Picture: I took this picture to show a friend how I was dressed because of the frigid temperature the day that inspired this post.

When was the last time you had an image or thought of your death?

I started thinking about dying after I had a shocking fall last month. One minute I was walking normally and then the next I was flat out on the ground where my face smashed the concrete. In the nanosecond that it took for me to go from upright to horizontal there was no thinking. And the weirder part is that it also felt as if I fell in slow motion but there was no thinking between the time I was walking and the time I was flat on my face. My head hit the ground with such force that I immediately put my hand to my mouth thinking my front teeth were gone. This all happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to use my hands as expected to prevent the fall. The natural instinct that didn’t show up may have saved me from broken wrists. I am still processing this fall! I am in awe of this fall because all my teeth are in tack, I was conscious and even though there was copious amounts of blood from my nose, which by the way wasn’t broken, I only had a small but deep cut under my nose from the pebbles on the concrete.

What does being in awe of this fall mean? First if you look at the picture you can see how covered up I was and I believe my coat protected me from some of the direct impact of face hitting ground! I notice that I hesitate writing some of what will follow but I decided something inside of me died in that fall so what the hell… move forward and be in my life in an even bigger way.

It is March 2018 and my front tooth broke off. Actually it was a crown that had been in my mouth for 45 years. I literally forgot that I had a crown on my front tooth because it had been with me for so long that it felt like an original part of me. Upon reflection I believe that I had a crown on my front tooth because I fell on my head or smashed my head so many times as a kid and young adult that I most likely damaged the nerve in that tooth by the time I was 25, hence, a crown.

What an ordeal to find a dentist to repair that front tooth and this is another story to possibly be explored in another post. But to give some details, my front tooth was crooked and the original crown was put in to match my crooked tooth. The 2018 replacement crown was put in straight for aesthethic reasons, which for me happened so quickly that I agreed to something that I really knew I needed more time to feel into. But I had a missing front tooth. Call it vanity but YEH! I wanted a tooth in the front of my mouth. The dentist put in a temporary straight tooth and I started feeling into it. It felt awkward but I figured I would get used to it. New tooth arrives and is cemented into my mouth. Voila! Straight tooth in the front! I hated it. Now hate might be a powerful word but I wanted my crooked tooth back. I didn’t like it straight. I was noticing a lisp and my tongue kept getting caught somewhere in my mouth.

OK, you might be thinking ~ all this from one tooth? She is being so dramatic? Well, whether or not you are thinking this ~ LOL ~ I thought this with a very critical and condescending voice within myself. Even though I knew from other experiences that something as small as a tooth or what might be perceived as innocuous can have huge effects on my body.

Moving forward with my new tooth. I couldn’t really use my front teeth to bite into an apple. I was afraid to chew on anything that entailed using my front teeth. I kept touching my teeth to see if they were in place or even there. I couldn’t really feel that tooth and also knew that I was being overly cautious with how I was eating but I was finding it hard to stop myself. I wanted my old tooth back.

Present Experience ~ I fall! My front tooth hurt a lot! I was thinking, WOW, its great that this tooth doesn’t have a nerve in it because if it did it would be damaged because of the force from this fall. I kept looking at my tooth waiting for it to turn black while also knowing it wouldn’t because it’s a fake tooth! So I lovingly and compassionately talked to myself allowing for the shock and stress to wash over me from what I experienced.

Two weeks later I bite into an apple for the first time in almost a year. I feel completely confident that this tooth is here to stay. After all, I did smash it and it didn’t break! Also, for the first time since the new tooth was placed in my mouth I am not lisping and my tongue feels centered and comfortable.

I have many ideas about what this was for me. I am going to go out on a limb here to share some of what might be perceived as radical thinking. I truly believe that I fell because my body was in such turmoil and stress over the new crown in my mouth. For the 10 months that crown was in my mouth I was trying to organize my walking, talking, eating and overall adjustment to that tooth. I was in resistance to the tooth from the beginning and I absolutely believe in my whole being that the fall corrected my entire body alignment. I notice I want to clarify or explain even deeper so You will understand my thinking. I have had so many of these types of experiences in my life and this is what has brought me to these understandings and truths about how things happen in my body.

I do not blame or shame myself for the fall. I do not say… oH what did I do to bring on such an event? What I am saying is ~ Thank you (to a higher part of myself) for taking care of me while I lived my very human experience and gained more information and clarity about who I am and how I choose to live.

We are all here in our bodies that carry us around with every breath. Every cell, every single fiber of our being is a part of the whole. All the subtle nuances of these body’s that we inhabit are at the core of our existence and not to be ignored. Every part of us is working synergistically for our overall balance and well being.

We are not body parts that can be looked at and separated from the rest. Each part of my body is in service to the all of me. I now see my tooth, even though its straight, and think, thank you for auto correcting and putting me back into alignment. I was trying to organize my resistant thinking around this one tooth and the tooth was trying to help me get into alignment with the whole. I could say that the fall knocked me into alignment in a bigger way. I could go down the questioning road by asking “did I have to fall to find this out?” The answer is obviously YES because that is what happened.

I came up with this sentence for myself the other day ~ “I banged my head against my limited thinking!” If we hold on to our emotions they will create a density inside our bodies. And even though I continued to release how I was feeling there was still a deeper part of me that felt resentment for that tooth. Until I didn’t!

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this post. I welcome your comments.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” ~ Mike Tyson