was demonstrated recently on my granddaughter’s 21st birthday. She and I have spent many afternoons sipping tea and eating scones together, and she’s beginning to collect household items for her first apartment. With this in mind, her birthday gift was her very own Royal Albert teapot set, in a design pattern that fits her personality.
I hope she’ll pass her tea set along to her progeny as an heirloom of her own, along with the teacup my grandma smuggled in from Canada in her bra, and the “Feed the Birds” cup that I bought at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and all the other items I’ve told her stories about …
Lisa Bonnice is an award-winning, best-selling author whose “day job” is as a Program Host at The Shift Network, where she hosts summits on ancestral healing, life after death, and intuition and medicine.
Her current passion-project is a series of metaphysical comedy novels. The first is entitled The Poppet Master (previously published as Be Careful What You Witch For!, now revamped and with a new ending). The Poppet Master is a modern-day fairy tale about Lola Garnett, a bored housewife and office drone who wakes up with unexpected psychic abilities, and no instruction manual, and Twink, the reluctant, sarcastic faery assigned to assist and educate her. The Poppet Master is available wherever books are sold. Its sequel is in the works.
Lisa is also writing The Maxwell Curse, a fictionalized version of a story she found in her own ancestral lineage about a witch trial, a generational curse, and massive mine explosion, all of which left ripples of destruction in their wake, devastating one family’s tree.
A commemorative coin I picked up in Saltcoats, Scotland, 2019
It’s 11/11, Veterans Day in the United States. For many New Agers, seeing all ones on the calendar or clock has an angelic meaning, especially at 11:11 on 11/11. In fact, I just happened to be awake at 1:11 this morning and took a screen shot on my phone. Today, however, I’m reminded of something that happened over a hundred years ago — the celebration of Armistice Day and the end of WWI — and I’ve got a marvelous story to tell about synchronicity and an honored ancestor.
My mom’s paternal ancestry is wholly Scottish and her grandmother Helen’s little brother, Buchan Littlejohn, was my second great uncle. Helen raised Buchan and her four younger siblings after their mother died when Helen was fourteen and Buchan was four.
Kilmarnock Standard, November 4, 1916
Buchan joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers shortly after WWI was declared. He was sent as a Private to France and was almost immediately wounded, and sent home in July 1915. He spent eight months convalescing before being sent back to France in March 1916 as a Lance Corporal. He was killed in an attack on Bayonet Trench, during the Battle of Le Transloy at the Somme, October 12, 1916 and eventually buried at the A.I.F. Burial Ground in France.
As both parents had died by that time, Helen was listed as his next of kin on his military records. The military dispersed Buchan’s belongings to her and their other siblings.
WWI Monument, Dreghorn Scotland
When my husband, brother and I visited Scotland last summer, we made a special point of digging up as much information on Buchan as we could find. As there was no local grave to visit, we climbed a steep hill in Dreghorn to find this monument with Buchan’s name on it. He’s listed here with other young men from the area who were killed in the “Great War”. He was only 22.
Short of taking a trip to France to visit his grave, I thought that was the end of the information I could find about my great-grandma’s baby brother. I was wrong.
A few months ago, I found a message in my Ancestry.com inbox from someone named Rita, asking if anyone in my family had ever lived in Tacoma, Washington. She and her husband Roger had found something on their property there, when building their house fifty years ago, and had always wondered how it got there. With the advancements in technology since then, she was finally able to make a real effort to track it down.
What they had found was a Next of Kin Memorial Plaque (also known as a Dead Man’s Penny) with Buchan’s name on it. While this made me tingle with excitement, I had no idea how it could have gotten all the way to the far west coast of the United States.
Helen and her family emigrated to Utah in the early 1920s. She would have received the plaque, as next of kin, in 1919 when they were awarded by King George. She would have brought it with her to Utah, where they settled in the coal mining town of Castle Gate, Carbon County, where three of her older brothers lived and had risen in rank to be foremen and supervisors at various mines in Carbon County.
Helen died shortly after arriving in the States, at the tragically young age of 39. Her husband died six months later, leaving their kids orphaned. Their children all eventually ended up in Michigan. None ever lived in Washington state.
Rita and I corresponded for months, trying to solve the mystery. I chased down all sorts of loose threads on Ancestry.com. Some brought me to Washington state, as a few descendants of Helen’s brothers went west, but no one ended up in Tacoma.
Finally, a breakthrough happened when Ancestry popped up one of their famous “green leaf” hints. I discovered that Helen’s oldest brother’s daughter eventually settled in Tacoma, just a couple miles from Rita’s house. This brother, as head of the family in the US, must have assumed ownership of the plaque after the deaths of Helen and her husband. Helen’s niece, I assume, took possession of the plaque after her father died.
That’s as far as my search took me … just a few short miles away from Rita’s property. Further digging, though, showed me that the niece divorced and remarried. Her new husband just happened to own the property adjacent to Rita and Roger’s new land but because the niece took on her husband’s name, and no longer lived there, there was no way to connect the last name “Littlejohn” to anyone there.
As the niece had no children, the ancestral lineage stopped there. Rita, who has become a good friend, kindly and generously sent the plaque to me, and it hangs in a place of honor in my home.
It may have been my imagination, but the first time I held the plaque in my hands, knowing that it belonged to my great-grandmother — the only one of my great-grandparents I have no picture of — I swear I felt a ripple in time as I ran my fingers over Buchan’s engraved name. I’m quite sure Grandma Helen did the exact same thing, at least once.
Thank you, Rita and Roger, for helping to close the circle and bring Buchan’s memorial plaque back into the family, where he is still remembered and honored.
In loving memory of Buchan Littlejohn, 1894-1916, Lance Corporal – Machine Gun Squadron, Royal Scots Fusiliers
Lisa Bonnice is an award-winning, best-selling author. Her current passion-project is a series of metaphysical comedy novels. The first is entitled The Poppet Master (previously published as Be Careful What You Witch For!, now revamped and with a new ending). The Poppet Master is a modern-day fairy tale about Lola Garnett, a bored housewife and office drone who wakes up with unexpected psychic abilities, and no instruction manual, and Twink, the reluctant, sarcastic faery assigned to assist and educate her. The Poppet Master is available wherever books are sold. Its sequel is in the works.
Lisa is also writing The Maxwell Curse, a fictionalized version of a story she found in her own ancestral lineage about a witch trial, a generational curse, and massive mine explosion, all of which left ripples of destruction in their wake, devastating one family’s tree.
The Saltcoats train and bus station, with connections to Glasgow, Ayr, Kilmarnock and many other places in Ayrshire.
Jeff and I parked the camper for two weeks in Saltcoats because their “holiday park” had the amenities we needed for such a long stay, and it was a centralized location, with a train station, for my genealogy research in Ayrshire. Little did I know, when I booked our spot months before we left the States, that I would also find ancestral connections there!
Saltcoats Town Hall
Saltcoats is a cute little town on the coast of the Firth of Clyde in southwest Scotland, just a short hop to Kilmarnock—where most of my research was to be done—and to Ayr and Glasgow, also places with ancestral connections.
My husband (Jeff), my brother (Mike) and I spent a lot of time bopping around the town on the days that I didn’t feel well enough to be out scouring the countryside for genealogy clues. There were plenty of pubs to keep us busy, including The Salt Cot, where the food and drinks were very affordable and downright delicious. They have a great system where you order by app from your table by giving your table number and paying for it on the app when you order. They were also one of the few places I found with Pimm’s readily available.
On the days I felt well enough to leave the camper, I certainly kept up with Jeff and Mike in the ale sampling, in spite of (or because of?) being sick with a head cold. One of my favorites pubs was the Windy Ha, where Rabbie Burns is said to have been a regular customer because he enjoyed the friendly atmosphere.
The Windy Ha, where Robert Burns is rumored to have been a regular.
There’s a framed print on the wall, inside, saying that Rabbie wrote his 1792 poem, Saw Ye Bonie Lesley, “while having a quiet drink” in the Windy Ha, about a local woman named Lesley, with whom he had fallen in love.
In addition to enjoying our unhurried time in Saltcoats, which allowed us a chance to soak in some genuine Scottish life, as opposed to hurrying from place to place or only visiting tourist sites, imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that my 3x great-grandfather, Alexander Garroch, lived in Saltcoats in his final years, according to the 1901 census.
Alexander is as far back as I can trace the Garroch name in my family tree. He was born around 1827 in Wigtownshire and, from what I can gather, was involved in a paternity suit in 1844 at age 17, while working as a farm laborer. He didn’t marry the girl, and she gave birth to a daughter. He married my 3x great-grandmother, Margaret, when she was 21 (he was 19). They had nine children in 15 years.
My 3x great-grandfather lived at this address at age 75, according to the 1901 census. He lived in many places throughout his life, but retired and probably died here.
Alex and Margaret eventually moved to Riccarton, near Kilmarnock, living for a while in a place called Bridgehouse Cathouse. I assumed, using American vernacular, that this meant it was a house if ill-repute, but my Scottish researcher friends were surprised at that and quickly assured me that it probably meant that there were just a lot of cats hanging out around that house. Many houses had descriptive names instead of street addresses. The local residents knew the houses by these names.
In 1861, they lived in the Gatehead Tollhouse, where Margaret was the toll keeper and Alex worked, again, as a farm laborer. She died in 1870 at the age of 45 and he remarried a woman named Jessie, with whom he eventually moved to Saltcoats and lived as a “Retired Ploughman” according to the census.
The most welcome ancestral connection, though, came in the form of meeting a living and breathing distant cousin, Sandra, who just happened to own a caravan at the same holiday park we were staying in. Sandra and I are related through our shared 5x great-grandmother, Grace Maxwell. Grace has been a brick wall for many of her ancestors, with a lot of different online family trees disagreeing about who her parents were. That mystery has finally been solved, but now her confirmed father, James Maxwell, is the new face of that brick wall.
I had a lovely chat with Sandra and her husband, Bobby, when they came to the park’s laundromat to keep me company as I tried valiantly to do two weeks worth of laundry. We talked like we’ve known one another for lifetimes. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos because I was distracted and looking pretty ragged, after so much traveling. The dryers weren’t working because the fish and chips shop next door had recently caught fire, so the gas was turned off in the building—meaning, no heat in the dryers!
But, just like family, Sandra and Bobby generously volunteered to take my wet laundry back to their house to dry it for me. Weeks later, as I write this, my heart still swells with gratitude for this huge favor. We had no way to get the wet clothes to another local laundromat (we couldn’t drive the camper, due to the diesel/unleaded fuel clusterboink) so I was screwed. My cousin’s willingness to help was such a godsend! Thank you, Sandra and Bobby!
And, of course, here’s you another dug (Scottish for dog), this one waiting for its people on the main drag in Saltcoats:
Lisa Bonnice is an award-winning, best-selling author. Her current passion-project is a series of metaphysical comedy novels. The first is entitled The Poppet Master (previously published as Be Careful What You Witch For!, now revamped and with a new ending). The Poppet Master is a modern-day fairy tale about Lola Garnett, a bored housewife and office drone who wakes up with unexpected psychic abilities, and no instruction manual, and Twink, the reluctant, sarcastic faery assigned to assist and educate her. The Poppet Master will be available in summer 2019. Its sequel is in the works.
Lisa is also writing The Maxwell Curse, a fictionalized version of a story she found in her own ancestral lineage about a witch trial, a generational curse, and massive mine explosion, all of which left ripples of destruction in their wake, devastating one family’s tree.
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