We Make Mistakes, But Mistakes Don’t Make Us

I have made mistakes. I have said the wrong thing, trusted the wrong people, reacted out of pain, and made choices I later wished I could undo. I have stumbled, fallen, and had to pick myself back up more times than I can count. And I won’t pretend otherwise.

But here’s what I have learned: my mistakes do not define me. And neither do yours.

We are human—flawed, learning, growing. We are not meant to get everything right all the time. We make choices based on who we are in a given moment, with the knowledge and emotions we have at the time. Sometimes, those choices turn out beautifully. Other times, they lead us down roads we never intended to walk. And when that happens, it’s easy to get lost in regret, in self-blame, in the fear that we’ve ruined something beyond repair.

But a mistake is just a moment. A single choice, a misstep, a lesson waiting to be learned. It is not a full picture of who we are. It is not the only story worth telling about us.

And yet, the world often tries to convince us otherwise. People love to hold our mistakes against us, to remind us of where we went wrong, to reduce us to our lowest points instead of seeing the full journey. Some will use our past as a weapon, as if our worst moments should define us forever. They will whisper, they will judge, they will try to convince us that we are nothing more than the sum of our failures.

But I refuse to accept that.

I refuse to let my past missteps erase the love I give, the strength I fight for, or the goodness in my heart. I refuse to let the worst moments in my life overshadow the best. And I refuse to let anyone—no matter how bitter, judgmental, or unforgiving—define me by my mistakes.

Because mistakes don’t make us. What makes us is what we do after them.

Do we learn? Do we grow? Do we take responsibility and try to be better? That is what truly matters.

I am not who I was five years ago, or even a year ago. I am evolving, changing, working toward becoming the best version of myself. And I will not let the past hold me hostage.

And I hope you won’t either.

So, if you are carrying the weight of your mistakes, feeling like they define you, like you are too broken, too flawed, or too far gone to move forward—please hear me. You are not your mistakes. You are the person who chooses what happens next.

You can forgive yourself. You can rise. You can rewrite the story.

Because in the end, life is not about the mistakes we’ve made. It’s about how we rise from them. And I choose to rise.

I hope you do, too.