My personal CBT Toolkit

When Inkling died suddenly in March of this year, it made me realize how much of a load I had been carrying throughout the year, and how much I was leaning on my dog to provide a framework for balance and strength.

Inkling was gone, and during a week of bad news about The Huz's cancer, and the death of my father-in-law, it really destabilized me. There was a mix of guilt and shame. I felt lost, invisible and unable to cope. The edge of the cliff rushed up to me and beckoned.

At my husband's urging, I signed up for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Really it was like going to a class where I was the only student. My therapist was wonderful; she recognized the way I learned visually, and guided me at my own pace. She also told me I was already using some CBT in my thinking, which was super encouraging.

I'm not really qualified to explain in depth as to what CBT is, but I can share that it provided me with ways of thinking that I could practice whenever I encountered a trigger: to recognize it, analyse it and deal with it. And let's face it, life is full of triggers, right?

My personal CBT Trigger Island.

At the end of the therapy, which lasted about four months, my final assignment was to create a "tool kit". I drew a map of Trigger Island, a danger-scape with all the pitfalls and traps I might encounter in myself or others: you'll see the Quicksands of Grief, a flaming Passive Aggressive Snowman (hot and cold!), Fear of the Unknown Haunted House, a Forest of Depression and Isolation, and the Howling Winds of Change, to name a few. The edges of the map are possibly the most dangerous of all.

My personal Mindfulness Cards.

There's also a set of  Mindfulness Cards, and Power Cards. I use the mindfulness skills to help give me a chance to recognize, unpack and analyse things that happen or that I do. Power cards are things that I can actively do to move myself forward, and put things in perspective, either with my thoughts or my actions.

My personal Power Cards.

I created Green Flags and Red Flags, so that I could recognize when I'm doing well, and when I'm getting into trouble. Funnily, the Green Flags were harder to nail down, perhaps because we tend to take them for granted when life is humming along as it should.

My personal Green Flags and Red Flags - they have little pictograms on the backs but no way to show them here.

If CBT was offered in schools, I think more people would have the skills to cope better when life throws them a curve ball. More of us would understand why we feel what we feel, what others are going through, why they behave the ways they do, and how to counter or protect ourselves with assertiveness and respect.

Inkling is gone, and even though I have another dog now, I still miss him so much. Grief is interesting; it seems to steal your joy but it also gives you an opportunity to grow, and I'm grateful for that.

Love you guys,

JC

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Sketchy memories.

I was hunting for a lost poem today, looking through my old journals, diaries and sketchbooks. I found this one little book from 2002 with drawings of my kids, and little notes about them. It brought me back in a way that no photograph can.

The eldest daughter was nearly eight. She was always practicing her violin.

She was a tiny little person. Small but perfectly formed.

It's hard to believe she's now nineteen and going to University.

And this daughter was only five at the time.

Even then she was fastidious about her clothes; everything had to be fancy, velvet, sparkley or shiny. She's still got definite ideas about fashion now that she's sixteen.

Children move a lot, and ink on paper is unforgiving. See how I noted my error of proportions on her face?

This was my son, at two. He was a jolly little fellow!

I was going to clean up the pages a little in Photoshop, because you can see right through them to the writing on the other side. But I decided to just leave it...after all, it's only a sketchbook.

The Huz, in a quiet moment.

I loved to watch my children. I felt that if I could fill my eyes up with them, I'd never forget the joy they gave me.

So many memories.

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#BlogHer12 TOON swag - part 5

Continued from Draw Someone In - TOON swag.

After hanging out with Rachel Nabors it was back to the Grand Ballroom where I bumped into @ReneeMMartinez, whom I've met before at the 140conf in Montreal. She gave me 3 body builder poses to draw, making it really hard to choose. Also dimples!!

ReneeMartinez.com

One of my most successful drawings from the whole entire Blogher event is this impression of Vikki Reich AKA @uppoppedafox. I drew it at the Come As You Are (#CAYA) party co-hosted by Aiming Low - hands down THE best party I went to at BlogHer. I found myself really studying Vikki's face...she was so unassuming and open in her demeanor. She seemed to draw a quiet confidence from her own vulnerabilities. Does that make sense?

At one point to get her to laugh I did a big fake laugh and she copied me and then we got the giggles for real.

UpPoppedaFox.com

Vikki was one of the treasure's of BlogHer's Voices Of The Year in the category of Identity for her post "Ministrations". It was pleasure to hear her read, each phrase framed with a cinematic quality; it was like watching a film.

You know those people on Twitter and Facebook and blogs that you really share with and feel like you know them? I have that with @DragonDream.

Kristin Cruz - Dragon Dreamers Lair

The thing is that although we'd planned to meet at BlogHer, we didn't even recognize each other until I was halfway through my drawing of Cecily Kellog. And then all hell broke loose. Kristin also posed for me at he #CAYA party.

All through BlogHer you could see groups of women sitting around on the floors of the Hilton hotel. There just weren't any comfy sofa-places set up in areas of movement where you might run into someone you know. So there we were, a bunch of us plonked down in the hallway between parties. I met a woman named @KirstenPiccini who told me she blogged about shoes and cupcakes. Which meant I had to draw a totally boss high-heel CupCake stiletto. Uh-huh.

The very cool thing about this drawing is that all the women on the floor had input on the colours. I would so wear these shoes. I have seen cupcakes in the shape of shoes, but I've not yet found shoes in the shape of cupcakes. Christian Louboutin pulllleeeeeze make them for us.

We ended up at the Cheeseburger party. There was more wine...I admit to being slightly tipsy at this point. I bumped into @LisaMcKenzie (like me, reppin' Montreal) who asked me to draw her. I told her I was just too wined up to be trusted. Lisa didn't mind. And Drunk Drawing was born.

Lisa McKenzie

I could barely see her in the dark so I just went with my Chardonnay fueled instincts on this. The next day I saw her Twitter avatar, and I was struck by how much it looks like the drawing. Skillz, right?

I went back to my hotel room. Brushed my teeth. Fell asleep. There were more Karaoke induced RockStar galivantings during the night, as my roomates came and went...but by the time I left to explore Central Park the next day, Megan had checked out and Faiqa got to finally sleep...

Native-born.com

...for a whole hour.

Thank-you Internet Media Labs, and SeeS.aw for sponsoring me at BlogHer12. I really can't wait to TOON swag again!


I drew this toon swag on my iPad with my Wacom Bamboo stylus, using Adobe Ideas.

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DOG Daze.

Here's my dog doing some more funny stuff.

She's very clever. But she doesn't like to show off by doing tricks.

If you think this is 'submissive' posture you are wrong. And if you'd like your fingers to remain attached to your hands, you should not interpret this as an invitation.

Multi-tasking? My dog can sing and do the bum-drag at the same time.

I love my dog.

I drew these on my iPad, using Paper and a Wacom Bamboo stylus.

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Limitations = FREEDOM. #MadeWithPaper drawing app review.

You may have noticed a slightly different style appearing in some of my drawings here since I got the iPad 3. I bought several drawing apps – they’re luxuriously cheap and some have nearly all the bells and whistles of Photoshop or Illustrator.

But my special favorite is a very simple app called Paper by 53. You can’t zoom in it… …there are no layers …you can't change the brush size...and the colours are limited. So why do I love it so?

Just download the free app and take a look at the books.

Choose one and open it up. It feels nice.

The ink drivers flow beautifully, and the limitations actually force a creative thought process.

I find I don't want to be bogged down by too many choices.

I can tear away from the temptation of time-consuming perfection and detail.

Working within restrictions can somehow set you free.

I guess drawing in Paper is a lot like drawing on paper, but with a really great eraser!

Here’s a quickie guide:

• The tool tray slides up and down. 
• The quill is speed sensitive – the faster you draw, the thicker the line. 
• The water colour brush will deepen the longer you linger. 
• All colours are transparent, except black and white.  
• A circular motion with two fingers on the screen counter-clockwise will undo. 
• The page is not white, so white ink shows nicely. 

Everyone who draws with Paper can't help smiling.

I would change two things though – first, I’d offer more colour palettes. Not unlimited colours, but more trays of set colours. The current colours are starting to bore me; it’s hard to differentiate one artist from another cuz we're all using the same colours. Prolly good for the initial branding of a drawing app but it's getting old. And  secondly, since I’m a cartoonist it would be useful to make copies of drawings; that way I could work on a succession of drawings, with subtle changes between them.

The basic version of this app is free but if you want all the brushes they cost about $2 each. A whole $8. Also... Paper just won an Apple Design Award yesterday - Congrats!

I drew my three children on my iPad, using Paper and a Wacom Bamboo stylus.

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My Funny DOG.

Here's some funny things my dog does.

You can set your clock by her.

She knows how to get what she wants.

She's a tad delusional.

I love my dog.

I drew these in a bar, on my iPad, using Paper and a Wacom Bamboo stylus.

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SEE what I SAW! About SeeSaw.

What the heck is SeeSaw? It’s hashtag-heaven for Tweeps! Go to Sees.aw, log in with your Twitter account and you’ll see the latest trending hashtags populating your screen in real time.

WARNING: You should not stare at this too long cuz it’ll hypnotize you. I'm not even joking.

Here's the cool part. Wanna follow a specific hashtag or topic? Let’s say you like a little #WineParty on Friday nights, heheh...hit the SeeSaw magnifying glass and type it in the box.

Presto! All the tweets with #WineParty will appear in a mesmerizing patchwork quilt on your screen. Of course there will be a few nuggets of incredible wisdom that you’d like to save forever, right? On Twitter it’s a real pain to scroll through tweets trying to find something you liked in a tweetchat, and there's no organized way to save it. But on SeeSaw, all you have to do is hover on the tweets you like and click on the word "Saw".

This saves that particular tweet to your own personal “Saw” board, which you'll find by clicking on the word "SAW" at the top right. So if you’re following hashtags for Twitter parties, chats, or certain topics, you can collect and curate tweets to your own custom boards. Like Pinterest, but for Twitter. Your favorite images, links, information, whatever is important to you, even an entire # stream can be saved to peruse at a later time.

SeeSaw is extremely useful for image lovers (like moi) because it’s so visual. I can save all my best #PickleWeasel tweets to a board – and if anyone asks what a Pickle Weasel is, I simply show them this:

If they see something they like, they can follow the link back to my blog. Someone says something nice about PickleWeasel – I save it for when I need cheering up.

SeeSaw is new and I’ve just started playing with it. You can tweet/reply directly into it, you can highlight keywords within a hashtag crop to harvest your content, and there’s share buttons too. There’s still a few bugs here and there - certain images won't show, for example - and it would be cool to have the option to make a board public or private (seriously I don't want you guys finding out which of the rude #DrawSomething's I'll be saving haw haw). But the peeps behind it (Internet Media Labs @SeeSawMe) are listening and refining, which is awesome.

Lemmeno if you find some other cool ways to use it.

#WineParty was created by @blogdangerously.

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Dogs.

This is a poem about dogs.

I love dogs.

I drew this on the plane, with Paper for the iPad.

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MORE Funny One Liners.

Okay, here's another FREE drawing lesson for you. It's easy, all you have to do is follow these simple steps. Ready?

We're going to start with a few simple lines. Just grab whatever it is you use to draw, and go for it - wiggly, straight or bent. Lines have a hidden personality, so let's discover it.

Next you just add some dots...put them anywhere you wish!

A few extra little dashes here and there to refine the pose...

Words magically put everything into context.

And a splash of color to give it that extra zing!

WARNING: Try to work quickly; you don't want to miss your dead line.

Lemmeno how it goes!

PS - When I googled Tarzan's cry, the 17 year old daughter said it sounded like "auto-tune on crack". Which it kinda does.

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Catching The Easter FUNNY.

WARNING: Don't share this post with your kids as it contains a huge spoiler.

One day, when our children were a little smaller, the eldest daughter asked "Mama, how does the Easter Bunny get in our house?" Logical question. I mean, everyone knows how Santa gets in via the chimney, but the Easter Bunny...we didn't know.

We decided to set a little "trap" to find out. If you want to try this out, this is what you'll need:

The first thing was set out a couple of trays of Baby Powder; we decided to put one tray by the front door and one tray by the fireplace.

That way, when the Easter Bunny came in to our house, he'd step in the tray of powder and leave a tell tale trail of footprints.

After the kids went to bed, I cut out the Bunny feet shapes from a piece of cardboard and made a stencil. Then I sprinkled the Baby Powder through the stencil to make footprints. It was really fun to make them start at one tray, wander around the room (a clue as to where chocolate was hidden) and then suddenly stop at a wall: as if he'd just walked right through it!

If you have a Newfoundland dog, do not, I repeat, DO NOT use flour instead of Baby Powder. It's a very bad idea.

The next morning, our kids went BANANAS!! It was extremely fun to video them too - I mean, as far as they're concerned this is like finding a half-eaten carrot times a million. PROOF that the Easter Bunny exists. Plus, hello? CHOCOLATE RUSH!

Then I'd hoover up the baby powder.

We all know who the real Bunny is anyways.

Do you think your kids will enjoy this...?  Lemmeeno how it goes!

Share and Happy Easter!

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