I grew up with a mother who had anxiety and depression. It was never acknowledged at the time and it's only recently I realised the full impact it had on me and my own mothering/sense of self.

This is not a therapy session for me so I won"t go into depth but in adulthood neither me nor my sister have had a straightforward relationship with her. We have an easier relationship with our father. We love her and as mature adults understand that things were not easy for her, both of us have had struggles with depression and we have both learned a lot from our mother's experience. We are aware of our struggles, we do not try to bury them as she did. In that way I think our growing up experience was helpful.

As long as a parent is not acting out harm on a child (abusing them verbally or physically) I think it's just part of life for many of us. We aren't perfect, we have our own issues, but we try.

In my own mothering I apologise to my son if I feel I have been unfair to him or let him down. I recently (last year) opened up a dialogue with him about my depression and anxiety - he was 18 and I deemed him old enough. He was studying psychology so had an awareness, he was very open to discussing and voiced his own feelings of unfairness and unhappiness when I was struggling and not there for him as I should have been.

I feel guilt too but in having these open discussions I feel I gave him validation of his own feelings from that time and I am glad we were able to talk about it. I never had such a talk with my mother and both of us grew up thinking it must be us, we had done something wrong. I believe she has such deep shame for her struggles she is unable to break out and talk about it. As an adult I get that and I love and have compassion for her.

I don't know if any of this makes sense (just finished crazy shift at work) or is helpful in any way.