Through Gritted Teeth

Recently I’ve been grinding my teeth at night. I’ve been told this could be related to menopause. I think the cause for me is political, but hey, everyone’s their own best doctor. I mean, I’ve GoogleHow’ed just about everything so I’m now an expert…on everything. Right?

I went to see an osteopath last week. My neck’s been stiff (see: teeth grinding) but I also just have some arthritis in the cervical joints. She worked the heck out of my neck and jaw and suddenly…I can smile much more easily. I didn’t know the overworked muscles in my jaw were pulling down my whole face.

It made me think of that Gordon Lightfoot song, “Sundown” “Sometimes I think it’s a shame when I get feeling better when I’m feeling no pain.” I didn’t know I couldn’t smile very well. I didn’t realize that I was performing impressive acts of power lifting just getting the sides of my mouth to go up. I didn’t know how much better I could feel because, I mean, sure, like the song says, I wasn’t actually feeling any pain.

And suddenly, heading home from the osteopath, I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for all the crazy, weird, scary things in the world, the things hurting people left and right to the point that we can no longer even process the concentrated power in the hands of so few people to cause this much misery. I’ve been holding it all back through gritted teeth.

But I can smile again. I’m writing here because there’s so much love in the world. I have been so lucky in my life so far. I have great friends. I have a wonderful sister and nephew. I have a great partner. He has great kids who just give me love (almost like I deserved it? Who knew…) It’s just so much easier when you can feel the love and it grows all the way up into a huge smile to share with the world.

I’ve even found a song to make Foro smile, and a new artist for the times: Jesse Welles: