A smile

The Smile That Made Me

I always hid my teeth.

Not because they hurt. Not because they didn’t work. Because they weren’t the “perfect teeth” everyone wants.

In Teen magazine at 17, I learned to smile with my lips closed. As a Noxzema Extraordinary Teen finalist out of 10,000, I figured out which angle kept my mouth in shadow. When I worked for an architectural firm, I laughed behind my hand in meetings. Even during photo shoots — real ones, with photographers and makeup artists and hair people, no AI, no filters — I’d ask, “Can we do one not showing teeth?”

I thought confidence had a straight line. That beauty had a certain bite. That to be taken seriously in a library, a coffee house, a classroom in Copenhagen, I needed the kind of smile that sold toothpaste.

I’m 51 now. And I love everything about me — to my crooked teeth — because they made me.

They’re part of the cocoon stage. The silent year when I struggled with insecurity and confidence. The season I found it easier to write than speak. The years I didn’t go to prom and played with Barbies past 19 and was told I was behind. My teeth were there for all of it. They were there when my mother said, “You’re not hopeless, you’re developing.”

They were there in the shelter. There during Safeway shifts with a Master’s degree. There at 5AM in the gym when I decided to get healthy for strength, not size. There when I walked alone in Oregon, born here, loving this state, taking the train to the coast, seeing a waterfall, and realizing I was allowed to take up space.

I have become confident in myself and love myself so much that what anyone says about me does not matter.

Not the comments. Not the beauty standards. I don’t live for their approval. I live for the peace God gave me when I stopped hiding.

I am strong with myself and God has given me so much strength.

Strength to post without enhancements. Strength to write one chapter a day of the book that’s dear to me. Strength to build a professional website and grow Instagram and a public Facebook page that tell the truth. Strength to finish three degrees and enroll in a PhD program for research — not just to put “Dr.” before my name.

Strength to smile now. Wide. Real. Crooked. Mine.

My teeth are not a flaw to fix. They’re a testimony. They prove I’ve been here. That I’ve eaten meals I was grateful for. That I’ve laughed in coffee houses where no one asked me to be smaller. That I’ve said yes to photo shoots at 51 because I love them, not because I’m chasing perfection.

Perfect is boring. Whole is beautiful.

And I am whole.

Teeth and all.