How I Learned to Forgive My Mother Without Forgetting the Pain

 

Forgiveness, Tina Strambler says, is one of the hardest things she has ever learned to do.

"It wasn't a moment," she explains. "It wasn't a prayer. It wasn't a decision I made once and never struggled with again. It was a process. A long one. A painful one. A necessary one."

For years, Strambler carried a weight she didn't fully understand—anger toward the woman who should have protected her but couldn't. Her mother, struggling with addiction and her own unhealed wounds, had disappeared into herself long before Strambler and her siblings were removed from the home. She was physically present some days, emotionally absent most days, and eventually, not present at all.

"I think I hated her," Strambler admits quietly. "That's not easy to say. Especially as a woman. Especially as a mother myself. Society doesn't give children permission to feel anger toward their parents, especially mothers. We're taught to excuse, to forgive, to understand before we're even allowed to feel hurt."

But the truth, she says, is more complicated—and more honest.

"I hated her for the pain she caused me. I hated her for choosing drugs over us. I hated her for not protecting us. I hated her for not being who I needed when I was small and helpless and terrified."

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The Reunion That Wasn't

When Strambler was 13, she had a chance to reconnect with her mother. After years in foster care at High Sky Children's Ranch in Midland, the state determined that her mother had passed her drug tests and completed her inspections. There was an opportunity to go home.

Strambler said yes—partly out of curiosity, partly out of teenage rebellion, partly out of a flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, things could be different.

They weren't.

The small blue house in Tickfaw, Louisiana, had no structure, no rules, no safety. Strambler saw things she had never seen before: roaches, food stamps, cocaine on a table. Her brother, shaped by years in different boys' homes, was angry and lost. Her sister was adrift. And her mother, despite passing the state's inspections, was slipping back into old patterns.

"I realized very quickly that I didn't belong there," Strambler says. "Not because I didn't want a family, but because I knew what a safe home felt like now. I knew what stability looked like. I knew what it felt like to be cared for. And this wasn't it."

She made a decision that would shape the rest of her life: she picked up the phone, called her counselor back in Texas, and asked to come home. By home, she meant High Sky.

The Difference Between Forgiveness and Reconciliation

For years, Strambler wrestled with what forgiveness meant. Did forgiving her mother mean pretending the past hadn't happened? Did it mean welcoming her back into her life? Did it mean excusing the years of absence and pain?

The answer, she eventually learned, was no.

"Forgiveness isn't about them," Strambler says now. "It's about you. It's about releasing the anger that ties you to a story you no longer want to live inside."

She learned this gradually, through years of therapy, through conversations with counselors like Jalynn Hogan at High Sky, through the steady love of a husband who held space for her wounds without trying to fix them, and through her own journey of becoming a mother.

"Therapy taught me something I had never heard before," she recalls. "You can forgive without forgetting. You can release the pain without letting anyone back in. You can move forward without pretending the past didn't happen."

Understanding Without Excusing

Part of Strambler's healing came from trying to understand her mother's story—not to excuse what happened, but to see the fuller picture.

"She was broken, too," Strambler says. "She was lost, too. She didn't have the help she needed. She didn't have anyone to save her. She was fighting demons I couldn't see as a child—addiction, pain, wounds she never had the space or support to heal."

Understanding her mother's struggles didn't erase the pain of her absence. It didn't give Strambler back the childhood she lost. But it did help soften the edges of her anger.

"It helped me release the bitterness I carried for so long," she says. "It helped me see her as a person—flawed, struggling, broken—instead of just the source of my pain."

The Peace That Came

Strambler's mother passed away on March 29, 2021, at the age of 69. By then, Strambler had done enough of her own healing to feel at peace.

"I am at peace knowing she understood me before her passing," Strambler says simply.

That peace didn't come from a perfect reconciliation or a Hollywood ending. It came from inside—from the hard, quiet work of letting go.

"Forgiveness didn't mean we had a perfect relationship," she explains. "It didn't mean I forgot. It didn't mean I stopped wishing things had been different. It meant I let go of the anger that tied me to a story I no longer wanted to live inside."

The Hardest Forgiveness of All

The person Strambler had to forgive most, she says, was herself.

"I blamed myself for the abuse. I blamed myself for not being able to help my siblings. I blamed myself for the mistakes I made as a teenager. I blamed myself for the things I didn't know, didn't understand, couldn't change."

Learning to forgive herself meant recognizing a fundamental truth: she was a child who survived, not a child who failed.

"I forgave the girl who learned to hide her pain. I forgave the girl who fought to stay alive. I forgave the girl who tried to find love in all the wrong places. I forgave the girl who didn't know better because no one had ever taught her better."

Forgiveness as a Daily Practice

Even now, decades later, Strambler says forgiveness isn't something she did once and moved on from. It's something she practices every day.

"Every time I refuse to let the past define me. Every time I choose love over fear. Every time I speak about my story instead of hiding it. Every time I see myself as worthy. Every time I love my children the way I was never loved."

That, she says, is what forgiveness really is—not a single act, but a way of living.

"Forgiveness is a journey, not a destination," she reflects. "And every step I take brings me closer to the woman I was always meant to be."

A Message for Anyone Struggling to Forgive

For anyone carrying the weight of unforgiveness—toward a parent, an abuser, or themselves—Strambler offers this:

"Forgiveness isn't something you give to people who hurt you. It's something you give to yourself. It's freedom. It's choosing to stop carrying them around in your heart, in your head, in your pain. It's choosing to let yourself go free."