Slowing Down, Healing: A Conversation with Dr. Jin

Dr. Jin, who I’ve known for four years, has long dismantled the archetypes of dentists. She was unlike the elderly, sometimes obsolete doctors, weaponed with cold, glistening surgical instruments, looming above their helpless patients. Her eyes offered the brightest glimmer –a smile before her mask ever came down, moving with a hurried yet reassuring rhythm. Despite looking twentish, retaining the refreshing vitality of an undergraduate, she was actually in her mid-30s.

The Powers of Healing

“My passions for becoming a doctor began with observation and inspiration,” Dr. Jin said, “My mother was in medicine, and I saw the fabric of her life from the powers of healing—not just the business, but the fulfillment of being needed, of earning respect from helping others.” Yet the decision to enter the particular industry of dentistry was guided with some practical help. A cardiologist uncle steered her toward stomatology, and finding her passions there, she applied and was subsequently admitted to the Stomatology major at West China School of Stomatology, Sichuan University.

The Architecture of Trust

For Dr. Jin, expertise is forever ongoing. Sometimes when she looked back at early experiences with patients, she too felt regrets and uncertainties. “It’s always a continuous dialogue between knowledge and practice,” she reflected. “You look back at work from years ago and see the subtle shifts you’d make now. Regrets are a form of growth.” The most critical element in this process, she revealed, is trust—a truly transformative and foundational chemistry between the doctor and the patient, and within the doctor’s own heart and mind. Familial support was key for her in building trust in her own abilities. “My first patient for early intervention correction was my son, and my first patient for lingual correction was my husband. Their willingness to devote themselves to medicine served as a kind of encouragement for my medical career.”

Orthodontics, in Dr. Jin’s view, is less a science of correction than an art of alignment—not just of teeth, but of goal and outcome. “It requires a deep understanding of structure, of biomechanics,” she says, “but the true challenge is temporal and personal. You are guiding a change that happens incrementally, over years.” This long arc fostered a unique intimacy. “You witness a gradual unveiling. A child who was reticent begins to offer a smile freely. That transformation isn’t something I can impose in a day; it’s something we strive towards, and work on, together.”

Portraits in Progress

When asked for a most memorable story in her career as a dentist, she spoke not of a dramatic cure, but of a quiet metamorphosis. She recalled a woman in her sixties who had always lived with a smile she held back. “She came to me with a lifetime of apprehension. The process, for her, was about more than straight teeth; it was about revising a long-held self-perception.” Dr. Jin’s face softened. “Now, she sends me photographs from her travels. In them, she is radiant, hopeful. It’s always the confidence that strikes me. My work may have helped in providing a foundation, but in the end, it was her own spirit that built the confidence. What I did was only showing her how courageous and how beautiful she could be without being defined—she did everything else herself.”

Healing takes time, but also trust. Every day, little miracles are happening in the clinic that may change a person’s life by simply changing how they think about themselves. Dr. Jin had indeed benefitted from her increased trust of herself, of her gradual learning process and building of confidence that helped her earn the title as one of the neighborhood’s most renowned dentists. Her greatest skill is not in carving the most aesthetically pleasing smiles, but those that are authentically owned, building the very definitions of confidence from inside out.