Image credit:
“Left Handed and Proud” graphic © Left-Handers Day.
Available at: lefthandersday.com/left-handers-day/graphics
Used with appreciation to promote awareness and celebration.

Today is Left-Handers Day yay! — a moment to celebrate the 10% of us who grew up flipping scissors, smudging ink, and quietly questioning why everything seemed to favour the right.

Growing up in Britain in the 1980s and ’90s, being left-handed wasn’t always embraced. In classrooms across the country, children were often gently (or not-so-gently) nudged towards switching hands — to write “properly,” to hold cutlery “correctly,” or to fit into a system that didn’t quite fit them.

The Subtle Pressures We Remember

• Being given a right-handed pen grip from WHSmith and told it would “help us write neater”
• Teachers gently correcting our cutlery use at lunchtime, or suggesting we “try the other hand” during handwriting practice.
• Scissors that didn’t cut, rulers that read backwards, and handwriting books that assumed a rightward slant
• The quiet shame of smudged ink on our paper, or being told our writing looked “untidy” because it sloped the wrong way

These weren’t acts of cruelty — just the quiet assumptions of a world built for the majority. But for people who were left-handers, they became daily negotiations. Small adaptations. Quiet creativity in the curve.

There’s a long-standing idea that left-handers are more creative — and while science may still debate it, lived experience often agrees. When you grow up having to adapt, you learn to see things differently. You learn to invent your own grip, your own flow, and your own way of making.

From Leonardo da Vinci to Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney to Maggie Hambling, left-handed makers have shaped art, music, and invention in ways that defy convention. Maybe it’s not about handedness at all — maybe it’s about perspective in the studio.

In my own cottage studio near Werneth Low, where textiles meet storytelling, I think often about handedness. About how tools, layouts, and gestures can include or exclude. About how design can honour our differences, and not flatten them.

One of the quiet quirks of being left-handed — especially for those of us who grew up in the 1980s and ’90s — is how often we use our right hand without even realising. It’s not always a conscious choice. It’s muscle memory shaped by years of adapting to tools, layouts, and expectations that weren’t made for us.

We reach for the kettle with our right hand because the handle’s angled that way. We stir with our right because the spoon drawer sits to the right of the hob. We use the mouse, the remote, the light switch — all designed for right-hand reach. And over time, our bodies learnt to bend.

Some of us were gently nudged at school to “try the other hand” for handwriting or cutlery. Others simply found it easier to conform — to avoid the awkwardness of scissors that didn’t cut or desks that didn’t fit. And so, without ceremony, we became quietly ambidextrous.

But that doesn’t mean our left hand isn’t dominant. It’s still the hand we reach for when we need precision, expression, or instinct. It’s the hand we trust when we draw, stitch, or write something that matters.

So today, I’m celebrating the left-handed life: the quirks, the adaptations, the quiet strength. Whether you’re left-handed or simply left-aware, may your tools fit your hands, and your hands shape the world.

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