My mother killed herself when I was 12. I won’t complete that relationship. But I can try to understand her.

Jane Fonda reflects on the lifelong emotional aftermath of losing her mother to suicide in childhood. The line acknowledges an irreparable rupture: a parent–child relationship normally develops through shared time, conflict, reconciliation, and mutual recognition, but death freezes it at an unfinished stage. By saying she “won’t complete that relationship,” Fonda names the limits of healing—some losses cannot be resolved into closure. Yet she also asserts agency in what remains possible: pursuing understanding. The quote frames understanding not as excusing or erasing pain, but as a compassionate, meaning-making act that can soften inherited shame, reduce self-blame, and allow a more mature relationship to the memory of the deceased.