Sophie, 34, teacher, Rennes
My grandmother lived 94 years and read the hands of anyone who extended them. Not as a seer, just as a woman who had learned this in her village in Italy and had never stopped practicing. She died last year. And since then, something strange happens: I find myself reading palms too.
What she taught me without me realizing
As a child, I'd sit on her knees while she held my hand. She'd trace my lines with her finger and tell me what she saw. 'Your heart line rises high, you'll love too much.' I laughed. I didn't believe any of it. But twenty years later, I hear her voice every time I see a palm.
The first time I did it alone
It was a colleague at work. We were having lunch and she extended her hand for something else, a pepper shaker I think. I saw her palm and said, without thinking: 'You have a cross on your heart line. A breakup is coming.' She went pale. She was hiding that she was about to leave her partner. No one knew.
Is it magic? Is it heritage?
I don't know. Probably neither. I think I spent 25 years watching my grandmother, absorbing without registering, and now when I look at a palm, I see what she would have seen. It's not magic, it's an imprint. Like a language you didn't know you spoke.
What I do with it now
I don't practice professionally. But when a friend asks, I look at her hand. I tell her what I see. I don't predict the future. I describe what the palm shows, the way my grandmother did. And most of the time, the person recognizes herself. Which says something about palmistry, and about heritage too.
My grandmother used to say: 'The hand doesn't lie. It remembers everything you haven't yet dared to know about yourself.' I believe her now.