Her 47th birthday came and went recently, and there was no phone call, card, gift, hug from her birth father for Lisa Marshall.
Just like the last 46 birthdays.
That’s because the Vernon Magazine distributor has no idea who her birth father is.
“He can’t even know I exist,” said Marshall, married with two grown children.
Marshall has been looking for her birth parents for more than 25 years. She has been known since she was young that she was adopted. Her adoptive parents had five boys and were still trying to find a girl, so they adopted Marshall.
She found her birth mother, a woman named Sharon Bolen, 21 years ago. And Bolen wasn’t at all thrilled to learn that Marshall’s adoptive parents had helped by pulling a trick.
“She called me at 6:30 am from North Carolina and she wasn’t very happy,” Marshall said. “My parents found her in a lie and said they knew her when she lived in Vancouver and wanted to know where she was.”
They talked for about 45 minutes. Marshall let Bolen yell at him and got mad at her for finding her, which Marshall says she “totally understands”. Bolen asked what information Marshall was looking for. Marshall was specific: she wanted the name of her birth father.
Bolen never told her.
“I tried to ask as many questions as possible,” said Marshall. “Give me some medical information about the family. She wouldn’t tell me who my father was. I asked, she just said no.
“She announced that she didn’t want any contact with me at all and I respected that. It’s her life, her secrets. But she didn’t give me any clues as to who my father is. “
Through her research, Marshall determined that Sharon likely became pregnant in Regina and moved to Vancouver to live with a sister (Marshall was born at Grace Hospital in Vancouver). Marshall contacted the sister and, like Sharon, said Marshall was not happy to have made contact with the family.
Marshall believes her father was around 30 years old at the time, which – if he was still alive – would make him 76 or 77.
Marshall never spoke to Bolen again. Through Facebook, she discovered that her birth mother had a profile page, and when Marshall clicked on that page, she found that she had died.
She also discovered that she had a sister, Nicole, who lives in North Carolina, and a brother, Chris, who lives in Europe. The trio plans to meet at family events in Saskatchewan and North Carolina this year.
Marshall is the oldest of the three siblings and said Nicole told her they have the same father.
“She’s been amazing since we first got in touch,” said Marshall, who spends a few hours every night on her laptop doing research. She has created a family tree, but the branch that would lead to her birth father is missing.
“I would like to meet him and talk to him or one of his relatives, sons, daughters, cousins,” she said. “I’ve postponed it for the past 21 years because I thought Sharon would come over and give me information. She never did. “
Her family is totally behind her goal of finding her father.
“You were great,” she said. “It was never a secret that I was adopted and it shouldn’t be.”
She’s done DNA testing and regularly reviews ancestry.ca, but she’s hoping someone can read her story and suggest another way to help track down her birth father.
Anyone with suggestions can email Marshall at lisamarshall5@shaw.ca.
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