Rocked by tragedy MARIA BIGGEST
The evicted Bachelor et te shares her private pain
She’s an ultramarathon runner, a recordbreaking swimmer and a selfless humanitarian. After five years spent in the navy, she is currently studying for a PhD. It’s an amazing list of achievements for solo mum Mariana Morrison, but in the end that’s what intimidated Zac Franich, who sent her packing from TheBachelor NewZealand.
This attitude is nothing new for the Rotorua beauty, 31, who confesses her accomplishments have put off potential love interests in the past. The granddaughter of the late Kiwi entertainer Sir Howard Morrison reveals to Woman’s
Day, “It’s awesome to have all these great accolades and achievements, but the PhDs, the titles and all the rest of it doesn’t mean anything if you have no-one to share them with.
“Guys get fixated on where I come from – my koro and then there’s my dad, who is a presenter on
HuntingAotearoa – and I’m just an amusement park to them,” she says. “Once the amusement park is over, they never want a relationship.”
However, after years of heartbreak, lovelorn Mariana – who describes raising her seven-year-old daughter Kahurangi alone as “the hardest thing the world has ever thrown at me” – had hoped that meeting Bachelor Zac would finally bring her happiness.
Family grief
In 2014, Mariana lost her mother to cancer and suffered a miscarriage. Shortly after, her beloved nana Frances Toi died too. “It was tragedy after tragedy – there are no words to truly describe that loss,” she tells. “The grief doesn’t ever really go away. You just find a way to cope and, for me, I focus my energy into helping others.
“After everything I’d been through, I really thought that
TheBachelor was going to be my moment. I honestly believed that I was finally going to meet ‘the one’, but you can’t force someone to fall in love with you. Zac and I just weren’t meant to be.”
While Mariana admits that leaving the popular Three reality series mansion without her dream man was disappointing, the real
heartache came after filming in February, when she was woken up by a phone call telling her that her 17-yearold cousin, Kiriana Morrison, had died in a car crash in Auckland.
“My heart will be broken forever,” tells Mariana, who had visited Auckland fleetingly that weekend but deeply regrets not having time to see Kiriana.
“She was my only female first cousin. We were like sisters. She looked to me as a role model.”
While there are so many things she would like to say to her “baby cousin” if she were still alive, Mariana – who also appeared on Maori Television dating show FindingAroha in 2016 – wishes she got the chance to tell her she made it on to TheBachelor. “I actually applied for The
Bachelor the year before,” she explains. “I sent through a video that Kiriana must’ve watched a million times. And when I went on Finding
Aroha, she wanted to come
with me as my support person. She’d have been my number-one fan.”
While Mariana is still heartbroken and struggling to comprehend life without her cousin, she’s staying strong for her little girl.
“I was 23 when I had Kahurangi,” Mariana tells us. “I was in no position to have a daughter, but she’s been the making of me. She’s caring and compassionate, like an old soul. One day, I would love to have more.”