You’ve gone to battle. You’ve taken the necessary steps. You’ve conquered anxiety. You’ve gritted your teeth in their aligner trays through times when detractors teased. You’ve sucked ice chips in the depths of winter and sworn an oath to swerve staining foods. Yes, you’ve slayed the big stuff – making the final decision and taking the plunge into being an adult in orthodontics –
and the ‘small’ stuff – turns out, accidentally slurping soup in your aligners didn’t really matter in the end.

The occasional ulcer is a war wound, but you don’t suffer for the sake of it. Gengigel is always in your battlefield kit bag and you’ve spread the word of its rapid healing effects to comrades along the way. It’s a case of no tooth left behind when it comes to your aligner journey.

Your Field Marshal, sorry, orthodontist, thinks you deserve a medal. We do too!

Lifelong asset: You’ve learned how to act with courage, despite all your reservations and fears.

You got cunningly resourceful. You laughed your way out of that coffee drinking incident and, when you sneezed hard, you retrieved the lump of brace wax that just so happened to land on your colleague’s desk. You merely muttered, comedy gold and got straight back to being excellent.

That temporary lisp was a quirk you embraced. Now, you can laugh when it’s awkward, you can charm in situations which make others combust with embarrassment. You’ve taken the tougher times and slapped on your signature aligner smile. It’s your smile, a bit more polyurethane guarded than a few months ago, but, still, it’s yours.

You travel with your Aligner Travel Kit partly because there are only so many ‘asparagus in your aligner’ jokes in your repertoire, but mainly because its case doubles as a prop for the ultimate mic drop!

Lifelong asset: Nowadays, you choose playfulness over perfection. You’re more human that way.

Real transformation takes quiet magic. You’ve transformed strange sensations of discomfort and pain into, well, at the very least managed pain (carefully dosed analgesics helped) and most of the time absolutely no pain at all! You’re a wizard by any stretch of the imagination.

You set to work with your Orthodontic Access Toothbrush as if it was your new wand. To be fair, that wasn’t sorcery, it was just brilliant engineering. Your original gaps, overcrowding and crooked bits were no match for its V-shaped bristles and flexible, angleable head. If only VITIS did wands as well as toothbrushes ...

You had the right potions to foil plaque’s cloak of invisibility, too – TePe Plaqusearch Tablets – plus the counter charm with your orthodontic toothpaste.

Lifetime asset: The spell of knowing that every day you move towards the person you will be – enchanting smile in place!

You’re a walking book of adult orthodontic knowledge. You know your elastics from your pontics, your buttons from your hooks. You’re thinking of auditioning as The Orthodontist’s Apprentice. Maybe a career change into dentistry would suit you, you’ve always loved operating hydraulic equipment, after all, and certainly you already wear the Crocs! You think you’d ace it, but you’d remain humble about it, of course.

Even better than this, your ability to self-coach has grown. There’s a voice in your head that cheerleads, that soothes, that shares wisdom with strange but meaningful sayings such as This is a chapter, not the whole book ... Or that voice is down to earth, in fact it’s downright matter of fact at times, Hey, did you pack your Chewies?

You’ve had to play the long game. There are no short cuts when it comes to moving teeth into their new positions. Your smile will take longer to cook, but that’s ok, because ...

Lifetime asset: You’ve had to learn patience the hard way, now it’s part of your DNA.

Everyone you know has reacted differently to the varying stages of your teeth straightening journey. There’s been sympathetic looks, curiosity, admiration. But, for you, as your new smile develops, there’s something inside you that stays the same. The difference is, however, that you become more aware of these parts of you.

Along with some pretty wondrous biology and an awesome orthodontist, you’re the one who's the Warrior, Trickster, Alchemist and Sage. You’re the one rising to meet all of this change. You weren’t quite sure you had the skills, but, here you are, right in the middle of it, aware that some days you can feel like chewing water hurts and that everyday there’s a changed gap to attend to (it’s why we interdental brush), while others you forget there’s something in there 22 hours a day, well, until you make the mistake of fancying an apple ...

Lifetime asset: You get a smile to celebrate and the confidence that comes from having your heroes within who will always travel with you (unlike your orthodontist whom you’ll eventually say goodbye to #smileyface – sorry about that Mr. Toothurty)