Straight from an Adopted Heart
by Lisa Elliott

I was ten years old when I took a road trip with my dad from Toronto, where our family of five lived, to Windsor, Ontario. It was an exciting trip as it wasn’t very often that my dad and I got to spend one-on-one, father-daughter time together. 

When we arrived in Windsor, we slowly drove around one particular neighbourhood. Weaving and winding through the streets, circling round and round one of the blocks. It became evident my dad was in search of something. We finally pulled off to the side of the road and parked across from a restricted, fenced in area where it was evident that a building had, at one time, occupied its space. We sat there in silence for quite some time while my dad stared at the empty lot. Puzzled, I asked him what he was looking for. He didn’t give me much of an answer other than to say that some people he once knew used to live there. Our drive home was a quiet one.

Years later, I would come to find out that the vacant lot we parked across the street from that day was the location where my dad’s birth parents had once lived. Unfortunately, not only did it bring him face to face with the reality of their absence. But it opened wide the gaping hole in his heart and ongoing void in his life.

You see, my dad was adopted. And he’s been on a lifelong search for his identity. Who would have ever dreamed that he would confront it while sitting in a lawyer’s office preparing his will at the age of eighty?

As the lawyer, sitting across a large desk from him, shuffled through the file, he came across a document that seemed out of place. The lawyer asked, “Who’s this guy?” This guy alluding to the name on the document: Ross Annett Mann. My dad, startled, simply replied, “That’s me.”

Over his lifelong search on the internet, in public libraries, and the Children’s Aid Society, my dad uncovered scant fragments of his past. At one point, he met up with a doctor who cautiously provided his parents’ surnames. This eventually led to another search which produced their wedding announcement. He learned that Joseph Daniel Mann (son of Mr. and Mrs.Charles Mann of Ilderton) and Afilena Pearl Bourne (eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Bourne of Lambeth) gave birth to a son, Ross Annett Mann, on May 27, 1937 at the Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario. A further search led him to the tombstone marker of his maternal grandparents; Joseph Bourne (1872-1948) and Elizabeth Gordon (1886-1966) at Trinity Anglican Church in Lambeth, Ontario. 

He has been on a search for his Bourne identity and a Mann by the name of Joseph for most of his life. His search initiated just after he turned seventeen when he unsuspectingly walked into a drunken brawl between, whom he knew to be, his parents. The drinking was not uncommon, nor was the arguing. Sadly, however, somehow my dad got in the middle of the brawl that would change his life and cause him to question his identity for decades to follow.

“Why don’t you go back to Lambeth, where you came from?” cried out the one he called, Mum.

A slap across the face or a sucker punch to the gut would have had less impact and caused far less damage than what those foul words did as they escaped his mother’s mouth and flew across the room—landing squarely on the target of my dad’s tender heart and vulnerable mind. This outburst sent him reeling in confusion. Up until that moment in time my dad had absolutely no idea he was adopted. To his knowledge, his only identity was Ronald Gene Stinchcombe.

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

At his step-dad’s prompting, his mom reluctantly imparted mere morsels of my dad’s concealed origin—with little explanation.

"Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell" (James 3:5-6, NIV). Setting the whole course of one’s life on fire is one way to put it. The shocking revelation of his adoption propelled my dad on a desperate search that continues to this day.

Unsure of what he was expected to do—or not do—and unsure of whom he could or should trust, he no longer felt at home in his home. Not that he ever really had. 

Driven by desperation, but paralyzed by fear. Wanting to know the truth, but unsure if he wanted to know it. Collecting evidence and putting as many of the fragments of his life together as possible through various sources and ongoing research—all in hopes of gathering enough pieces of the puzzle to make a picture. Years spent searching for answers to questions he should have been able to easily answer in order to fill out a medical history form, a passport, or a resume were nowhere to be found. 

It wasn’t until June 1, 2009 he received the official document of his adoption. Never have I witnessed such longing as I did the day he showed me the frail, yellowed piece of paper. His eyes transfixed on the names of his birth parents as he carefully traced their signatures with his fingertips. As if hoping the gesture would reveal secrets of his lost past—secrets he was desperate to uncover about his whereabouts. Any hint that he had a history, a reason for being—an identity. 

I can still hear his choked words, “I now know that I once belonged to someone.”

Rejection: haunting, stifling, paralyzing, and immobilizing. It’s the perfect soil for the seeds of failure, unworthiness, inadequacy, guilt, and shame to grow in. These, when fertilized with lies, tilled with regret, and watered with fear only serve to produce frustration, anger, and depression.

While I can’t claim to fully understand my Dad’s pain. I can appreciate his yearning for a sense of identity. I understand because I, too, am adopted. I’ve been adopted into the family of God, my Heavenly Father (Eph. 1:5). I’ve learned that my true identity can only be found in relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ. That is my hope for this Mann I call Dad who is, to this very day, in search of his Bourne identity.

* * *

My Dad’s story has been stirring in his heart throughout his entire life. I’ve been hearing fragments of it throughout mine. So, being the first person on the face of the earth he could actually claim as his own blood relative, who better than me to put it all together for him?

When I asked his permission to write his story, again, the effects of his adoption came bubbling to the surface—his past as present as it’s ever been. He could hardly contain himself.

He regurgitated details of his life at such a rampant pace that I couldn’t transcribe quick enough.

He shared with such luster I could barely take it all in. It was evident in the depth of detail he shared that the story that had haunted him all of his life was begging to be released. I witnessed urgency as well as a fresh, raw yearning to find a true sense of worth and value. It’s my prayer that this story will help him find just that. Who knows… maybe writing and publishing this piece will be the vehicle to help my Dad find the missing pieces of his lost identity and redeem the years that the locusts have eaten.

About this Contributor:

Lisa Elliott is an inspirational speaker and award-winning author of The Ben Ripple, Dancing in the Rain, and A Ministry Survival Guide. She’s also a writer for Just Between Us Magazine, theStory, and Good Ground. She and her husband, David, have four children (three on earth, one in heaven) and serve the Lord together in Stratford, ON, Canada.