Breaking Every Cycle: How Childhood Trauma Shaped the Mother She Became

 

The first time Tina Strambler held her newborn son, she felt something she had never experienced before: belonging.

"It was a mix of pure excitement and absolute terror," she recalls. "I had grown up in the system, raised in group homes, never truly had a family of my own. Now I was about to become a mother."

That moment in 1996, when Darius was placed in her arms, didn't just change Strambler's life—it saved it. For a woman who had survived abuse, neglect, and 13 years in the Texas foster care system, motherhood became both a challenge and a healing balm.

"He was the first person in my life who was truly mine," Strambler writes in her newly released memoir, Raised by Strangers, Rebuilt by Love. "Someone I got to protect the way no one had protected me."

The book chronicles Strambler's journey from a abused child in Midland to a wife, mother of three sons, and grandmother of four. But at its core, it is a story about breaking cycles—about choosing to become the mother she never had.

A Childhood Without Blueprints

Strambler doesn't romanticize her early years. Born in Louisiana, she and her two siblings were sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Midland after their parents became unable to care for them. What followed was years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse—beatings with a nail-embedded paddle, forced stands for hours on end, humiliation, and fear.

"When I became a mother, I didn't have a blueprint," she says. "I didn't know what a healthy mother-child relationship looked like. I only knew what it wasn't. I knew it wasn't fear. I knew it wasn't confusion. I knew it wasn't feeling like you had to earn love."

What she did have were the lessons learned during her 13 years at High Sky Children's Ranch in Midland—the cottage parents who tucked her in at night, the counselors who helped her process trauma, the structure that taught her how to create a stable home.

"I found myself repeating the things High Sky taught me without even thinking," Strambler says. "'Put your laundry away neatly.' 'Everyone helps with dinner.' 'Make your bed every morning—it starts your day right.'"

The Weight of Young Motherhood

Strambler was 20 years old when Darius was born. She and her husband Roderick, whom she met the night of her high school graduation, were young, hopeful, and terrified. They moved into a cramped apartment, counting dollars and stretching paychecks. Roderick worked in a file room at an oil and gas company. Strambler took jobs where she could find them.

"We struggled financially in ways that don't always show on the outside," she recalls. "Counting dollars, choosing which bills could wait, stretching groceries, hoping the math would somehow work itself out."

In 1998, their second son, Dedrick, was born. By 2001, they welcomed their third, Donovan. Three boys in five years—a household full of energy, noise, and love.

But love alone didn't make it easy.

"We argued, not because we didn't love each other, but because pressure has a way of finding every weak spot," Strambler says. "We cried—sometimes together, sometimes alone—exhausted, overwhelmed, and unsure if we were doing any of it right."

Unlike many young mothers, Strambler had no family to lean on. No safety net. No familiar place to fall back to.

"Roderick's family often stepped in to help us, and I will always be deeply grateful for that," she says. "But I didn't have a family of my own. It was just me, learning how to trust, how to receive help, how to build a family from the ground up while I was still healing myself."

Healing Through Parenting

What Strambler discovered, slowly and unexpectedly, was that motherhood itself was therapy.

"People don't always talk about this part," she says, "but motherhood forces you to re-experience your childhood in a new way."

Every time she hugged her boys, a part of her healed. Every time she tucked them into bed safely, a memory of her own unsafe nights softened. Every time she disciplined them gently—with guidance instead of cruelty—she rewrote the harsh lessons of her own upbringing.

"Through them, I saw what love was supposed to feel like," she says. "Through them, I learned to forgive myself. And through them, I learned to forgive the world."

Each son taught her something different. Darius, her firstborn, taught her responsibility and purpose. Dedrick taught her balance and patience during years of struggle. Donovan, born after they had weathered enough storms to understand how precious life really was, taught her joy and gratitude.

"I wasn't perfect," Strambler admits, "but I was present. I was there for the scraped knees, the school projects, the late-night talks, the sports games, the heartbreaks, the moments where all they needed was someone to say, 'I'm proud of you.'"

Breaking Generational Curses

For Strambler, motherhood carried a weight that mothers from stable backgrounds might never fully understand. Every choice felt like a chance to either repeat the past or rewrite it.

"No generational curse, no trauma, no past mistake was going to touch my babies," she says firmly. "I poured everything I had and everything I never had into them: love, consistency, routine, warmth, safety, affection, boundaries, support, encouragement, stability."

She became, she says, "the mother I wished I had. The protector I prayed for as a child. The safe place I needed growing up."

Today, watching her three sons navigate adulthood, Strambler sees the fruit of those choices. Two went off to college. One built a career and started a family of his own. All three became men with big hearts, strong values, and bright futures.

"We did it," she says quietly. "Two young kids who fell in love after graduation night built a life out of nothing but commitment and faith."

The Next Generation

Now a grandmother of four, Strambler finds herself experiencing a new layer of healing she didn't know existed.

"It is healing in a way that words can't describe," she says, "watching my grandchildren experience the love, the stability, the family foundation I worked so hard to create."

She thinks often of the cycles she broke—not just for herself, but for the generations that follow.

"I broke the cycles. I changed the story. I built the home I once dreamed of. And my children get to live in the warmth of that healing. That alone makes everything worth it."

A Marriage That Helped Heal

None of it would have been possible, Strambler says, without the man she met on graduation night.

"Roderick loved me through wounds he didn't cause," she explains. "He held spaces inside me that were still raw. He believed in me when I doubted myself. He protected me without making me feel weak."

Their marriage, now approaching 30 years, hasn't been perfect. They've struggled, fought, cried, and doubted. But they've also chosen each other, again and again.

"He showed me what healthy love was supposed to feel like," Strambler says. "Little by little, he helped me rebuild the parts of myself that trauma had taken."

The Woman She Became

Looking back at the little girl who stood trembling in hallways, who learned to read danger in footsteps, who survived abuse that should have broken her, Strambler feels something she never expected: gratitude.

"Everything I survived, everything I overcame, everything I struggled to understand in my childhood—all of it shaped me into a woman who could stand firm not only for myself but for others," she says.

Today, Strambler works in sales in the oil and gas industry, a field where her ability to connect with people has become her greatest asset. She speaks openly about her past, not for sympathy, but because "pain held in silence becomes poison. Pain shared with honesty becomes medicine."

"I am the woman I used to dream about meeting when I was a little girl," she says.

And to every survivor still healing, she offers this: "You can come from the darkest places and still build a beautiful life. You can be hurt and still be whole. You can be broken and still be chosen. You can be afraid and still be brave. You can be a survivor and still write your own happy ending."