Nora Kathleen Mann O'Brien came into this world on November 9, 1946, the eldest childmary of Francis and Vera Mann of Arlington, Virginia. She left it on May 21, 2026.

She was, above all, a woman who received the world gladly — even when the world was heavy.

Raised in Arlington, Nora found her true home in Loudoun County, where she put down roots in 1976. For nearly five decades, she was a proud resident of Round Hill, Virginia — a place that suited her: quiet, rooted, and full of growing things. Her garden was her sanctuary and her canvas, tended with the same patient devotion she gave to everything she loved.

Nora had an artist's soul in the fullest sense. She painted. She sculpted. She sewed. She sketched. She created beauty with her hands as naturally as she breathed, and the things she made carried something of her in them — warmth, intention, a quiet originality. Creation was likely also her refuge. She was an introvert by nature, most herself in stillness, in making, in the interior life she cultivated with great care.

She read voraciously and thought deeply, drawn especially to the mystical and the searching. She loved Jesus with the full-hearted sincerity of someone who also wanted to know what lay just beyond the edges of the known — the fairy traditions, the ancient wisdom, the teachings of Edgar Cayce. Her faith was capacious enough to hold all of it. She was a hippy and a Catholic and saw no contradiction in either. That same faith, no doubt, was also what sustained her through a life that asked a great deal of her.

Nora loved her children with everything she had, and she gave that love without condition — through joy and through hardship, through the ordinary and the extraordinarily difficult. She carried much quietly, the way mothers often do, and she carried it with grace even when grace was hard to find. Her anxiety was real, her burdens were real, and her love was real. All three, together, made her who she was.

Nora was preceded in death by her parents; her sister, Mary Teresa Mann; and her brother, Francis (Frank) Mann. She is survived by her sister, Vera; and by her children: Teresa Baker, Dorri O'Brien, Mike O'Brien and his wife Megan, Patrick O'Brien and his wife Johnette, and Johanna O'Brien. All of her children attended Loudoun County Public Schools. She leaves behind ten grandchildren: Jonathan, Brennan, Joseph, McKenna, John Michael, Sam, Joseph, Ava, Nora, and Zoe.

Fear not, for I am with you.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Loudoun Education Foundation's student mental health fund at: loudouneducationfoundation.org/donate. Include "in memory of Nora" in the memo.

The family will hold a private celebration of life in the coming months.