I think this is the key takeaway from your article:

Self-reflection, facing the truth about ourselves as parents and laying down our defenses will do more to bring about a possible reconciliation than all the gifts, cards and letters in the world ever will.

The reason I no longer have a relationship with my mother is that she has no capacity for self reflection or willingness to acknowledge the damage she caused me as a child and continues in the way she treats the adult me. Gifts would just be a way of her claiming the high moral ground and reinforcing her version of me as ungrateful and unreasonable.