To some, my story is a testament that good things happen and dreams come true. Although living in the United States my entire life, I’ve noticed optimistic thinking is not universal.
We seem to come from a place where our glass is always half full. I used to have that same mindset for many years, but something shifted inside me regarding how I view life and the world. In this post, I share details of my beginnings and my story about reuniting with my biological family.
Pin Me for Later!
This is the ninth post in the Nigeria travel series. Here’s the complete 10-part series:
Nigeria Travel Series
Bucket List: 7 Reasons Why You Should Visit Nigeria At Least Once
Travel Guide: The Ultimate Lagos, Nigeria Travel Guide: For First-Time Visitors
Food: 9 Popular Foods To Eat In Nigeria
Packing Guide: The Complete Packing List for Your Trip to Nigeria
Travel Tips: 13 Things You Need To Know Before Visiting Lagos, Nigeria
Inspiration: 15 Photos That Will Make You Want To Visit Nigeria
Tourist Visa: 5 Tips for U.S. Citizens Applying for a Nigerian Tourist Visa
Lagos: 11 Best Things To do in Lagos
My Story: Homegoing: Reuniting with My Biological Family
Travel Itinerary: How to spend 5-day in Lagos, Nigeria
Homegoing: Reuniting with my biological family
The Beginning
From a small village in southeastern Nigeria, my parents moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1980s to do what every immigrant family sets out to do, search for a better life resulting in more opportunities. My father was studying at the Massachusetts School of Pharmacy, and my mother was pursuing her nursing degree at a local college.
We lived in downtown Boston, near Fenway Park, in an apartment building with mostly Igbo people who also migrated to the U.S. We shared an apartment with my godparents; they were also going to school. My father and godfather took classes during the day, then drove taxis until the wee hours of the morning.
While I don’t remember being an infant or toddler, I was told I was a chubby and cheerful baby. I always had a smile on my face.
As life happens to many of us, it occurred to my parents they were busy working, going to school, and raising two little girls.
My father met his untimely death on a hot summer day in July. He had died of a drug overdose. It was unfathomable to believe that my father was into drugs, especially for my family, who knew him dearly. When you are so far away from home, I think you might do anything for the sake of comfort and to numb the pain of sadness and loneliness.
My father was the firstborn son of my grandfather’s last wife. Yes, my granddaddy was a busy man with three wives! You would see him MC-ing every party there was! He was the pride and joy of the family, not to mention the life of the party.
My mother suffered from mental health issues, and back then, you were labeled as crazy, not as someone who needed help. I will also add that historically, Boston is known not to be the friendliest city for people of color, especially foreigners! With my father passing, the glue that held everything together was unraveling.
According to Igbo culture, my mother was expected to return home with my father’s body and bury him with the rest of my family. But what was my mother to do? She did not have a green card herself. She was in the country because she married my father, the green card holder.
After receiving much pressure from family to return to Nigeria and bury my father, she willingly obliged to fulfill her wifely duties. The plan was for her to go home long enough for the burial and return to the states, where my sister and I would be waiting.
I was too young to comprehend everything going on and the level of severity of our circumstances. Little did we know that with my mother returning to Nigeria, we would never see her again.
This part of the story gets foggy. I mentioned that my mother suffered from mental health issues and later discovered she had bipolar disorder. I attended a nearby daycare, and the staff was concerned I wasn’t being looked after properly.
This pattern continued, and one of the teachers called the department of social services. Unfortunately, the courts deemed my mother unfit to look after my sister and me. As a result, my sister and I became the custody of the state of Massachusetts.
Foster Care
My experience in foster care wasn’t pleasant. My sister and I were placed together in a few foster homes. It’s where much neglect and nefarious activities happen, and no one is concerned. Not all, but some unscrupulous people take in foster children because of the monetary incentives they receive from the government.
Fast forward to a few months or a year. I can’t be sure, given my young age trying to account for the timeline accurately. I had an uncle and aunty living in Maryland with three small children around the same age as my sister and me, who came forward to take us in. We lived with our biological family for five years.
Children are incredibly resilient, and at the time, I didn’t realize I had been through more trauma than most people experience in a lifetime.
My aunt and uncle proceeded with the adoption paperwork to keep my sister and me in the family. They were two weeks away from completing the adoption when suddenly, we were sent back to Boston and placed with another foster family.
Adoption
When people look to adopt children, they rarely keep siblings together. You almost always hear stories about siblings being split up or one getting adopted but not the other. In the fall of 1992, a family took us in and adopted us. I thank my lucky stars every day that we stayed together.
When my sister and I were adopted, the social worker told my adoptive family that given the severity of trauma we experienced early on, we wouldn’t make it past high school and that I would be pregnant with several children by age 18. The false narrative was ingrained in us from the start.
The Suburbs
Growing up in a predominantly white and Jewish area in Boston, I stuck out like a sore thumb, and all I wanted to do was fit in. So much so that I made up a name so my Nigerian name wouldn’t be the target of ridicule and laughter.
Given the amount of moving we did in our earlier years, we adapted pretty quickly. We were introduced to new sports, people, and experiences.
There was something always missing. That empty feeling I carried around for so many years in silence was that I never really felt like I belonged. I never felt like I fit in. I had so many questions that went unanswered. For instance, why was my name spelled the way it was, and how will I ever get to know and learn my culture. What was my biological last name?
So many nights, I would lay wide awake, wondering what exactly happened to my parents and why I couldn’t see them. I understood my father passed away, but I couldn’t ever understand what happened to my mother.
When people would ask where I was from, I couldn’t say, which embarrassed me to no end, especially if I met other Nigerians.
I wanted to learn about my culture and know where I came from. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue as to where to start. When I shared my story with others, I’d receive such pitiful or sad looks like the “Damn. I feel sorry for you.” Which I then began to internalize.
However, despite what the social worker had to say, my sister and I graduated from high school, college, and grad school. It shows you that just because you may come from unfortunate beginnings doesn’t mean the false narrative you’re told about yourself has any truth.
Then There Was Facebook
Like most college kids, when Facebook first surfaced, I used it to connect with people I went to high school and college.
Sometimes, I would deactivate my account to go off the grid for a few months. One day I had a lightbulb moment and thought that maybe I could find my aunt, uncle, and cousins I lived in Maryland. I searched the platform with the bit of memory I had of them but never had any luck.
Christmas Miracle
The week before Christmas, I was in Boston working my part-time seasonal job when I called my sister to check in and see how she was doing. We talked for a few minutes, and she mentioned she received a message on FB messenger from a lady asking about our past and if she remembered living with them many years ago. Before my sister could finish her sentence, I screamed, “IT’S THEM!! THEY FOUND US. OUR FAMILY FOUND US!!”
I didn’t have Facebook access on my phone, so when I got home, I checked FB, and sure enough, there was a message from my cousin, the same one who reached out to my sister with an almost identical message. The feelings I had at that moment were indescribable.
So many things started racing through my mind once we chatted back and forth. I asked my cousin about my mother. I initially confused her parents’ name with my parents’ name. I learned my mother passed away several years ago from an infection. I was devastated by the news but didn’t feel a complete loss seeing how we’d been separated for so long.
After connecting the dots and speaking with my aunty and uncle, who had the best memory of us, we arranged a visit to reunite.
The Reunion
In typical fashion, I had a trip planned to Cuba at the end of the year, so we made plans to visit my family in Maryland once we returned. My aunts and cousins had a trip already booked for Nigeria, and because it was too last minute, I couldn’t go. My aunt and cousin shared pictures of us when we all lived together to jog our memory.
Slowly some memories came flooding back to me, but I was so caught up with emotions and had so many questions I was overwhelmed by everything. While visiting, my aunt mentioned that my grandmother, my mother’s mother was still alive and continued to pray daily. My entire family back home did the same. They never gave up hope.
While on their trip to Nigeria, my cousin took a picture with my grandmother and sent it to me. I fell to the ground because I couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew immediately from the woman’s features she was my grandmother!
I felt like I was staring back at a picture of my sister, but if she were an older woman. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to go to Nigeria and meet my family!
Homegoing
In 2018, my aunt, sister, and I traveled back to Nigeria. I had no idea what to expect; part of me was scared. I had never traveled so far away and heard wild stories about kidnappings in Nigeria. My first impression of Lagos was, wow! A lot is happening in this city! After spending the night in Lagos, we rose before the sun the following day and ventured out for the 9-hour car ride to southeastern Nigeria. We were heading to meet my grandmother and other family members for the first time.
Driving through Nigeria was an experience that I will never forget. Don’t even get me started about the traffic! Never in my life did I see so many vendors, people, and police looking for what I like to call “donations” along the way.
Once we arrived in the village, my aunt made a few phone calls, and suddenly visitors started coming out of nowhere. People who knew my parents and wanted to pay their respects or heard about our story through the grapevine wished to come to see us for themselves.
The following morning, we walked across the main dirt road in my parents’ village of Ihioma. My aunt knocked on the door, and a lady with a familiar face came to the door. My aunt and the lady stared at each other for a few minutes, and suddenly the lady turned to look at me. Immediately she started screaming, “Thank you, God, God is so good,” and ran straight toward my sister and I. Moments later, my grandmother appeared to see the commotion.
For the first time in my entire life, I felt the warm embrace of family. My biological family! Tears streamed down my eyes as my grandmother and aunts jumped around in a circle laughing, singing, and thanking God for keeping my sister and me safe and, more importantly, together after all this time.
I learned I had a passport at five months old, which solidified my theory that I’m destined to travel! Little did I know, my grandmother kept our original birth certificates and baby pictures I had never seen in my life. She had albums filled with pictures of my sister and me as newborns and of my parents living in Boston.
The news spread quickly that my sister and I had returned home, and family traveled far and wide to see us. I learned I come from a big loving family. On my father’s side, there are three sets of identical twins! My grandmother, a widower, is a business owner and raised six children alone. My grandfather passed away when my mother was a girl.
The pieces to the puzzle were slowly coming together. Seeing family that looked like me and learning the meaning of my name, which means God who gives or blesses, was more than I could ever ask for. I visited my parents’ grave and spoke to them. They were smiling down on my sister and me for returning home.
It was such a joyous occasion and only a miracle. My family never stopped praying, never gave up hope, and knew that we would be reunited one day again.
Since then, my relationships with my family have gotten stronger. Knowing I can call my family at any time, know where I come from, know that I belong, and know that I’ve always been loved is a blessing for which I will be eternally grateful.
If Mark Zuckerburg had never created Facebook, my cousin wouldn’t have found us, and I would’ve continued down my path but always wondered about such important pieces to me and my story.
I am thankful for everything, and even though my story started with unfortunate and devastating beginnings, I am so so proud to say that I’m still standing. My sister and I are our parents’ legacy and continue living out their dream of coming to America and making something of ourselves.
That’s what they set out to do, and unfortunately, they couldn’t live out their vision; we continue in their footsteps. I didn’t give up, and it’s a testament to myself. If you’re reading this, then keep going, and keep pushing for your dreams because miracles do happen and I’m living proof!
Conclusion – Lady Chin’s Two Cents
What’s next, you might ask? Now that I have my original birth certificate and my parents’ documents, I plan to apply for my Nigerian passport. Dual citizenship, here I come!
Related Posts
Liked this post? Pin it and save it for later!
