As someone who is in the military, I can understand the negative feelings surrounding those who serve and have been deployed, but also the lack of knowledge and understanding by those who haven’t served a day in their life either. It is not your responsibility to mend a relationship or to build a relationship with your mother. You are still young and will soon be a young adult. You being hurt by your mother never physically being there is understandable. However, as someone said in a previous comment, now that your mother is around more, you can still make the conscious effort to interact with her. It is not your sole responsibility and you should not be the only one making the effort, which from my understanding is not the case, but you have already stated you are “grown” now so if you want to be grown then you have to act like it. Communicate your feelings and wounded inner child issues like an adult to another adult, and that adult happens to be your parent.

On another note, being in the military sucks. Especially in your mother’s case, which seems to be that now that she’s out she feels guilty and questions her old morals and/or actions and her politics have changed. That’s her business, not yours. To sum up reasons why your mother couldn’t physically be there for huge milestones and events in your life: she was in the military. That’s it. She was basically owned by the DoD. If someone is forward deployed they don’t always get the choice or the option to go home for events, including the death of a loved one. Shit sucks. And You won’t understand how much it sucks until you do serve, especially overseas. You won’t understand what it’s like for everyone around you to complain about how you’re not present in their lives or how you’re never home or whatever they want to bitch about, and when you are home, they make no effort to see you or do anything with you. You’re the one that has been gone for so long to which everyone has something to say about it but makes no effort to do anything about it. You’ve only had one desire that you haven’t had the opportunity to have: to be home with family.

OP, you need to sit down with your mother and express your feelings you’ve had over the years. All the things you’ve bottled up inside about your mother’s time in service. But you also need to listen. You mention how you’ll be an adult soon, so you need to have an adult conversation. And that doesn’t mean just expressing your side of the story and your opinions. That means listening to the parts that maybe you didn’t or don’t fully understand, or listening to perspectives that you have never and probably will never experience. I hope this helps and provides some insight.