This feeling is something I’ve been dealing with since my child was born and I don’t know how to overcome it.
Long story as short as I can. My parents divorced when I was 8/9. They had us 50/50 every other week. My mum had been a SAHM and my father took the business and the money with him. He didn’t pay maintenance as they had shared custody. He married the woman he left my mum for and together they were very wealthy. My mum was the opposite end of the scale, she’d been out of work for years, had no savings, she went back to work and eventually made a good career for herself but our life with her was completely different from at our dads.
We’d go from a 6 bed house with my own bathroom, cleaners, holidays, new clothes and furniture, toys and treats back to my mums where we had to share a bedroom, we never went on holiday, everything is the house was secondhand or falling apart. Mostly I remember that mum just seemed so angry all the time. When I was 13 I went to live with my dad - my older sister was so angry with me and I remembered her saying you’ve broke mums heart. They still came every other week but I only went home sometimes. She’d call all the time and we’d speak but I was just being selfish and preferred being at my dads.
Our relationship has never really recovered, we still talk and she is very involved with my children, but it isn’t like it is with my sister and brother.
Now I have my own children I feel this terrible guilt and also this anger at my dad. Of course my mum was angry - I can see why now. My dad was so desperate for us to love him he made her life so much harder than it needed to be. I remember my sisters 16th birthday he booked a big party at a restaurant and invited about 40 people. My sister asked if my mum could come and he said no, if she wants a party she can organise it herself. Now I look back and think how cruel it was, he could have helped us - we were living there on the breadline for half the year and in the lap of luxury the other half.
I feel like I don’t know how to say I’m sorry to my mum, that I get it now, that I’m sorry I left and that I know how hard it must have been for her raising 3 kids in those circumstances.
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How do you deal with guilt from childhood?
18 replies
Slashandcut · 24/07/2021 18:11
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