Dear friends!
What a wonder!
It has been 1 year - more than one year, since I celebrated a major milestone of my life.
July 2, 2016 was a Lovetastic celebration of 2 weirdos making a pact to lovingly adventure together in life!
We moved onto the farm in September 2016 and the past year has been an absolute cacophony of annoyance, beauty, understanding, creation + making home, together.
When we celebrated our first year wedding anniversary together I marveled; everyone coos over the glamorous buzz of planning a wedding but only my dear elderly Italian neighbour took a moment to lovingly ground me with the real work of marriage. From my understanding and definition, marriage is a commitment to unite two individuals in an equitable (and fun! and honest!) dance of power wherein both are nurtured to grow.
Dudes.  This feat is more challenging + scary than anyone can articulate but also more deeply satisfying and amazing than anyone can articulate.
My heart is so full.
I continue to overflow with gratitude (that needs to be translated into thank you cards, STILL) for the new landscape that is my life with the most ridiculous, wise + steadying force of love that is my husband and partner-in-crime, Gopaul.

It feels really good to close the loop on Lovetastic celebrations in my blog + make way for my voice to flow again in words.
Thank you all for your good wishes!
Please hit play to watch a video scrapbook of our day, tendered to posterity by
​Rick Collins + Cheryl Claiborne of Love You Me Pictures.
With gratitude + quiet delight beyond my wildest imaginings,

Hello dear world!
​
Peggie Arvidson of the awesomely helpful The Pragmatic Palmist asked me to contribute something on the topic of palmist's best tips for life using your hand (read the entire column here).

I am delighted to contribute!
For my tip, I need you to yourself to some good lighting.  
​Grab a magnifying glass if you need and let's take a look at your fingertips.  
Do you see whorls on your fingertips?  I'm talking little swirl, bullseye, circular designs right on your fingerpad like the little guy on the bottom left that I have circled in green or some close variation of it.

How many of these little whorls do you have?

The biggest thing that you are here to learn about in life is how to really be of service in the world.
To find a way to be of service to others be they people, causes, animals or the planet is a one of your ingredients to have a meaningful + fulfilling life.

En route to this though, you're inevitably going to have to find ways to get more focused, empowered and dedicated to what lights you up otherwise you might fall into the trap that Service people are prone to:  exhausted burnout, grumpily unappreciated and backed into a corner where you feel unable to do what you want because your duties / responsibilities / obligations are way too heavy.  EEW.

So let's get into this.  
I'll set you up with context so you remember what it feels like to be in awesome service versus awful service.  
Then I will give you the 2 questions to ask so you can find your back to awesome after you notice you have been quagmired in awful.

Whorl fingerprints indicate that there is a soul-level delight + motivation for you to to give, serve and help.  Serving can feel so good for you!  At its best, people with all these whorl fingerprints can be found doing thing like helping friends move into apartments with no elevators in the rain for the 3rd time this year with an easy smile and ridiculous cheer.  Why?  Because they love to help and serve.  They love to do this just because they want to.  Because it fills them up and makes them feel like they have done something meaningful at the end of the day.

Awesome service =  giving / doing generously because they want to.  Plain + simple.  It feels easy, magical, light + invigorating for not only you but the lucky recipient of your service.

Okay bad news time.
The thing that service people forget is this:  it is vitally important to learn how to serve yourself with the same steadfast dedication that you serve others. Learning to care for oneself with badass focus is actually something that the majority of of service people need to learn to excel at.

Awful service = Basically when you feel you SHOULD do something but you really don't want to.  Your desire and your action are out of alignment.  So instead of giving / doing something because you truly want to, you are acting because you are plagued with guilt, overcome with feelings of duty or feel bound by obligation.  Some one else  or some seemingly external condition is creating a prison of SHOULD DO / BE when the reality is that you want something different.  Welcome to hell for a Service person.  You know you are here when you feel burned out and exhausted.  Or when you are filled with dread, reluctance and heaviness to do the thing you said you were going to do.  If you find yourself needing to justify an action or talk yourself into doing something when your body is resisting, I bet you are dancing around Service hell.  

Remember that example of helping friends move into elevator-less apartments in the rain?  Well you may have been happy to do so the first 3 times but let's say that you are called for help again to help for a 4th time.  When they just moved last month.  On a day that you were planning to do something you were really looking forward to and had planned for weeks in advance.  I bet it doesn't feel as easy to say ''Yes I'll totally be there to help" which is EXACTLY THE POINT.  Most beginner Service people will say yes to helping anyway and resent it.  

Good question!
Here's your practical palmistry life tips right here Service people.
You are here to learn to master two phrases:

"What Do I Want?"
The biggest fear of Service people is the fear of being selfish.
This makes the question "what do I really want in this moment / situation etc." a potentially very scary one to ask.
But guess what?
It's super essential for you to learn how to ask it.  To yourself.  With steadfast regularity.  
This is because this question is your practical bridge to your whole self!  Ask what your body wants.  Is it to take a pee and stretch break after you have worked with tireless focus tending to your sick dog for 8 hours?   Ask what your mind wants.  What your heart wants.  Ask what you want - WITHOUT ANYONE ELSE'S OPINION CLOUDING THE RESPONSE.  This can be a startlingly simple way to get back to the tiny voice of wisdom that's your real, true Self.  Also, the more frequently you ask yourself ''what do I want" the more likely it is that your wise inner voice will get louder.  Clearer.  That it won't be so hard to tune in and hear it amidst the other clamour.

AND.
If you want to change your life, start acting on what you hear.
If your body feels thirsty and you want water - down a glass.
If you want to feel connected with your creativity - take 10 minutes a day to doodle / sing / dance / make something.
Do this consistently and your whole life will shift because you are acting from what you really want, rather than what you feel like you should be doing.

I hope this helps fellow whorl fingerprint people!
Listen to what shows up in your hands.  It can change your life :)
​Much love,

Please feel free to share this invitation to someone that
​ you think may enjoy or benefit from this information!

Fingerprints come in 4 basic designs.
Each forensic pattern, in hand analysis world, corresponds with a major theme of consciousness.

I usually send my hand reading clients away with a doodle summary that summarizes the major themes of the associated fingerprint.  
Here's the doodle I have for Loops = Love
(for people with 6 or more of these fingerprints!)  
These doodle summaries also name the general fear associated with the fingerprint, gives a handy affirmation and tool that will be helpful and resonant with people who have a whole lot of love fingerprints.  It's a great place to start getting specific about love / feeling / vulnerability awareness.

I would like to offer what I think are 

Wonderful!  Now you have felt the feeling, the emotion it is time to try to name what you felt - so you can share the experience with others.  Trust me, sharing feelings is awesome.
This can be tricky as there are so many words to name your experience precisely. I love to grow my vocabulary around these words.  Here are a couple charts / pictures that I love:

People with loop fingerprints are challenged to be their most authentic self first and foremost.  
Usually that this looks and feels like is the willingness to speak / feel what seems most prickly and uncomfortable.
It is a willingness to notice the place within us that resists, that wants to blank out and be willing to sit patiently and invite this resistance to unfurl itself, bringing with it a wisdom + insights.

When loop fingerprinted people are able to acknowledge, accept + lean into the evasive, scary part of their experience (and recognise the symptoms of it in their life)  the great gift is to learn to yield to feeling.  
This can lead to a profound feelings of relief, lightness and awareness.
The loopy fingerprinted person is gifted with an opportunity to see and accept truths within them that once seemed intolerable.  
This self-love and self-connection is the foundation for being able to hold the same unconditional regard for other people's hard-to-love elusive parts in tandem with the sublime + genius aspect of their being.

Feelings are essential to this process - feelings indicate when we are closer to being and expressing our authentic self.  Put simply, being our full authentic self often feels invigorating, easy, light, joyful and good.  When we are out of alignment with being who we really are we can feel dense, fearful, evasive, depressed, stuck or numb.  We don't feel good.  
In this light, the skill to express emotions in the moment freely becomes an imperative for our physical well-being.

Does this help or give clarity to you loopy-tipped folk?
I would love to hear.
Until then, here is your friendly neighbourhood hand analyst signing off with much love + joy :)

Hello dear world!
It's long been on my mind to sit down and examine where I have been + where I am going - especially with my hilariously amazing adventure of working for myself.  
Also:  I have been working as a nurse for 10 years!
A decade!
How the time flies :)
For those of you who have followed me since I first started sharing in 2012, you may remember that at one point I was a hybrid of face-painting, cranial-sacral-therapist even on top of my current artist, palliative-care-nurse and hand analyst.
Honestly, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do or be, I just knew I needed it to be more different + more creative than what the world of conventional medicine + academia appeared to offer.
Also, I should note that up to about 3 years ago I was completely in love with my work as a nurse and at that point of my life, could never imagine wanting to do anything different.  
Especially not anything entrepreneurial. 

In each of these drawings, the left side of the picture shares what was happening in my conventional nursing world.  
The right side of the drawing are things that happened in my personal life that had some major impact on my perspective and on how I oriented myself to my career.  I have high-lighted in particular to creative exploration, integrative learning opportunities and family challenges that factored into my journey.   I highlight the Occupy Wall Street movement because the whole social / political / environmental climate that I have found myself in heavily informed how I have grown.

Actually, I realize that related to this but not drawn-out:


In 2011 I went through a brief phase of exploring what it would mean to be an Emergency Preparedness First Responder + started taking courses online at the Justice Institute of BC.  This was largely informed by my sustainability / global warming studies wherein my conception of the future was much more focused on disastrous end-of-the-oil-age + near-zombie-apocalypse scenarios.  Remember, we were on the brink of 2012 - the Mayan end of ages :)

As you can imagine, I got over that perspective :)
Totally + completely.
In my growth and development I became much more acutely aware of the power of my own attention + perspective in creating my reality.  So, I became much more invested in doing things that would create a reality where I was sharing and creating from joy and passion.   This is a so much more fun that working on the premise that I needed to do things differently, responsively out of fear that human civilization as we know it is seriously endangered.
Neither am I denying this possible reality either.
Let's be real, there are some seriously fucked up things in the world. Heinous injustices.  The Alberta Tar Sands. Generational fall-out of colonial tyranny that is ongoing.

The experience of 2010 + 2011 are darker than expressed in my drawing, mostly because I was contemplating the above topics and how they would affect my life and work. It was the advent of my global warming / species survival contemplation phase.

Fortunately, I was gifted with the great honour of reconnecting with my ancestors through ceremony on Tsleil-Waututh territory (also not doodled).

This taught me how to take care of myself in a way that made it possible for me to take full responsibility of how I would be in the world.  To honour the power of my attention and affect in the world, I started asking for help + guidance with the bottom line ask of ''Dear ancestors + Universe, I really don't want to spend my life contemplating how to survive in a zombie apocalypse. There has got to be a more fun, beautiful, gorgeous way for me to do the same integral work in a different perspective.'' Someone was listening because I started being shown new ways of being.

Here is my latest doodle-status-update from July 15, 2015.

The big game-changer here is that I am starting to circle back to the aspirations of that original youtube video I created.
That tender + cheeky illustrated workbook is finished - part 1 of it anyway. I am looking at it as I type this :)
Hand analysis is the service / modality that I needed to zero in on what is meaningful and why we should treat / aim to live anyway.  I am not sure of how everything will come together exactly but I can appreciate that everything I have learned + experienced over the past 3 years is an important part of what will come together.

Thank you so much for reading + sharing your time with me!
It means the world that you have joined me on my reflection.
For as long as I create I will continue to share.
So, be sure to watch this space as I feel I am just at the beginning of another new chapter altogether :)
Here is a sneak preview of what has been coming out of doodling:

POST-SCRIPT:
After I read this over I realize that I have also left out huge pieces of my personal life that have unfolded in the past 10 years!  This is just as well - those stories would best be woven into a memoir :) It is important for me to share and acknowledge though - I would not be who I am today were it not for those dear, amazing, incredible souls I have met. Thank you, each and every one of you, for sharing your friendship + yourself in all the worlds where we have crossed paths.  For a short time or long one.  You are in my heart :) It is a gorgeous life and I am so thankful for the ability to live it and share it with you :)

1.  How does ornery feel to you?

Ornery feels different to everyone.  
The formal definitions of ornery frequently cite: bad-tempered, easily annoyed, difficult to control and combative.  
For me, ornery is when I feel cranky and growly.  
When I am in prime ornery mode I feel resentful, backed into a corner, guarded and uncooperative. 
I feel like my shoulders are hunched down together and that I have a perpetual frown.  I feel heavy and defensive.
What does ornery feel like to you? Learn to describe it so you can notice when it shows up.

2.  What does ornery tell to you?

Feelings are genius clues to our condition.
For me, feeling ornery is usually my alert that I am out of alignment in some way.
It usually means that I am acting out of reaction rather that thoughtfulness.  
It means I am just doing without consciously , intentionally choosing to do something.  
It might also mean that I have forgotten to ask and answer the 3 cardinal questions for Whorl fingerprint people before responding to a request:

• Is it good for them?
• Is it good for me?
• Do I want to do this?

3.  What's the rescue kit for lifting ornery + returning to Happyland?

I used to judge myself quite harshly for being cranky or getting cranky.  
I mean, what kind of a selfish and terrible person am I for agreeing to do something I don't really want to do anyway?  Joking!  So joking.  
Nowadays, thank goodness, I have come to recognize and value my ornery state of feeling as an indicator that something is off.  
Life is meant to feel easy and feel good, really and truly, so ornery is a delicious contrast to direct us back to the easy, pleasurable joy (= Happyland).  
When I notice that I am cranky, here's what I do to honour the ornery and help move it along:

3. Listen:  I talk to the ornery part of me and ask what's going on.  You'd be surprised what this does sometimes.  Usually it gives me some more insight as to what has ticked me off or what is pressing against me. ''Talking'' can be done via journalling, quiet time, conversation with a friend, meditation, checking in with a support person etc.

4. Choose: Usually after that introspective part, I often ask myself if I still want to feel ornery.  Then I choose to DO (see next) accordingly 

5.  Do: Hey, sometimes I do want to feel ornery!  True story.  It's fun!  Also a healthy and honest expression of my anger connects me to the truth of what I am feeling and power - all good stuff when expressed in a conscious way.  So if I want to keep feeling ornery and run with Crankypants I usually choose what I am going to do. Keep doing what I am doing perhaps (argh, this one can be hard, especially when you think you have no option otherwise) or stomp around monstrously and deeply only to notice the grump has dissipated.  Possible.  Or if you don't wait to be cranky, do something to pull you out of it.  Some physical experience that will immediately bring you to a feeling state of something other than cranky.  I like to turn on music and dance.  Or go notice and appreciate some beautiful flowers.  Or take deep breaths.  Or pay attention to my cat.  Or go do something that brings me joy.

It's through exercising all these things I have come to really, truly enjoy the state of ornery as a wise indicator of how in alignment I am.
How my actions are matching - or not matching - my wants.  
It allows me to course-correct!
And that my friends, is why it is important to embrace your opposites, even if it feels initially uncomfortable.  
There's usually wisdom in the opposite - even if it means becoming the embodiment of Grumpy McNo!

Love from your resident Crankypants,

Hello dear ones:
This image really resonates with me.
I pretty much have it on all of my social media headers right now because for a while there, I felt at a loss.  
An explosive, mind busting loss that encompasses both grief and joy.
It has been a full summer.
It is quite the amazing fall.
My short synopsis is to bring you to speed and welcome you to the most current unfoldings of my life + work: