THE CREATRIX

Every rebellion begins with the refusal to be invisible. Every rebellion begins with the command: 'I will create what the world tried to erase'.

For decades, our creativity was the first thing sacrificed to the hunger of others. We were told our 'art' was a pastime, secondary to the emergency of the bedroom, the sickroom, the stockroom, or the boardroom.

The Creatrix is the refusal of that lie. This is where the Noble Lie of silence is broken with color, grit, and the raw, unvarnished truth of who we are when we stop asking for permission to exist.

The Creatrix does not paint for the comfort of the viewer. She paints to reclaim the space the world tried to shrink. The pieces below, from the feminist protest series to the daily love poems I write to myself, are the maps of a mutiny. They are the evidence that when a woman stops negotiating her existence, she becomes incandescent.

THE PROTEST MANIFESTO

In 2017, as the world fractured into a discord I could no longer ignore, I realized that silence was not a sanctuary. It was a cage.

My rebellion began not with a shout, but with a brushstroke. What resulted was a series of feminist-based protest paintings born from the friction between the 'Noble Lie' of female diminishment and the incandescent truth of my own power.

In their creation, I stopped being the ballast for a world in chaos and started building my own territory of resistance. At seventy-two, these works remain the evidence of a soul that refused to go out quietly, trading the grey exhaustion of expectation for the raw, vibrating joy of a life reclaimed by hand.

The Cost of the Lie

by Louise Gallagher

I want desperately to be the perfect wife

the unflagging caregiver

the one who carries the burdens

with the ease of Titan carrying the weight

of the world.

I want to pretend

the hiss of the oxygenator

pumping air into your sickly lungs

is only the sound of the sea

breaking against the rocks

and I fail

again and again

to live the lie.

Our lives are breaking

apart

every stitch we’ve made

in this tapestry

that once was woven

with tender silky threads

now lays tattered

and torn

the colour of green phlegm

spewing from your lungs

when the coughing

is so violent

I want to cover my ears

and run as far from the sound

as my weary legs will carry me.

I want to be the child

whose mother rescues her from a raging bear

or pulls her from the tossing seas

even though she cannot swim.

And I fail.

Again and again.

The Grace of Failing

(excerpt from The Caregiver's Mutiny)

For years, I believed that if I just gripped the edges of the world tight enough, I could keep it from fraying.

I tried to perform the role of the 'unflagging caregiver,' attempting to carry the weight of an incurable disease with the ease of a Titan.

I tried to pretend the hiss of the oxygenator was the sound of the sea.

But the 'Noble Lie' has a scent, and it is the smell of exhaustion and denied resentment.

This poem was the moment I stopped trying to sew the tattered threads of a dying identity back together. I realized that my repeated failure to be the 'perfect wife' or the 'Saint' wasn't a moral lack—it was my soul’s refusal to go numb.

Failing to live the lie was the first honest thing I had done in years. It was the crack in the foundation that finally let the light of the mutiny in.

THE LOVE MUTINY

The song of the sea is loud and repetitive, calling me to awaken.

Get present. Be aware.

I breathe. Deep. It is dark here on the island. No streetlights. No cars. No ambient light from Vancouver Island across the waters.

I keep breathing. Slowly. In. Out. A ‘Blue Mind’ state of being.

Studies show that listening to the sound of the ocean for 20 minutes can reduce stress hormones like cortisol by up to 30%.

It is one of the side-effects of caregiving I experience most; my tension level often measures ‘high.’

The sea helps.

So does writing a love poem a day to myself.

REBEL WORDS

Rowing for One

by Louise Gallagher

The silent house

a museum of shadows

I walk the halls

curating grief

in the slats of the blinds,

the voltage of a man

who keeps turning out the lights.

The Good Girl knows

giving is the path to better.

Coffee.

A smile.

A performative “I’m so sorry you feel that way.”

The Saint kneels

her prayers an earnest plea

to beat the depression

into retreat.

They are both exhausting.

I’m tired of taming them.

I stand on the deck

the surf scours the "visionary"

who wants it all to be different

from my skin.

The wolf howls.

ENOUGH.

It began on a day when the weight of the 'Noble Lie' felt heavy enough to crush the ink right out of my pen.

I was 1,000 miles from the life I once knew, navigating the unfamiliar tides of our island home and the shifting landscape of my husband’s health.

In that silence, I realized that if I didn't consciously choose to see the light, I would eventually go blind to it.

I sat down and wrote the first verse. Not because I felt particularly 'loving,' but because I needed to prove that my heart was still my own territory.

This poem was one of many flags planted when I committed to write a love-poem-a-day to myself for a year. Like breath, each poem has become a vital portal into the reclamation of my own joy. It represents the moment I stopped being the ballast for everyone else’s ship and became the architect of my own devotion.

There's still more of the year to unfold. I'm not done yet. Neither is the poetry.

RECLAIM YOUR COORDINATES

Stop being the ballast for everyone else’s ship and become the architect of your own devotion.

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