Tina Strambler has a message for anyone still carrying the weight of their past. It’s a message she wishes someone had whispered to her during the long nights at High Sky Children’s Ranch, when she lay in bed wondering where her brother was sleeping. It’s a message she needed to hear during the years she blamed herself for abuse she didn’t cause. It’s a message she eventually, through decades of healing, learned to believe.
You are not your trauma.
“This chapter is not about my past,” Strambler writes in her memoir, Raised by Strangers, Rebuilt by Love. “It’s about yours. It’s for every child who feels unsafe in their own home. Every teenager who learned to survive instead of live. Every adult still healing from things they never deserved. Every foster kid who feels forgotten. Every survivor who wonders if they will ever feel whole again.”
To the One Who Survived Abuse
Strambler knows what it’s like to carry wounds you didn’t cause. To fear the night. To flinch at footsteps. To wonder why the people who were supposed to protect you became the ones who hurt you.
“I know what it’s like,” she says quietly. “I lived it.”
But she also knows this: What happened to you was not your fault. Not then. Not ever.
“Your worth did not diminish because someone tried to break you,” she insists. “Your value was not taken from you. You are not damaged goods. You are not unlovable. You are not the things that were done to you.”
She pauses, letting the words land.
“You are still whole even with the cracks. Especially with the cracks.”
To the One Who Grew Up in the System
For those who spent their childhoods in foster care, group homes, or institutions, Strambler offers a message of hope born from her own 13 years in the system.
“You may feel lost. You may feel alone. You may feel like you don’t belong anywhere. But I promise you this: There is a place for you in this world. There is a future for you. There is a life waiting for you that is bigger than your pain.”
She knows the statistics. She knows how many children age out of the system and struggle. But she also knows that statistics don’t define individuals.
“You will build your own family, the kind you deserve. You will rewrite the story. You will prove that the system did not define you. You are stronger than you realize. You are braver than you give yourself credit for. And you are loved more than you know—even if you haven’t met the people who will love you yet.”
To the One Who Thinks They Won’t Heal
Healing, Strambler emphasizes, is not a straight line. It doesn’t happen all at once. It doesn’t follow a neat timeline or a predictable path.
“Some days you’ll feel strong. Some days you’ll feel broken. Both are part of the journey.”
She’s learned to forgive herself for the hard days—the days when grief resurfaces, when old wounds ache, when healing feels like it’s moving backward instead of forward.
“Forgive yourself for the days you struggle. Forgive yourself for the moments you fall back. Forgive yourself for surviving the only way you know how.”
And then she adds the most important part:
“The fact that you’re still here—breathing, still trying, still fighting—is proof of your strength. Don’t give up now. You’re closer than you think.”
To the One Who Thinks They’re Too Broken to Love
This one, Strambler admits, hits close to home. For years, she believed the lies that trauma had whispered to her: that she was too damaged, too complicated, too much.
“I told myself I didn’t need anyone. I told myself I was strong. I told myself the past didn’t affect me. But trauma doesn’t disappear because you ignore it. It sits inside you, shaping your fears, your reactions, your self-worth.”
What she learned—through therapy, through a husband who loved her through wounds he didn’t cause, through becoming a mother—is that she was never too broken to love or be loved.
“You are not too broken. You are not too damaged. You are not too complicated. You are not ‘too much.’ There will be people who love you exactly as you are. People who show you what safety feels like. People who treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”
She adds: “You will learn to trust again, slowly, gently, at your own pace. You will learn to let love in. You will learn that you are worthy of every good thing that comes to you.”
To the One Who Feels Ashamed of Their Story
Shame, Strambler says, is one of trauma’s cruelest gifts. It makes you believe your story is something to hide, something to be embarrassed of, something that makes you less than.
But she’s learned differently.
“Your story is not something to hide. It is something to honor. You survived things others would never understand. You endured storms that would have crushed most people. You kept going even when the world gave you every reason to give up.”
That, she says, is not shame. That is strength. That is bravery. That is resilience.
“One day, someone will hear your story, and it will give them courage. You may never know their name, but your journey will inspire them. You were not meant to be silent. Your voice matters. Your experience matters. You matter.”
What Strambler Wants Every Survivor to Know
Strambler has lived long enough, healed enough, and grown enough to speak these words with certainty:
“There is life after trauma. There is joy after heartbreak. There is peace after chaos. There is purpose after pain. You are not alone. You are not forgotten. You are not trapped in your past. You are here. You are healing. And you are becoming.”
She thinks about the little girl she was—the one standing in line for eye checks at High Sky, the one sleeping in fear, the one separated from her brother, the one who had every reason to give up. That girl, she says, would never believe the woman she became.
“If you take anything from my story, let it be 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.”
A Final Reminder
Strambler’s voice softens as she offers one last message:
“Your story isn’t over. It’s just beginning. Keep going. Keep healing. Keep becoming. I did. And if I can rise from the ashes of my past, so can you.”
