I can’t remember the first time I threw my mom under the bus, but try as I might, I can’t forget the worst time. I was 17 and thought I was the hardest working, most put-upon high school girl on the planet. I went off-campus to college for all but one class, worked a weekend job in catering, and volunteered in an at-risk classroom every week. I was pretty self-sufficient.

So when my mom got onto me about something one day, in a fit of self-righteousness, I threw her personal life history in her face. I yelled something along the lines of, “Yeah, well when you were my age you had a baby.”

Real mature. If you want to be treated like an adult and think of yourself as an adult, this is not the way to go, FYI.

The ironic thing is that I’ll bet my mom forgot about that after a few weeks. Having raised two daughters through their teenage years, I’m guessing my mom grew some tough skin. But me? I’ve never forgotten those words and what saying them took away from me. I’ll remember those bitter words for the rest of my life.

The Longer You Live, the More Mistakes You’ll Make

What changed between the me I was when I said those words to my mom and the me that regrets them today (although, to be honest, I regretted them instantly) is a whole heckuva lot of life experience.

You’re mom isn’t perfect; no mother is. So if you’re already at the stage of your life where you’re measuring her up against a stick of what you think a mother “ought to be” – stop it. All you’re going to achieve with that is a lot of resentment from unmet expectations. I’ll write about the pitfalls of expectations in another letter. Those are generally no good anyway.

You’re not going to be perfect when you’re your mom’s age either. And that’s a good thing. Life provides us with plenty of opportunities for “mistakes” and the older you get, the more “mistakes” you’re going to accumulate.

Mistakes Make Us Smarter

Mistakes are what make us grow into better people. If your mom never made a mistake, then she would never learn how to be a better person. And none of us are born “better” than others. Some people just choose to turn their mistakes into growth opportunities, while others will wonder why the same mistake keeps happening to them over and over again.

Socrates said that the truly intelligent man knows that he knows nothing. There’s so much that life is going to teach you through mistakes, that maybe it’s impossible for you to understand that kind of intelligence right now.

There’s No Satisfaction in Being Better Than Anyone

Just know this: the satisfaction you think you’ll feel by belittling your mom doesn’t exist. The impulse to yell at her or throw her faults in her face is momentary and unfulfilling. Putting people down because you feel superior (or because you think it will make you superior) never works. It’s like quicksand; quicksand pulls you in further every time you try to climb out. That’s how putting people down works, too. You’ll actually only feel smaller, less superior.

That’s what I lost the moment I uttered (or rather, yelled) those words that day. I felt a sinking in my stomach that I recognize today as disappointment in myself, because I had attempted to make my mother feel small because I thought I was so much bigger than the person she was at my age. What really sucks is now that I’m an adult, I realize what my mom sacrificed at my age to give me the kind of life that allowed me to be in a better situation than she was in.

You’re not better than your mom right now. You simply haven’t had the opportunity to make your mistakes. And you will make them. It’s not a bad thing as long as you choose to grow.

Maybe one of your mistakes will be taking out your frustrations on your mom. That’s OK too. You’ll get to learn how to apologize, find out how good an honest apology can feel, and discover a new way to communicate when you’re hurt or upset. That’s how it’s worked for me, anyway.

This post is part of a series called Letters to a Teenage Girl. Read the intro and other posts from the series here.

I had coffee with a friend this weekend and we talked a lot about failure. She said that she felt like she had never really failed before. I, on the other hand, have failed numerous times. Like here. Or here. The amount of mistakes I’ve made in my life is kind of ridiculous. They are far too numerous to count, and some of them have been life-changing.

Some of my failures have only seemed like failures. Others have been important lessons that I only wish wouldn’t have taken so long to figure out.

I always hear people saying to “fail forward.” I guess that’s just a fancy way of saying learn from your mistakes and don’t repeat them. Because there’s something to learn in all of our so-called failures and mistakes, if we are only willing to admit that we’ve been wrong.

Personal story
Meet Amaya. She was my puppy for about 18 hours this weekend. She’s adorable, super-sweet, and loves to chew on… well, anything. She is also a total cuddle bug. So what happened?

I’ve been itching for a dog for months now. But I live in an apartment that is 30 minutes away from my work. And I leave that apartment at 8 a.m. and sometimes I don’t get back until 10 p.m.

I threw all that logic out of the window and did what I wanted. I bought a dog.

When I got her home, she became more rambunctious than she had been in the car. She chewed on everything, and I realized she was covered in fleas. She followed me everywhere, and I when I left her alone she cried. I picked her up, and she stopped.

That’s when I realized there was no way I could keep this adorable little puppy.

Logic and reason came flooding back. And I began to cry as I realized my enormous mistake. Honestly, I began to panic. After about 30 minutes and a conversation with a friend I trust, I came to the decision to take my puppy back to the shelter she came from.

I have to admit that I was wrong, that I made an impulsive decision. And I have to admit this to the people I assured I was ready for pet-parenthood. I have to tell them that I was wrong, that I’m not ready.

I am humbled and embarrassed. But I also have learned from this mistake. I learned that I’m not ready for a puppy. And that will definitely take those wistful feelings away that I used to get when I would see people playing on the beach with their dogs. And when I am ready for a dog, I’ll know it. Because I’ll remember this humbling experience and the accompanying embarrassment, and I won’t make the mistake again.

We can beat ourselves up about our mistakes, or we can see them for what they are – bad decisions we can learn from, moments of weakness that turn into wisdom that lasts a lifetime.