Lekan Otufodunrin writes on the search by a Canadian lady for her Nigerian father who along with the mother gave her up for adoption at birth.
SHE was born in October 1975 in Ontario, Canada by a Nigerian father and a French-Canadian mother who, she has never met. At birth, Marianne Turner was given up for adoption by her parents who could not agree on marriage for her sake.
Through the Adoption Registry in Canada, her mother was found and, although she initially agreed to meet with her, she changed her mind midway through the process and ended up declining to meet her daughter.
Having failed to meet her mother, Marianne is desperately searching for her Nigerian father who ironically she doesn’t have any personal information about except for his country based on what she was told by her adoptive mother.
“I am not asking for anything of my birth father. My only hope is to have the chance to meet my father so that I know where I come from” Marianne, a singer, dancer, songwrite and recreational athlete told The Nation Online in an email interview.
In search of her roots
“I’ve gone through life feeling rather rootless and floating, incomplete and desperately triggered by loss and change. I have worked hard to try and overcome these feelings but it’s not always easy. It’s like a blueprint on my soul.
“At the present moment, sometimes I am very excited and feeling alive about the possibility of finding my birth father. I believe that anything is possible. It would be quite a bit to digest if I were to meet him, and perhaps even a line of new relatives. I am very curious to see if I have any physical features or personality traits in common,” she said.
The scanty information she has about her father is that he would have been in Canada in the early/mid 1970s and would have completed two years of university training.
She stated further: “My birth father moved to Canada to do some university training sometime in the mid 1970s, met my birth mother, and the young couple dated for eight months. Marriage was discussed but my birth mother did not feel their relationship was sufficiently deep and did not feel they should marry ‘for the sake of the baby.”
“They broke off with each other since she made the decision to give me up for adoption. I’ve been told that my father returned to Nigeria at some point, and although I know that he completed two years of University. I am not sure if he would have completed his training in this amount of time. My only guess is that he came to Canada as early as 1972 or 1973. But this is only my assumption based on the likelihood that he was not in Canada before his training started” Marianne stated.
While many would say that Marainne has had a very dynamic and interesting life despite being adopted at birth, she says “my heart and soul have never fully been at peace”. To connect with her African root, she has being in Kenya for about three months “to learn about the African culture in hopes that I might gain a stronger sense of my identity”. Her plan to visit Nigeria was aborted due to some challenges but still hopes to come over if she finds her father.
Nostalgia
Marianne is grateful for the very loving family that adopted her, the friends and experiences she has had, but expectedly it is hard for her to get over the feeling of not knowing her birth parents, particularly her father.
“I have no idea what I’d say to the man that is my birth father, but I’d like to have the opportunity to experience that moment. I don’t think that it will necessarily undo the blueprint that has made me who I am today, but I do hope that it will bring me some peace and lessen what sometimes feels like an intense insatiability to feel connected to something.”
Marianne can be contacted through her email: emmturner@gmail.com
