Doug MacNally
Post-recovery portrait
— coming May 2026 —
Hanover, Ontario
The 30-Year Shadow
For thirty years, I lived in the background of my own life. If you look at my photos from the last three decades, you'll see the same thing over and over: a hand partially covering my mouth. A head turned at an awkward angle. Lips pressed tight in a forced, closed-mouth smile that never quite reached my eyes.
I wasn't being shy. I was hiding.
When your teeth are failing, you don't just lose your ability to eat — you lose your ability to be present. You carry a constant, heavy weight of dental shame. You assume every person you talk to is looking at your mouth. You stop laughing out loud in rooms full of people.
"I sat at my computer, my face throbbing, staring at a photo of myself. I'm a CNC machinist — I'm used to visualizing how a raw block of metal becomes a finished part. But I couldn't bridge the gap between the pain I was in and the person I wanted to be."
In February 2026, I hit a breaking point. A massive dental infection left me in the kind of pain that makes the world go quiet. I knew I needed a fresh start. But even with the pain, I was terrified.
Using custom AI visualization tools I'd built, I created a workflow to see what "After" could look like. When the image rendered, I froze. It was me, but it wasn't me. It was the version of me that didn't have to hide. For the first time in 30 years, I saw a version of myself laughing without a hand over my mouth.
I wasn't going to the dentist to get teeth pulled. I was going to claim the person in that photo.
That feeling — that specific, indescribable moment of seeing your own potential — is what SmileForward sells. Not pixels. Not a workflow. That moment.