Amy Walsh: Redefining Success

Did you think of yourself as a creative kid? What does creativity look like for you these days?

I did not think of myself as a creative kid at all. I had a few wounds regarding being “bad at art” because I was bad at cutting with scissors and being a bad singer. My mom is also a major perfectionist, so she definitely had the tendency to “edit” or take over some of my creative projects. 

I have only identified as a creative person over the past year. I am an ER doctor and the pandemic hit me pretty hard. In an attempt to deal with that, I started exploring not repressing feelings. Then, I needed something to do with all those feelings, so I started writing poetry, which led to drawing, painting, and writing essays. 

How much time do you get to work on creative projects? 

I am currently taking a leave of absence from work, so I have more now than I ever have. My youngest daughter is in school three days a week, so I can usually devote at least two half days to a project or a walk that fills my creative tank. My youngest daughter also loves to paint, so we usually spend one or two mornings a week painting with each other. I really try to each have our own projects rather than getting wrapped into hers, with varying degrees of success. After bedtime is also a key time for kid free fine-tuning. 

The Flood Bringer

I walk up to the waters
Feet squelching into the murk. 
My voice a low, rhythmic bellow
as I call forth the waters 
with a power I have run from for many moons.

The water rises,
slowly at first, 
then rapidly,
then overwhelming.

The water, first at my ankles,
now overtaking me, 
until I can barely tell up from down,
the torrent so strong I can no longer stand with my feet in the muck, 
no longer breath,
leaving me no other option, 
but to leave my feet,
to swim,
to gasp for air, 
to cling to flotsam.

There is no way to know where I am going,
nor do I have the power to change course.
But I am not powerless, 
moving the very earth,
shaping the river bank, 
as the bank shapes me. 

Washing away the old, the unrooted, the disconnected,
those who refuse to adapt 
and those who refuse to acknowledge
that flood plains flood.

Rising and rising
Rising and rising
Rising and rising
Battering and splattering with wind and rain
until the wind and rain seem eternal. 

Until the solid ground you stood on before
has thoroughly shifted.
Until that small sunbeam peaks through.
Slowly, slowly as the waters recede
the impact, results, potency of the incantation 
appears before our eyes.
Muck and purification
Chaos and fertility
Flexible branches and sturdy roots

Those who have witnessed her power
and rooted themselves
or surrendered as she carried them where she would
have stayed to receive her gifts.
And those lacking that kind of strength 
were never meant to stay. 

How did motherhood change your creative practice? 

Motherhood opened me up to all new “ways of knowing” about the world. It didn’t change my creative practice right away (in fact it took seven years), but it transformed my definition of success, my ability to connect to intuition. Before becoming a mother, I had never considered the divine feminine before that, so that opened me up to creativity and different definitions of productivity as well.  

When do you feel most creative? 

Walking my dog is one of my key creative practices. I have poems dropped into my head that are nearly fully formed by the end of my walk. 

What do you hope your kids will learn about creativity from you? 

That they don’t need permission from anyone else to consider themselves a writer/artist/poet/storyteller/musician, whatever, that these creative ventures are their birthright. 

Crimson

Crimson on white
White gym shorts
Not even my own
Borrowed from another, much cooler, girl
Marked the very clear message
My blood was a curse
There were no wise women to tell me different
None who knew it ever to be otherwise

So I took the offer presented to me
Be masculine in a female body
Traded the feminine for safety
From embarrassment
From shame
I moved through the world forgetting
Or ignoring the risks that female body faced
I thought that bargain included my actual physical safety
He thought otherwise

Later a potion opened a portal
Again crimson on white

I pretended it never happened
And carried on climbing the ladder
Carried on as if I didn’t bleed
Profoundly ashamed anytime my blood showed

It was easy to follow the masculine path to success
No reason not to
No one in my life
In my culture 
Had any interest in changing me
In definitions of success that don’t involve
Achievement
Accomplishment
Accumulation
Polite ways of saying conquest

No reason not to
Until my first daughter was born
I was no longer who I had been 
And the immensity of the feminine was made visible

I soon learned of women who were sequestered during their bleed
Not because they were unclean
But because of the need for sacred rest
Because their community needed their dreams
Because of their immense spiritual power

After the birth of my second daughter
We buried her (our) placenta
That guardian of the threshold between this world and the otherworld
Under a pear tree
The blood we shared bringing new sweetness to the world
Crimson on black

Now, thirty years after that first moon
After motherhood and Mother Earth forced me to question that curse
I am the wise woman who knows it to be otherwise
I return my blood to the holy altar of the earth
I know this blood hails from the portal between the otherworld and this one
And it carries blessings from the otherworld to the here and now
My blood is a blessing
Crimson on black

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Amy Walsh is an Emergency Physician, mother of two daughters (8 and 5), wife to a patient and caring stay at home dad. She is a plant enthusiast who loves foraging and herbalism. She is a poet, writer, beginning painter, storyteller and singer. Connect with her on Substack at:

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