Sasha Barber-Gatt

Hello, thanks for joining me for this bonus episode of The Briefing.

I'm Sasha Barber-Gatt.

If you're lucky enough to have your mum or a mother-like figure in your life, chances are you'll be spending today celebrating them for Mother's Day.

But across Australia, there are millions of girls and women who will be grieving the loss of that person in their life.

and there are concerns society isn't doing enough to support them.

A new study by Deakin University and Motherless Daughters Australia has found the difficulties this group experiences in trying to cope with their grief, even revealing that their pain is often dismissed when they do seek help.

So what is it like to mark Mother's Day without your mum?

And what can we do to better support the motherless daughters in our own lives?

Today, I'm joined by Danielle Snelling.

She's the co-founder of the not-for-profit group Motherless Daughters Australia.

Danielle, thanks for being here.

Tell us more about what your research uncovered about what motherless daughters are going through.

What about the response from the medical field, GPs, and the finding that some women are having their kind of trauma and their grief dismissed?

How did you find that out?

Tell us more about the impact of losing your mum as a woman, as an adult.

Help us better understand how that feels.

Can you tell me why with your group that you helped co-found, you chose to focus on daughters and not boys or sons as well?

What is it about the mother-daughter bond that you felt needed this group to better support women who were going through it?

So the research talked a bit about how some respondents in the survey felt that they were dismissed by society for experiencing their grief and, as you mentioned a bit before earlier, were kind of told –

there's the expectation to, oh, come on, like she died a year ago, get over it or whatever.