“You’ve lost your smile.” I cannot remember exactly who said that to me or where I was, but that sentence is engraved in my memory. Perhaps it was the photographer who took my 7th-grade picture for picture day. Or the guidance counselor who also told me she just wanted to feed me some chocolate chip cookies because I appeared so thin. Maybe it was the therapist I saw because everyone thought I was making up symptoms. It doesn’t really matter who said it though; what matters is that sentence was more than just a figure of speech. I felt it, physically and deep down.
I didn’t lose my smile; I lost my ability to smile. It was there, somewhere in there, but the disease was far more powerful than anything I was once capable of. Unfortunately, I lost more than just my ability to smile and it would take years before I could regain that ear-to-ear grin I once knew. Today, I still have some paralysis on the right side of my mouth, but now I at least have the words to express what I’m feeling.
We all smile for different reasons. We smile to express joy and pure happiness. We smile to mask the pain we sometimes have to deal with. We smile to convince ourselves otherwise—you know; “fake it till you make it.” We smile to relay kindness and empathy. We smile to illustrate the best version of ourselves. A smile can mean multiple things, thus, when I physically was unable to exercise that ability, it sometimes felt as though I had no meaning.
But this is the thing…. we are far more than any ability our physical body is supposed to have. I learned that the hard way with myasthenia gravis. My existence is not dictated by the wideness of my smile, by the strength of my muscles, or by my abilities.
Today is World Smile Day; a day that encourages kindness and human connection. You never know what someone is going through, even behind a cheerful smile. Take today to genuinely promote kindness or intentionally be nice to someone. Give a compliment, offer help, or reach out to someone—it may change the course of their day or even their life.
The following blog post was written by Meridith O'Connor, St. Louis Program Coordinator of the Myasthenia Gravis Association.
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