Danielle Snelling

Thank you so much for having me.

Our research was really important for us to conduct as a growing and emerging organisation so we could learn so much more about our community of 25,000 plus women.

And what it revealed to us was kind of what we already knew through an anecdotal perspective, but we lacked the evidence-based research for, and that was that mother loss has a significant impact on the quality of life of adult daughters and

and also can have a significant impact on mental health and physical health.

So many experiencing things like anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, stress, and even physical pain.

We know that through hundreds of women sharing their story in our support group and through that anecdotal evidence, we can draw lots of conclusions around that, that women are having their grief pathologised very early on.

And by that, I mean they're being diagnosed with depression where there is no pre-existing or co-existing condition.

mental illness at play.

So we really feel that that is just a reflection of society and Western culture's inability to hold conversation and accept what grief might look like, that there's no right or wrong and that we're so uncomfortable with it.

So we want to diagnose people and fix them by putting them in a box and

getting them to hurry it up or move it on.

And that's just not how it works.

You know, it's a normal, natural response and it needs to be embraced and nurtured and felt.

It's incredibly life-changing and I can speak from both personal perspective and from thousands of women in our community.

Many of us describe it as feeling totally untethered, lost out at sea, no anchor.

For someone who's had their mum and then she's just ripped away, it's

It's just so debilitating at times.

For many women, their mum is their greatest cheerleader and their supporter.

And the grief that we feel as a result of her loss, it's huge.

And we know that mother loss is so much more than grief.