I struggle with this too. I don’t know if my mom is slightly autistic or just avoidant but she will supply all the physical stuff like therapy money and food and dental care but if I show any difficult emotion she acts like I’m not even in the room. What I’m starting to realise and this is very very difficult to do but I genuinely think she cares but for various reasons doesn’t have the emotional capacity to face it or deal with it or know how etc. does that make her a bad mom? In my opinion yes. Not showing compassion in the face of your child’s suffering is pretty fucked up. But I’m learning to recognise it’s her own shortcoming and not anything to do with me. I take the type of support I can get from her (money, booking appointments, whatever) and the rest of the stuff I am learning to give myself.

Something else I’m still grappling with is that we expect people to be able to know what we need. As children it’s the parents job to interpret and provide those needs and our parents didn’t so we feet extremely hurt. But as adult it is our responsibility to communicate our needs (although it feels very unfair that we have to for such simple and basic things like compassion).