To know who you are is important and many children do not know who they are. Being adopted comes with challenges for the adopted and the adopted parents concerning identity. Centering the child to his or her identity is a major concern to adoption reformers. Adopted children many times find they have not bonded with their adopted parents and search for that missing link that bonding with a birth parent can bring. Also many content successful adoption matches feel the need to seek out who their birth parents were and find out the whys and how comes of their adoption.
Twenty, thirty or forty years ago adoptions were being kept very secret. Non-disclosure was the rule of the day. Many times they were born out of wedlock to teenage parents that had no way to care for an infant. The adoption occurred with the social stigma of not allowing the name of the birth parent to be found out, this was to ward off embarrassment to the family.
This is 2010 and stigmas have changed. Now it is not the end all to have a baby out of wedlock and we now face the facts that adoption may be the best resource for many couple to go to. This era supports open adoptions where the birth parents can have contact and knowledge how the child is doing. The process seems to bring less conflict to the child in dealing with their identity. More emphasis is being put on helping the families be whole.
This year Minnesota Legislation Bill 1679 authored by Representative Simon is being sponsored so that people that have been adopted can request information at age 19 about their birth parents. If the adoption is a non-disclosure adoption, there will be avenues where the adopted can petition the court for disclosure. The bill is stuck in the Minnesota House with some authors dropping out much to the dismay of many progressive adoption reformers.
My friend was adopted in the late 40’s and was adopted by not very nice parents. She wanted to find her birth parents in 70’s but was not allowed to because of the non-disclosure agreement. In her case her father had put her up for adoption and pressured the mother to release to adopt. Finding her mother was her greatest quest; she had to wait until the death of her adopted mother to petition the courts for information. She found her birth mother after a great search and that bonding was the missing link of her identity.
I am parents of adopted children that were neglected. They knew their birth parents and they have the names of their birth parents. We all know at some point they will go to meet their birth parents and find out who they are now. They are not as curious as some adopted children are and that is because they remember who these birth parents were. The link of identity is known to them and the safety of their new life has helped them move on to a better life of peace within themselves.
This Bill 1679 can help children that were born under the stigma of embarrassment. It will help the adopted find closure of who they are. Society is now more open to disclosure of the past; although there maybe some still stuck in the past that do not want to be reunited. This may turn painful for some, but for others a sense of knowing where they came from will be healing. Now we wait for the Minnesota Legislators to find their way through this bill to help the adopted find their identities.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Bergwall, Blog 6: A New Way To Bury
March 18, 2010 Senator Pappas of the Minnesota State Senate introduced a bill that would allow more freedom in viewing, transporting, and removal of a dead human body. Bill SP2903 was introduced and modified to HP 3151 and the passed by both House and Senate relating to mortuary science or funerals. Governor Pawlenty signed it into a bill April 28, 2010.
This bill gave the right of bereaved relative or guardian to be able to transport and prepare the remains for burial. Doctor Michael Osterholm from the University of Minnesota State Epidemiology Department testified before Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security about the safety of handling a dead body. Osterholm testified that he was a 100% certain that an intact body will not contaminated anyone with an infectious disease. Most deaths (85%) he cited were of the heart attack or cancer variety and with an intact body it was very safe to care for and transport the body by family. This put many fears to rest for the legislators.
Before the bill was passed you had to make special arrangement to be alone with the body and have to have special arrangements to transport the body. The bill came about because families did not like incurring the expense of mortuaries without a viable alternative. Families started objecting to embalming the body for environmental reasons and finding that the embalming process would last only two weeks anyway. The process in keeping the body preserved was started in WWI for keeping our dead soldiers bodies whole until they could be buried at their own home cemetery and that is where embalming came in.
This practice of embalming and the mortuary’s handling all affairs is relatively a new process. Before that most funerals were done at home with the deceased being viewed in the parlor and buried in a church cemetery or a home cemetery. “The personal aspect of families taking care of their dead has been lost,” a sponsor of the bill inform. Anyone who picked up a body now has to sign a certificate where the body is going and there are many other restrictions. This new bill gives transportation rights to family and 72 hours to take care of the funeral preparations.
Stories of home burials and preparations were told at the hearing about the closeness of the experience. It made it easier for the families to say goodbye and grieve in a normal way, the witnesses testified at the hearing before the Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security at the Minnesota Legislation. Stories were told of decorating and preparing the coffins and how the family reflected and told tales about the individual’s life during that time. This is usually done with the help of dry ice instead of embalming fluid which allowed the family to do this. There is a change and this personal touch is coming back into vogue instead of the former ides that have made the burial process homogenized.
This freedom of how families want to say goodbye to their loved ones is growing in popularity. It is definitely felt in the State of Minnesota as it goes forward with the passing and signing Bill SP2903 into law. It may not be for everyone but the grassroots of living and dying is taking hold of American lives. Minnesota is ahead in this learning curve and that is good for Minnesota.
This bill gave the right of bereaved relative or guardian to be able to transport and prepare the remains for burial. Doctor Michael Osterholm from the University of Minnesota State Epidemiology Department testified before Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security about the safety of handling a dead body. Osterholm testified that he was a 100% certain that an intact body will not contaminated anyone with an infectious disease. Most deaths (85%) he cited were of the heart attack or cancer variety and with an intact body it was very safe to care for and transport the body by family. This put many fears to rest for the legislators.
Before the bill was passed you had to make special arrangement to be alone with the body and have to have special arrangements to transport the body. The bill came about because families did not like incurring the expense of mortuaries without a viable alternative. Families started objecting to embalming the body for environmental reasons and finding that the embalming process would last only two weeks anyway. The process in keeping the body preserved was started in WWI for keeping our dead soldiers bodies whole until they could be buried at their own home cemetery and that is where embalming came in.
This practice of embalming and the mortuary’s handling all affairs is relatively a new process. Before that most funerals were done at home with the deceased being viewed in the parlor and buried in a church cemetery or a home cemetery. “The personal aspect of families taking care of their dead has been lost,” a sponsor of the bill inform. Anyone who picked up a body now has to sign a certificate where the body is going and there are many other restrictions. This new bill gives transportation rights to family and 72 hours to take care of the funeral preparations.
Stories of home burials and preparations were told at the hearing about the closeness of the experience. It made it easier for the families to say goodbye and grieve in a normal way, the witnesses testified at the hearing before the Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security at the Minnesota Legislation. Stories were told of decorating and preparing the coffins and how the family reflected and told tales about the individual’s life during that time. This is usually done with the help of dry ice instead of embalming fluid which allowed the family to do this. There is a change and this personal touch is coming back into vogue instead of the former ides that have made the burial process homogenized.
This freedom of how families want to say goodbye to their loved ones is growing in popularity. It is definitely felt in the State of Minnesota as it goes forward with the passing and signing Bill SP2903 into law. It may not be for everyone but the grassroots of living and dying is taking hold of American lives. Minnesota is ahead in this learning curve and that is good for Minnesota.
Bergwall, Blog 5: Car Accident in Cambridge
On Sunday, April, 25, around 2:40 a.m., a 2000 Oldsmobile Bravada SUV driven by Josh Netzel, 24 of Sandstone, was traveling east-bound on Hwy. 95 when it collided with a 1998 Pontiac Grand Am, driven by Schumacher, heading west-bound.
The accident occurred on Hwy. 95, just west of the Cambridge Rum River Bridge.
Travis Buchan, 17, of Cambridge; Kelsee Blackledge, 15, of Isanti; Tres Kendryna-Whitefeather, 16, of Cambridge and Travis Gryczkowski, 21, of Cambridge, all passengers in the Grand Am, were killed.
Both Netzel and his passenger, Aaron Neuschwander, 23, of Mora, were also killed. The Bravada SUV burst into flames upon impact.
The driver, SeBrina Schumacher, is now in satisfactory condition at Hennepin County Medical Center.
The family released a statement through HCMC that said, “The family of SeBrina Schumacher confirms that they’ve been notified of the results of the blood alcohol test that was taken at Cambridge Medical Center. According to the test, there was no alcohol in her system at the time of the crash.”
These excerpts are from the Isant County News about the recent accident that captivated the attention of the State of Minnesota. The community of Cambridge woke up that Sunday morning finding out that four high school students driving a Pontiac from CIHS were dead along with two men in their twenties driving an SUV. The only survivor was a student who was sixteen, she had recently passed her driving test and was now reported to be in a comma. Speculation of drunk driving surfaced right away about the students because an officer on the scene had smelled liquor from the crashed car.
The wind of stories whipped around Cambridge as the unfolding of the identities came forth. Toxicology reports were being done on all involved. The news stations from the Twin Cities got involved with a discussion of why the students were not using seat belts and how come the 16 year old female was driving that many people after curfew. The focus was mainly on the students. More trepidation began when it was reported by EMT’s that in all their years they had never seen such a horrific accident. The mourning vigil of the young people and family started with signing poster boards and hanging flowers at the crash site. These actions filled our TV local news and captivated our local highway. The communities heart sank as they watched everything unfold and knowing that the local prom was less than a week away. Speculation occurred whether the teens now had learned from this heartbreak.
Cambridge had done its mock drills and the local EMT’s did do a program about driving and drinking weeks before for the CIHS student body. They were not lax in the warning and were dismayed that state critics would think that they were not educating the teens on teen survival subjects. The school and community got on their haunches and proclaimed they had been proactive and had done their job. The parents of the deceased kids were saying to reporters that it was just an accident and not to lay blame on anyone. Nobody wanted to be blamed for this devastation.
The fault turned out to be the drivers of the SUV. They were the ones that were drinking without a designated driver. It was reported that they had been at a birthday party in Cambridge that afternoon and were already drunk at that time. At the accident site they had landed on top of their SUV and were caught in a fiery blaze; there was not enough left of them to even do a toxicology report but the sighting of them at various places that day confirmed they were intoxicated. Schumacher also relayed days later that they had crossed the centerline.
It was about 2:40 am when they crossed over centerline and hit the car with the kids. No one was wearing their seat belt except the young 16 year old Schumacher who was the designated driver of the Pontiac. She was spared, although the way the SUV had hit the Pontiac, seatbelts may not have changed the outcome of the accident. The only thing that may have changed the outcome of this accident would be those two young men would had their own designated driver then this story may never have occurred.
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