Standing in the Costco merchandise return line, I saw this lady walking out toward the exit with a cart piled high with boxes of Depends. She wasn’t that old.
I felt embarrassed.
I remembered the awkward evidence of wet pants after laughing too hard when I was pregnant. Or coughing when I was pregnant. Or basically doing anything that required any degree of bearing down when I was pregnant. She wasn’t pregnant.
The uneven balance of power between her and the rest of “the world” was announced by many boxes of Depends — the cumulative, “We don’t need Depends and she does.” In that moment, bodily control became an unspoken currency.
What does that say about me? About us?
The feeling was quieter than judgment. It was more uncomfortable than wet pants. A sudden awareness of bodies, of exposure, of who is still “contained” and who is not. Not a moral judgment, but an emotion in response to perceived loss of autonomy.
Way way way back, when I used to menstruate, I’d feel the need then too. I would hide my sanitary items going up to the teller. I’d hope hard at the people around. “Please please don’t see my period stuff!”
Knowing people know you bleed or leak urine is embarrassing. Shame was up, eyes open, on point.
Isn’t it strange what we’re taught to hide.
We are schooled by everything. Community, commercials, the Lebanese heritage that is spliced into my DNA. Anything that signals dependency, permeability, or loss of control, is shameful. Bleeding is normal. Leaking is common. Needing products is part of being human. And yet the visibility of those needs is losing. A loss is there, of privacy, of boundaries, of dignity.
Standing there, I realized that what I felt wasn’t just that. It was vulnerability. Seeing her cart jettisoned the power-meter. It showed just how much power we quietly assign to bodily control, and how quickly that power can climb. Control, not character, had become the axis of comparison. Embarrassment wasn’t about her at all.
It was about fear.
Fear of being seen as dependent. Fear of the body betraying us in public. Fear that dignity is something you can lose simply by needing help. Unfortunately, these are not irrational fears; they are culturally reinforced and clinically familiar.
We learn early that our bodies should be discreet, quiet, sealed. That need should be invisible. That containment improves value. This belief system shows up repeatedly in clinical work — in stigma, nonadherence, and resistance to care.
What does that say about me? About us?
Maybe we are still learning how to untangle dignity from control. Or shame often masquerades as embarrassment when it’s really grief for the illusion of independence.
Question: When did needing help start to feel like losing for you?
Self-Care Tip: Notice one place this week where you hide a normal need. Then practice letting it be visible without fixing it, just to allow yourself to need something without apology.