This weekend, Thornton Academy is hosting its graduation ceremony for the class of 2010. Among the honorees will be, unbelievably, one of my very own stepdaughters. She will be following both her father’s and my own footsteps as an alumnus of T.A.

Looking back at my own commencement ceremony it seems like more than a generation has come and gone. At her age I was totally ready to jump into life with both feet and experience everything it had to offer. I was going to move mountains. I knew everything there was to know about people and myself. And old people knew nothing, were boring and outdated and should be ignored at all costs.

In other words, I was 18.

As her career as a student is coming to an end and her life as a big adult begins, I would love to hand her the Cliff’s Notes on all the lessons I’ve learned along the way, especially the ones that have been hard to come by.

However, in the short stint I’ve had playing the role of a step-parent to teenage kids, I know better.

Somehow in the course of just three short years life has pulled a bit of a practical joke on me. It’s come about that I’m now one of those old people and, being related, any words of wisdom would probably go in one of her ears and out the other. It’s okay, us old folk understand.

I guess some of the most valued lessons can’t be handed down, but have to be lived through. There’s no way to articulate life’s events like buying a home, holding your child for the first time breaking someone’s heart. Words can’t dictate someone’s path to avoid heartbreak or elude accidents. To all of us, life just happens.

Through the years, the hardest lesson I’ve learned is how to listen to people who know better (a.k.a. my elders). It took me years to get it through my thick skull that I don’t have to learn things the hardest possible way when there may be someone who can teach me otherwise. It was after I caught on to that most valuable tidbit that I began to feel older, wiser and more grown up myself.

Now, being ranked as a person to seek advice from is both flattering and aging alike. I’m learning, through trial and much error, how to let them come to me, instead of unsolicited advice. That, in itself, was a lesson I’ve learned along the way from an elder I trust.

If asked, I suppose the best advice I could possibly send her into the world with would be to always follow her instincts and find herself.

My instincts have helped me immeasurably through the years. They kept me alive, steered me away from more trouble than I could get out of and kept me relatively safe. They showed me who to trust, who to walk away from and who to believe in.

There were countless times as a mother I’ve relied not at all on logic but what my heart was screaming at me. Having faith in one’s innate knowledge is priceless.

And as for finding herself? Some of us never do. Others may much later in life, only to realize they’ve wasted too many years denying who they really are.

Though I’ve tried on many hats and attitudes, I’m learning, not too early but not too late, that when all falsehoods are stripped away and you find faith in who you are, contentment is sure to follow. No, none of us are even close to perfect. But trying to be the best version of myself lets me hold my head high, despite my trip-ups along the way.

Everyone has a story to tell, though not everyone is willing to listen. After living life as a grown-up for a while, none of us escape unscathed. Life hands us our scars, whether their visible or tucked away.

And all my stories, life’s curves and hardships ended up defining who I am today. I did know some things about life when I was 18. My stepdaughter knows much more about life and hardships than I knew when I was her age. She also has a much stronger grasp on her self awareness than I did. But what I had absolutely no clue about is just how much more there was, and is, to learn.

Maybe someday, years down the road, some of my stories will end up coming her way. If that day does come, I hope I have the wisdom to deliver them well and appreciate the opportunity to share my defining moments with her.

Until then, I’ll keep fine-tuning my ongoing lesson of keeping my thoughts to myself, while watching her further transform into the woman she’s to become.

— Elizabeth Reilly Hussey can be reached at elizabethreilly1@yahoo.com.