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Birthmother’s Day: Grief Takes A Holiday

By Gail Cammero Reilly
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Birthmother’s Day, the Saturday before Mother’s Day, is one of few occasions that recognize women who have surrendered their children for adoption. We are the outliers of motherhood.  Created with good intentions, Birthmother’s Day segregates us as the “other” mothers, continuing a tradition of shame and stigma attached to adoption - for birth mothers and adoptees. It legitimizes shame while elevating adoptive mothers - the next day.  Our society cannot seem to idealize mothers without disparaging birthmothers.  Adoptees, under the guise of protection, suffer this bias through their mothers. Many adoptees still can’t get a copy of their original birth certificates in most states. (Imagine knowing there’s someone who looks like you - someone you’ll never meet.)  Birth mothers are not always  welcometo mingle with family members. After all, when I learned my birth daughter was about to be married, I wasn’t invited to the wedding. I didn’t flinch - I joked about creating the wedding
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Woodstock Not: Laurel Made Our History

By Gail Cammero Reilly
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Woodstock Not:  Laurel Made Our History in Life (Magazine)  "Laurel is on the pages of Life magazine!” Roger shouted. It was days after Woodstock and celebrity was in the neighborhood. Laurel was our celebrity. She didn't just GO to Woodstock - she was memorialized in the pages of Life magazine. It was Instagram 1969. No one was surprised. But like a celebrity, Laurel was also a stranger. Whenever and wherever she appeared, Laurel smelled like fresh sex in broad daylight. Laurel was gloriously wanton, whorishly flush when she'd smile at a new man. She was at least 25 years old, the first old hippie I met in the 1960s. Blue-eyed and beautiful, her dark roots peeking through short blonde curls, Laurel could run her fingers through her hair and take over a room upon entering. She commanded the panting admiration of younger men, older men and most in between. She was sleeping with Roger and Tom and maybe Rob, and didn't care if Richie Havens or Joe Cocker would show
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Schoolgirl Hippies

By Gail Cammero Reilly
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I almost didn’t meet Joe. He wasn’t supposed to be at Ben Farkle’s house that day. He wasn't a hippie. If I hadn't been wearing my Catholic school grey uniform, rolled at the waist and hiked thigh-high, I might have left with an accessory - handcuffs. Maybe it was my glossy black oxfords that saved me – the polished shoes of the police gleamed nearly as bright. I didn’t fit in at Ben’s. I didn't look like a wannabee hippie, not that day. Becoming an expatriate from upper-middle American values was still an ambitious rebellion cocooned between the pages of my diary. I was months away from frizzy curls or jettisoning supportive undergarments; I was camouflaged in conventional attire, matching the sensibilities of the arresting officers. The 1960 were ending; it was years past of the Beat Generation. The cusp of Free Love hadn’t overflowed into STDs. It was decades before medical marijuana could arrive by FedEx. Against the backdrop of Vietnam, the culture of drug abu
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Don't Interrupt My Overdose; I'm Almost Dead

By Gail Cammero Reilly
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In "A Poison Tree", the poet William Blake once wrote that "I was angry with my friend I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe I told it not, my wrath did grow." I was driven to rescue and fix people, never intending to actually save a life. I was just 17 or 18 years old. "Fixing" people often meant helping them see the best in themselves. It was, for the most part, a self-serving avocation. But at the time, when I "saved" Jerry, I had no idea. That August night, I just happened to be around. It was my night off from waitressing at an all-night diner.  It was a hot night and air conditioning was best at the local supermarket. But when the doors swung open to the market, I saw Jerry slumped over in the phone booth - an antiquated contraption with telephone gadgetry in a glass closet. For some stupid reason, probably because actual suicide-in-progress was too remote for me to instantly grasp, I thought he was, well, tired
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Mad at the Dying Old Dogs: Yellow Newspapers

By Gail Cammero Reilly
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My old dogs are breaking my heart today, but instead of the usual tears, I feel annoyed and angry. They will leave me too soon, as four of our pack passed away in my arms this past year. Several others remain - a few are younger but most are dear old family members bearing the creaky hips of mid-life, torn ligaments and weakening bladders. Everyone died because they got old, that is the best and worst of it. They would have stayed longer and sometimes tried to struggle against the end, as if to continue pleasing me. Only one, Honeybear, was euthanized because cancer (and chemo) had already taken her, a once vigorous pitbull/boxer - she was in terrible pain and I would want to go into that good night myself in a similar state. Honeybear came into my life from the streets and too many years in a no-kill shelter. Only a few months before, Fuzzy, my pekingese discard, died at age 13. He'd been given up to a shelter years earlier by a family that traded him in for a huma baby. I'd
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"Lost and found, rescued by dog" in Six-Word Memoirs

By Gail Cammero Reilly
Yes, I was one of the "obscure" writers of six-word memoirs. Someone had to be unknown. After all, what were the chances I'd be published in a best-seller with Joyce Carol Oates? I wrote my bio, "Lost and found, rescued by dog." It's now in print. Page 44.
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Home at the Canine Theme Park

By Gail Cammero Reilly
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Dogtown decor isn't pretty. It isn't shabby chic, either. At its best, my home is a canine theme park, more their sanctuary than mine. There is no doubt that my home is designed with the dogs in mind, from the paw-print throw on the sofa to the many dog beds here and there. What started with a few dog-friendly items has metamorphosed into a quaint kennel where people are optional, infrequent visitors. There are dog towel dowels, dog coffee cups (not for the dogs), dog bedsheets, dog curtains and a framed poster - "You can't have too many dogs!". Then there's the famous Andrew Wyeth print - "His Master's Bed" - which, unlike Coolidge's "Friend in Need" , announces that a woman of some taste resides here. Or so I like to muse. Even the faux fur toilet cover was selected for the dogs' comfort as a sitting perch. Yet no matter how cute the dog-patch shower curtains, dog-face quilt with matching throws, vintage art or Mi
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