Jane Fonda is opening up to People magazine in one of her most personal interviews yet. Specifically, she got candid about her mother’s suicide when she was only 12 years old. In the new HBO documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts — which comes out Sept. 24 — the star also reveals what it’s like having a mother who was bipolar. 

“If you have a parent who is not capable of showing up, not capable of reflecting you back through eyes of love, it has a big impact on your sense of self,” she told People. “As a child, you always think it was your fault…because the child can’t blame the adult, because they depend on the adult for survival. It takes a long time to get over the guilt.”

She added, “When I wrote my memoir [2005’s My Life So Far], I dedicated it to my mother because I knew that if I did…I would be forced to really try to figure her out. I never knew her because she suffered from bipolarity.”

“When you go through that kind of research…if you can come to answers, which I was able to do, you end up being able to say, ‘It had nothing to do with me,’” she said.

“It wasn’t that I wasn’t lovable. They had issues,” she adds. “And the minute you know that, you can feel tremendous empathy for them. And you can forgive.”

Read more at People.