Chapter 1: The Smile She Hid
For two years, my daughter hid her smile.
Not because she wasn’t beautiful.
Not because she wasn’t kind or intelligent or funny.
But because middle school and high school can be brutal, and a complicated orthodontic frame attached to her teeth had turned her into an easy target.
Kids called it “robot gear.”
Some called her “metal mouth.”
Others simply stared.
Little by little, Elsie stopped smiling in photos. She learned to laugh with her hand covering her mouth. She learned how to make herself smaller.
And every time I saw it happen, it broke my heart.
Then one afternoon she burst through the front door looking happier than I had seen her in years.
“Mom!” she shouted.
I looked up from the kitchen table.
“Mason asked me to prom!” Continue Reading ⬇️
