The Weekly Embarrassments

An Honest Essay

I’ve come to accept that I embarrass myself at least once a week. Sometimes more often. If longer than a week goes by without incident, I get suspicious. Something’s coming, and it might be a doozy.

More recently, though, my perspective has shifted. I’ve started to mostly embrace the embarrassments. I’ve let go of the shame and stopped telling myself I should be able to contain everything, to move through the world without making mistakes.

Now, I almost track them like the weather. I know something will roll through eventually, and there’s only so much I can do about it.

What I have realized is that this has become its own kind of surrender practice. There’s a strange freedom in it.

For years, I treated my mistakes, the gaffes, and awkward moments as something to hide. I’d deflect, minimize, and cover up wherever possible. It was exhausting. And it never made me feel better, just restricted.

Now I talk about them openly, even with my kids. I want them to see that messing up is part of being human. That you can do something awkward or imperfect and survive it. Maybe even laugh. Maybe even give yourself some grace. Because really… what are we all trying to prove?

This week’s standout embarrassment happened in a yoga class.

I was taking a class at the studio where I teach (which of course made it worse). We were mid-class, holding chair pose, when a large charter bus drove by. The studio is on the second floor, but this was a big bus, and you could clearly see the top of it. Horns were honking as it passed; it was a brief celebratory moment.

The bus was taking our local high school basketball team to the state semifinals, and a few people in the room recognized it. There was some light cheering, a little clapping. It was a fun, fleeting moment.

And it would have passed quickly… if I hadn’t suddenly blurted out, not quietly, “Oh shit.”

My 14-year-old son had been planning to leave school early that day to go to the game with friends. For two days, he had been asking me to email the school permitting him to leave early. He gets anxious about these things.

So when the bus went by, a voice shot through my brain: Did you email the school?

Now, you might assume in this case that I hadn’t. But I had. I’d already sent the email. I had just forgotten, momentarily.

In that split second, my mind didn’t register that I had emailed the school, nor did I manage to keep this processing contained. Instead, it produced a vivid image of my son standing in the school office, unable to leave, the staff trying to reach me while I was unreachable in yoga class.

Did I pause? Did I take a breath and double-check my memory?

No.

Hence: “Oh shit.”

Out loud. In the middle of class. While everyone was still in chair pose.

It was not elegant.

I then attempted to explain myself—also while in chair pose—which only made things worse. Thankfully, most people were laughing, and the teacher handled it with grace, joking that she’d been wanting to hold chair longer anyway.

I was embarrassed, and to be clear, there’s still a part of me that doesn’t want to be that person. I want to be the yoga teacher who is composed, regulated, and graceful. The one who doesn’t blurt out curse words mid-practice.

But the truth is that’s not entirely me. Maybe sometimes. Maybe on a good day.

It doesn’t mean I’m not still working toward more pause, more clarity. But I’m also learning to sit in these moments as they are. To own them fully and with transparency, perhaps with some of that grace I’m hoping my kids will foster for themselves.

I’m trying to see these moments as predictable and ordinary as the weather, and maybe, in their own way, just as natural.

Peace ✌️