I’m going to take the blog in a new direction again. Focus on what I stand for, not what I’m against.
My aim is to focus on what’s going right. To give an action plan listing solutions. Not keep reiterating what’s not right in society. To counter what’s going on with my ideas and insight for positive change.
Not give airtime to what other people are doing. Only highlight the efforts of those of us making a positive difference.
The expression is: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound? By not responding to the ones who attack us we neutralize their effect
At the end of the day I simply want followers to have a good time reading this blog. To amuse everyone as well as make reader think in a new way.
The world could use more joy and optimism. This is what I want to deliver.
I would like to ask the question: What is Justice? The online dictionary defines justice as right action.
Too I think it does a disservice to parrot that being kind and caring isn’t good enough. The way I see it the best way to “dismantle oppressive systems” is not only to fight injustice at its core. The other method of creating justice lies in how we treat each other in our relationships.
If you ask me it won’t do to judge and demonize people for their efforts in either fighting or not fighting injustice.
Love is Justice.
Recovery is Justice.
Compassion is Justice.
Seeing how each of us treats each other as justice is the difference.
Vowing not to follow along in what the haters in society tell us to believe about everyone is critical.
We each of us also need to be kinder to ourselves when the outside voices of critics attack us sight unseen.
I say that people can change and this is a good thing.
At 20 or 22 or even at 30 or 32 we’re tasked with attending to our own struggle to overcome the lemons that life handed us. Whether in the form of illness, disability, being born on the wrong side of the highway, or whatever.
I’ll give my own story to highlight that judging each other isn’t the way to go.
Today I often think of my earliest attempt at seeking justice. In 1988 I sought justice for myself in terms of economic security. By fighting for the right to have two things normal people take for granted they can have: Renting their own apartment to live in and working at a full-time job.
I think it’s synchronicity not just a coincidence that after I recovered for over 15 years I’ve helped customers create resumes and conduct job searches at my job. Upwards of 85 percent of those people received job offers not just interviews.
This is to say that as we get older each of us holds in our hands the power to not only transform our lives and heal ourselves. We can create positive change for others.
So I urge followers not to despair if you’re ratted out as not doing enough for the cause of justice. Each of us taking whatever right action we can is wonderful resistance to the status quo.
There’s no shame at all in seeking to better ourselves first if we’re not in a place in our lives to agitate for everyone’s rights.
We are good people doing the best we can with what we were given.
A friend gave me a bookmark with this quote: Never forget the difference you’ve made.
I firmly think each of us is making a positive difference simply by acting true to ourselves.
The above book The Conjuring of America is a celebration of the Black Women’s Magic that kept Americans of all colors healthy and healed through centuries of oppressive backlash to the emerging civil rights of newly freed African Americans.
Today I think we can certainly trust each other to be the agents of change that our elected leaders cannot be.
The Conjuring of America reveals the vibrant life-affirming, giving, and sustaining roles of Black American women. They held the power to fight injustice in their hands as healers, midwives, market women, and Candy Ladies.
Their story is America’s narrative writ with the beauty of faith, perseverance, and community. I was taken particularly with how one Black chef at her own restaurant served food to Black and White civil rights activists in a secret upper room where they could come together to plan protests out of sight of the police.
I recommend that everyone read The Conjuring of America. The forgotten stories of these Black women and their Magic brought to light in the book give me hope that as has been said: “Resistance is self-care.”
For those of us who have no interest in conforming to business-as-usual this book is the playbook for beating the system.
In a society where the typical metaphor has been that the playing field isn’t level I think the one way to level the playing field is to first create change for ourselves. Then turn around to help others get a fair shot at their goals.
Coming up more ideas on how to conjure our own healing.
“Obsession has always been at the center of fashion…This issue is about those kinds of obsessions: the ones that fuel our sense of identity, our sense of purpose, our sense of self.”
I ask you: Can being obsessed with something be empowering?
I think after reading the book The Conjuring of America that there’s a definite link between the physical and spiritual.
What better way to embody this twin-ship than through dressing up in the style that speaks to us. In the clothes that ignite our desire to be alive fully in our skin and and nobody else’s.
Pre-Covid I had been mired in an existential crisis about what my style “should” be. Taking the Visual Therapy quiz proved a short-lived exercise in how to dress.
Finding out about Allison Bornstein’s Three Word Method changed everything. I could see that how you and I dress cannot be prescribed by an outsider or even a person who calls themselves an expert.
Often I looked back on the girl I was in college in the 1980s who dressed in head-to-toe black long before it was the trend.
The idea that an obsession can fuel our sense of self is at the heart of reinvention. How we dress is the mirror of our mood and yes our sense of identity, purpose, and self at the time we’re living in.
The core of who we are doesn’t change. I don’t think that it does. Yet we can take on a new persona and new worldview as we get older. Which is a good thing.
Our fashion changes because we are not the same person we were at 20.
Today I’ve gotten on a carousel of chasing color. In vibrant pairings like melon jeans and a green top. Pink and red come together too. I wear a green sweatshirt and yellow sneakers that I liken to reggae colors.
This is how all of us grow and change and better ourselves over the years:
Through whatever our new obsessions are that spark the joy we can’t live without.
I liken dressing up and walking down the street as being on The Runway to Resilience. For how we fashion ourselves can help us heal.
Coming up I’ll review a book that was too riveting to put down. I broke my vow to read only fluff like beauty and design.
The Conjuring of America exposed how the ubiquitous blue jeans that everyone wears today had their birth as clothes that enslaved Africans wore on plantations.
Expressing ourselves through how we dress is a unique kind of magic.
The Conjuring of America centers how 400 years of Black Women’s Magic was at the heart of American history.
One other reason I had in titling the URL Girl on the Left is that there’s no one right way to think feel live act dress and love. Just the way that is right for you. And the way that is right for me.
Left of the Dial is a lifestyle not a political screed at the end of the day.
In the 1980s I was a disc jockey on FM radio in college. The music we played on-air was called Left of the Dial because it was alternative.
I happen to think that there’s beauty in everyone living on earth being unique. We have so much to give each other in terms of our humanity which is sacred.
I often write elsewhere about these components of lifestyle: How each of us thinks, feels, lives, acts, dresses, and loves. The fact that how we do these things is an individual approach is wonderful I think.
Pierce your nose .Ink your body with tattoos. Get locs. Or do nothing like this.
Bake brownies for your kids in Sandpoint, Idaho. Have an ordinary life. Watch TV. Scroll social media.
It’s all good. However you and I express ourselves in living our lives is phenomenal.
Some of us don’t live in the mainstream. Others have the white picket fence life.
Either way honoring embracing and accepting each other’s uniqueness is called for.
I’ve written this before so I must sound like a broken record.
The Self-care challenge for the month is to engage in one act of self-care each day.
Self-care can be simple yet not easy to attend to. In a society that doesn’t prioritize the well-being of citizens (it prioritizes that we buy things to feel good or improve ourselves).
I say that self-care can be as simple as looking in the mirror and telling ourselves: “I feel good. I am good.” Say this three times out loud in the morning before going out.
Self care that might not be simple is changing our mindset from negative to positive. Too in not expecting ourselves to do the right things every day.
I for one have become okay with wearing regular blue jeans. Who needs to wear a ball gown skirt to go see a movie?
Right. Easing up on expecting ourselves to be perfect is the real deal for National Self-Care Month if you ask me.
Like a woman I knew told me decades ago: “Perfection is a myth because it implies there can be no growth.”
I say too to listen to the Cyndi Lauper song “Good Enough.” As really good enough is often good enough.
Coming up a second take on why I titled this URL Girl on the Left. It isn’t primarily in terms of politics. It’s a lifestyle more than anything.
On the opposite experience a woman who is attractive gets hit on regularly. And not often by genuinely decent men.
This doesn’t seem like an atrocity. Only it reinforces the reality that there’s a standard notion of what beauty is. And that those of us who don’t fit into this paint-by-numbers definition of beauty are ugly. Not worth asking on a date.
We need to think of what beauty is in terms of the non-physical. I don’t like that our faces and bodies are the first thing others see and form an impression of. Within 7 seconds apparently!
Justice is beauty.
Compassion is beauty.
Self-expression is beauty.
Recovery is beauty.
Identity is beauty.
And so on. If we human beings could just see inside the persona to who each other is in our internal makeup that would be lovely.
There’s minor deviations that can cause us to feel poorly about our bodies too. Irrespective of what others think.
Only this self-perception is often the echo of those outside voices crowning you and me as either beautiful or not beautiful.
I say: Our bodies are maps of where we’ve been in our lives. I have kitchen scars from burning my arms taking dishes out of the oven. Today I can say to myself: I was cooking a delicious meal. So be it having scars.
What I think is beautiful you might not think is beautiful.
Either way seeing this beauty as it appears to us is a way to take joy in life.
A dandelion shooting out of the crack in a concrete sidewalk can be beautiful. A struggle that we’re experiencing or have overcome can be a thing of beauty too.
I’ll end here with this point: We should not judge what each of us finds beautiful. This is the human condition: To enjoy the beauty we see.
I read the book above in three days. I recommend that followers buy the book to read.
Imagine that like Chloe Cooper Jones you’re walking down the street and hear others say: “What is that?”
This was an ordinary reaction Cooper Jones received because her physical disability was obvious. She was not treated like a human being who has feelings.
I think how could anyone living on earth think it’s OK to act that way? How could they not see that there was nothing at all right about what they were doing.
Did their family not teach them to have compassion? My family did not teach me to hate. I was expected to treat everyone I interacted with in the same open, equal way.
Faced with the reality that Cooper Jones exposed in her memoir Easy Beauty it’s hard for me to believe that most people are kind and caring.
In the coming blog entry I’m going to talk about how I think having a photogenic face and lithe body is NOT always a prize or blessing either. Case in point: I’ve only been ghosted every time on OKCupid. The only guy on OKCupid who expressed an interest in me was a scammer.
There’s no comparing everyone’s pain to each other. What each of us goes through is not a birthday party. Whatever thing we’re going through should not be minimized or taken lightly.
Yet even in the face of a struggle it always pay to have a sense of humor to get you through the hard time.
That is the strength of Chloe Cooper Jones voice in Easy Beauty: she tackles a terrible experience with grace and insight. She has come out a winner and her memoir is a must-read.
I checked this new 2026 memoir out of the library. Reviewers gave the book 3.7 stars on Amazon. I recommend checking Selfish out of the library. As opposed to buying it.
The fact is I think other women in America might relate to what Docherty was going through in her life. This is why I recommend reading Selfish.
Reading Selfish I was struck by how the author appeared to engage in what’s called “virtue signaling.” I think when a person does good work for others this doesn’t have to be touted.
Though of course women should “toot our own horns.” We’re given flak for promoting ourselves.
In reality though I couldn’t relate to Docherty. She went to Yale for an undergraduate degree and has a JD from Pepperdine University.
How she could not be happy with her life I have no idea. The un-selling point for buying the book was that the author had an emotional affair. Throughout the book she justified this and other actions. I don’t know about this.
Docherty lives in another stratosphere of society and economic reality. Proof that connections and clout will get you a literary agent and book contract with a traditional publisher.
Only even with its drawbacks I say: read the book. I’d love to hear what others think of this first-person account. There could be those of us who get it about what Docherty’s going through.
I tend to read books that I’m not the target reader for. I read all kinds of nonfiction.
For readers who love total honesty in a juicy tell-all this might be just the book for an August afternoon. So pour yourself a lemonade and drink in the narrative.
