In December 2012, Jackman told the Australian version of 60 Minutes that he still remembered the morning she left:
“I remember her being in a towel around her head and saying goodbye. [It] must have been the way she said goodbye. As I went off to school, when I came back, there was no one there in the house. The next day there was a telegram from England. Mum was there. And then that was it. Dad used to pray every night that mum would come back.”
Losing a parent in any way, whether it be divorce, abandonment or death is tough on any child. In 2018, Jackman went on to tell Australian outlet, Who magazine that he found his mother’s abandonment “traumatic”, explaining how his parents separated when he was just eight years old and how his sisters, Zoe and Sonya, then went to live with their mother in the UK.
Conversely, Jackman stayed with his dad, Christopher, in Sydney and although he “thought she was probably going to come back”, her absence continued to just “dragged on and on”; he only started to see her once a year around the age of 12 or 13.
It wasn’t until around a decade ago that the two managed to full reconnect, with Jackman quoted as saying at the time: “I am 43 now and we have definitely made our peace, which is important. I was always quite connected with my mum. I have a good relationship with her.”
Speaking to Australian Women’s Weekly, he explained that she had been suffering from post-natal depression around the time she decided to leave, stating that “I’ve spoken about it at length with her since and I know she was struggling”.
He went on to describe how she was hospitalised after he was born and “suffering from post-natal depression. There wasn’t a support network for her here.” However, the wounds have clearly healed over time, as Jackman added: “The thing I never felt – and I know this might sound strange – I never felt that my mum didn’t love me.
Just goes to show the sheer power of love and how it can overcome almost anything. We’re glad this story has a happy ending, even if took them some time to get there.
