By Dana Stovern
Written September 21, 2021
Paonia, Colorado
Who knew that so much was riding on a tooth?
In the middle of my first marriage, I cracked a lower back molar. At the time, I did not know that the stress of my life and being with an abusive partner were causing me to grind my teeth at night, putting my ivories at significant risk. Many mornings, I woke with achy jaw joints, not understanding why, until a dentist pinpointed the issue as he mitigated the tooth with a root canal and capped the molar with an expensive gold crown.
That was the beginning of a very long journey of awakening to the layered reality of my life that has taken me years, decades, to unravel. The journey has transpired through glorious awakenings of my psychic gifts, heartbreaking truths about my family, tremendous loss, fabulous adventures (especially in nature), uniquely unfolding connections with fellow journeyers, grueling emotional labor to heal embedded trauma, and adamantly persistent insistence to find my professional way in an unbelieving world. It’s been twenty-five years of never giving up on myself, even when the odds looked slimmer than a size zero model during Fashion Week in New York. When I look back now, I revel in the fact that I’m still surviving the chances that someone like me is still making it in the aftermath of this predominately toxic masculine world. It’s a miracle.
And all the while, this tooth, capped with a gold crown, has sat in the back of my mouth, perched on its throne with a revolving need for attention. Sometimes I forgot about it, but always, my tongue would find its way there to trace the semi-natural ridge and test the edge and the tooth base to see if it was still there. It was like I was reaching out to touch a buddy, wondering if I’d still find it, and always relieved when I did. What was it about this tooth?
There were times this tooth ached underneath, a phantom pain mysteriously waxing and waning in a way that none of my other teeth ever have. I see now that an energy was there, trying to work itself out in my body. Yet, all along, I’ve tried to ignore the deeper meanings of this tooth, never connecting the dots between the home of origin traumas with toxic patterning in my marriages. Never connecting the interminable secrets of un-mouthed words I had to keep for the relationships in my life to stay intact. I needed to stay safe and survive. I never made the connection between this cracked tooth holding up a crown and the silence of intimately embedded information that fishtailed around the root, hidden in my gums. That’s where a phantom but very real ache came and went for years.