Oliver Hudson opens up about childhood 'trauma' growing up with mom Goldie Hawn

“This was my own perception as a child who didn’t have a dad and who needed her to be there, you know, and she just wasn’t sometimes,” the actor said.

Oliver Hudson thinks his mom Goldie Hawn is an “amazing” mother — so he was surprised to discover he had to work through some trauma stemming from his childhood with her.

In a recent episode of Sibling Revelry, the podcast that he hosts with his sister Kate Hudson, the Rules of Engagement actor discussed his time unpacking familial trauma at the Hoffman Institute, a place for “unpacking the patterns that have been put upon you from your parents and then step-parents as well.”

Hudson said he expected to process his relationships with his two father figures — his father, musician Bill Hudson, from whom Hawn filed for divorce in 1980; and Kurt Russell, whom Hudson has dated since 1983. “I went in there thinking it was all gonna be about my dad, and then Kurt, my step-dad who raised me,” Hudson said. “But whatever that connection was, my dad who wasn’t there. My mom was gonna sort of be easy-breezy, because she was always the constant in my life.”

Hudson’s experience at the Hoffman Institute was the exact opposite of what he anticipated. “It totally flipped on its head. My mother was the one who came up the most,” he explained. “My mother was the one that I had almost the most trauma about, interestingly enough, because she was my primary caregiver, and I was with her all of the time. So I felt unprotected at times.”

“She would be working and away, or she would have new boyfriends that I didn’t really like,” he continued. “She’d be living her life, and she was an amazing mother. This was my own perception as a child who didn’t have a dad and who needed her to be there, you know, and she just wasn’t sometimes. And she came out [at Hoffman] far more than even my dad, who wasn’t there.”

Hudson said that his limited interactions with his father were always positive. “When I was with him, it was incredible,” he said. “He paid attention to me, we played football, we played basketball, we were on the beach, he taught me how to fish. He was so present, but he was just never there.”

The Splitting Up Together actor also said that the overall experience allowed him to forgive his parents. “It’s an incredible week of enlightenment on who your parents were [and] are,” he said. The forgiveness and the compassion that you feel at the end of this process is unbelievable, because then you realize that they’re only repeating the s--- that they went through with their parents. The forgiveness of my father was huge, because his dad left him when he was five years old in the middle of the night.”

Listen to the full podcast above.

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