Top 5 Ways to Reduce Incontinence (Without Losing Your Dignity—or Your Sense of Humor)
Getting your period is no longer taboo. Menopause is suddenly cool—hello Naomi Watts! So why the hell aren’t there sexy pampers for adults yet?! The truth is, most of us will deal with bladder leaks at some point. Who hasn’t laughed so hard they peed a little? It’s as real as death and taxes.
So here’s the short list, then the real story:
Kegels — squeeze the day.
Bladder training — teach it like a puppy.
Skip the culprits — coffee, cocktails, carbonation.
Move a little — walking, yoga, dancing in your kitchen.
Better products, please — not hospital beige.
Now let’s get to the part that matters: what this looks like in real life.
Love and Leaks in Assisted Living
A few years after moving my mom from Boston to the Bay Area, she had a fall that made living alone impossible. Assisted living was the next step. I loved the place instantly—buzzing with lectures, film nights, even a class about the music of Vivaldi. I’d read the schedule posted in the elevator and thought, Sign me up!
My mom? Not a joiner. “Mom, don’t you want to go to the conductor’s lecture?” I’d ask. “No,” she’d shrug. She stayed in her room. That is, until she met Bernie.
Bernie was 88 and full of life. A widower, a mensch, a walker of 10,000 steps a day. He had a yellow legal pad permanently tucked under his arm, scrawled with cruise plans and port-of-call research. He had a lazy-boy chair, a flight simulator, and the energy of a man half his age. He also had a soft spot for my mom.
Soon he was bringing her coffee in the mornings, running errands at Trader Joe’s, and showing up at her door in matching pajama sets with chocolate in hand. Together they’d watch Monk reruns on her TV—Tony Shalhoub solving the same mysteries again and again. Were they really watching, or were they necking like teenagers? Hard to say. But they were adorable.
And then one day, Bernie stopped me in the lobby. His eyes wide, his voice hushed:
“Your mother needs diapers. That’s outside my scope.”
Fair.
Towels, Secrets, and Mapplethorpe
Sometimes I’d find my mom sitting on a towel on the wicker chairs in the assisted living café. Was she protecting herself from other people’s stains, or protecting the chair from her own? I never asked.
This was the same woman who once took me to a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in New York when I was a teenager. “Art is supposed to make you uncomfortable,” she said, as we stared at photographs that shocked and thrilled me in equal measure. She was a cool mom.
But now, she was a desperate mom. A needy mom. A mom trying to keep her dignity wrapped in towels and Depends. I wanted to channel my best self, to hold onto the image of the woman who’d encouraged me to face art, and life, head-on. But here we were: my mom needing something I couldn’t provide, Bernie drawing the line, and me figuring out diapers.
Enter My Sister
Thank goodness for my sister Emily. If I’m the obsessive over-analyzer, she’s the get-it-done tech wizard. She set up my mom’s smart TV, researched her streaming apps, and when I called in a panic about diapers, she calmly created a daily delivery system.
Whew. Done. Or so we thought…
Because incontinence isn’t just about supply. It’s about comfort, skin sensitivity, elastic rashes, and the constant reminder that your body isn’t fully your own anymore. My mom, who once stood proudly in front of Mapplethorpe photographs, was now irritated by the seams on adult diapers.
We Can Do Better
If Naomi Watts can make menopause sexy, surely someone can design incontinence underwear that looks good, feels good, and works. Products that don’t chafe. Products you can put on with dignity. Products that let you sit in the café without a towel.
But until that happens, here’s what I know: dignity doesn’t only come from the products we buy. It comes from the people who show up for us.
For my mom, it came in the form of Bernie sneaking down the hall each night in his pajamas, chocolate in one hand, crossword clues in the other, ready to watch Monk for the tenth—or maybe hundredth—time. Not because the mystery changed, but because love, humor, and tenderness made it worth solving all over again.
dōteworthy
Resource: hanky panky + saalt link
dōte note:
do you have some information to share about incontinence products? I mean we are all going to need them…