Oliver Hudson is getting candid about family trauma.
The 47-year-old son of Goldie Hawn and her ex-husband Bill Hudson said he discovered during a recent wellness retreat that he faced trauma during his childhood due to his mother's Hollywood lifestyle.
"I went in there thinking it was all going to be about my dad and then [Kurt Russell], my stepdad who raised me," he said on the March 17 episode of the podcast he cohosts with sister Kate Hudson, Sibling Rivalry. "My mom was going to be easy-breezy, because she was always the constant in my life."
However, as Oliver noted, "It was totally flipped on its head: My mother was the one that came up the most, my mother was the one that I had almost the most trauma about, interestingly enough."
Explaining how he felt "unprotected" with his mom at times, Oliver shared, "She would be working and away or she had new boyfriends that I didn't really like. She would be living her life."
While he acknowledged "she was an amazing mother," he feels that as a kid who didn't have his father present, he "needed her to be there, and she just wasn't sometimes."
The revelation came to Oliver during a week-long course at the Hoffman Institute, where he spent time "unpacking the patterns that have been put upon you from your parents" and learning about the concept of "negative love." And the whole week was a "perspective shifter" for him, especially about his relationship with dad Bill, who split with Goldie in 1982.
Oliver and sister Kate have often talked about the difficulties they faced following their parent's divorce, including the feeling of abandonment because of their father's absence. But Oliver is still able to find the positives in their relationship.
"When I was with him it was incredible," he continued. "He paid attention to me, we played football, we played basketball, we were on the beach, he taught me how to fish."
Adding, "He was so present, but he was never there, you know what I mean?"
As for Goldie, she has previously shared how she worked hard to develop a close relationship with her children, telling Today that she did that by "loving, paying attention, listening, being there, caring, and [focusing] on them."
"Mothers are everything," she continued. "I feel that I'm everything to them and, of course, they're everything to me."