The truth of the matter is I had to stay silent to stay safe and survive. That requirement began early before I even had significant rooted memories — and continued until one life-shattering event after another tried to undo the paths of my life, tried to undo me. You see, there’s this thing about keeping secrets, especially keeping silent about information to protect the people around you whom you love, even as they hurt you — it all adds up in the body, even in the mouth. Especially in the mouth and your teeth. Because, you know, teeth are in the mapping system of the throat chakra, which is all about being seen, being visible, and being heard, especially in value and truth. So, when you’re burying secrets in your body, especially the ones you really really really really can’t talk about, it turns out that tooth roots are a pretty good place to hide those secrets. Until those secrets come up from the roots and crack teeth. Until those teeth need gold crowns that say, “Here, right here. ‘X’ marks the spot of the treasure hunt where these secrets lie.”
And all of this never ever occurred to me until my dentist got to taking a very close look at this old, gold-capped crown, where the tooth base met at the line of the jawbone, and a shadow in the dental image created a furrow in his brow. Instead of replacing the old crown with a new one, like we had hoped, which would just keep holding in the secrets, he determined the whole damned thing needed to come out, roots and all. He said, “You know, I’d just be doing you a disservice to cover that up again. You’re not going to like this, but the tooth needs to be pulled.” I was shocked, but not shocked, because I sensed this was inevitable.
That’s when I returned home and yanked The Secret Language of Your Body by Inna Segal off my bookshelf and read right there about how teeth are “holding on to shame, guilt, fear, anger, blame, bitterness” of the interminable secrets I’d been required to hold in my body for the sake of my survival. She went on to say how teeth that are in trouble are also “about having difficulty making empowering decisions (because of said secrets). Troubled teeth can also be about self-neglect, unresolved childhood issues and frequent self-sabotage.”
I read the passage and thought, “Hah! What is she doing? Examining my tooth with a magnifying glass and viewing the emotional baggage I had stuffed into that tiny place of ivory for decades?” No wonder it had cracked. No wonder I’d felt phantom pain for years. No wonder my dentist said, “Ding, time’s up. That tooth needs to come out because it’s on overload.”
I sat with the information my dentist had given me, and I sat with Inna’s book in the yard, while beautiful buzzy things buzzed around me and the haze of smoky fires from hundreds of miles away fogged up the view of our mountains and the trees swooshed around me in a billowy breeze of sunshine. I sat there and sobbed. I grieved the unfairness of life and how hard the past eighteen months had been (COVID, death of business, looming death of marriage), but I also bodily reveled in understanding more layers of my life. And I let all the unfair challenges of the years of being human on the planet hang out.
Once I was done with my blubbering mess in the beauty of our yard, feeling my feels, two things were completely clear to me. First, it was time to let my tooth go because it had done a miraculous job of surviving and holding traumatic secrets from my childhood that I’d then played out, bookended in my first and second marriages. My beloved tooth that had sat on a throne with a crown had done her job and done it remarkably well. I was so grateful. It was now time to let a new titanium screw hold new space for a newly fabricated tooth. Maybe a new tooth with new energy. New words. New stories. And no more secrets. All of it was sad and scary but with a glint of potential new truth.
Second, in the aftermath, it was also clear to me that my second marriage was over. The evidence had been piling up for a while, and I’d done my best to hold space with it. Somehow, the tide of the changes in my mouth with my teeth was connected to the course of my marriage. I didn’t know what I would do or how things would go, especially in the middle of a pandemic, but I knew my marriage was over just as I knew my tooth had to come out.
It was directly a month later, after receiving a new crown on an entirely different tooth, an upper tooth (oh yes, my mouth is getting an overhaul), that my mouth finally let loose with the words to my husband that I needed to let go of old decisions and anchor in new decisions. These decisions meant dissolving our marriage.
It was hard to speak up vulnerably and say how and why I could no longer hold interactive space in the partnership. It was hard to say words that reached down into my gut and uttered my existence of, “I can no longer sacrifice my well-being so that we can have what we have. I’m invisibly and silently sinking with this ship here, and I can’t allow myself to sink. I have too much left to do on this planet, and I’m ready to live in a new way.”
It wasn’t until after the upheaval my words caused, words that secured the power of my decision, that I began to understand. I caught glimpses of understanding that I was beginning to untangle the secrets kept in my teeth that had anchored old patterns. With this untangling, I began to feel and see the urge of new words glimmering — new words containing a new script. A new script of hope, power, visibility, and vibrational sound to claim.
And that’s when I understood. The teeth in my mouth that are changing are the ones responsible for giving me a new script, new words, new ways of being in the world where I don’t have to hide and keep secrets any longer for the sake of my survival. It turns out that speaking my words, letting the secrets go, and showing up quite visibly IS what will keep me alive, no matter what.
Last week, the oral surgeon pulled my crowned molar that has valiantly held space with me, keeping secrets to keep me safe, but that is changing now. As my tongue gently runs over the gap where a tooth once stood and finds a titanium cap, the pain of the removed tooth flares and wanes. When I’m able, I hold presence with the pain, tracking the infinitesimal nerve lines up into my brain, along the side of my face, along the back of my throat, and down into my heart. I wonder if this reaches deeper into my gut and sacrum? How could one tooth be magically, painfully connected to so much? I wonder: Is brushing your teeth a form of dental reflexology that touches the nerve-line mapping of the body with a toothbrush?
And therein lies the painful yet magical destiny of letting go of this tooth . . . how the nerve lines are now letting go of so many packages of old energy, old patterns, old secrets. Something is opening up. Space now exists for the power of new thoughts, new words, and new decisions. The power of script-flipping and sourcing the new destiny line of well-being.
Dana Stovern is founder and coach of The Magic of Somatic Money, and author of the blog Along the Learning Curve of Life. Even though her profession is body-based money relationship coaching, her first love is words, writing and exploring the depths of the human conscious (or unconscious) condition in body and soul development.