Things I didn't do one upon a time

My daughter is struggling with her friends being dishonest and experimenting with life, love and drugs, while championing freedom of thought, religion and sexual identity. She seems to be far more emotional than I was about it. I am finding it difficult to guide her through this because I was drawn to the misfits and found them and their choices intriguing. I am a very patient person and I observe before I jump into things. I didn't rebel or live a sheltered life in the least. But I didn't reveal my heart or give up my soul, or give into anything until I was ready to envelope myself in it and accepted any consequences. As a teenager I was told so often not to have sex, drink, do drugs, and all the reasons not to and I was devastated to find out that not only do most people do and enjoy it all but that its pretty much acceptable as a right of passage. And that "virgin rock" I still have just seems so ridiculous in retrospect. So is shoving all that guilt down the throats of responsible, good kids actually counter-productive? Because it just seems the consequences were not as harsh as I envisioned and the reality of the world we lived in was far more devastating to me than I anything I could have put myself through. It seems the whole point of Christ is grace and forgiveness so if you never do anything wrong how can you fully understand it. So we have unconditional love down. Perhaps its the forgiveness we need to now work on. Forgiveness of myself for not living so much as watching. Forgiveness for friends distanced or lost because I wasn't ready to face reality. Forgiveness for the adults who let me down or judged me too harshly or who I simply feel embarrassed for revealing too much of what was in my heart. And the ability to give better advice based on my getting it partially right growing up. Maybe me thinking too much, Mike acting too much and Autumn loving too much will somehow bind together into some unstoppable force of awesome.