BONUS: The other side of Mother's Day
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What challenges do motherless daughters face on Mother's Day?
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?
How does grief impact mental health for motherless daughters?
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.
Thank you so much for having me.
Why is the medical community dismissing the grief of motherless daughters?
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.
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?
What unique struggles do adult women face after losing their mothers?
How did you find that out?
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.
Why does the mother-daughter bond require special attention in grief support?
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.
Tell us more about the impact of losing your mum as a woman, as an adult. Help us better understand how that feels.
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.
How can society better support motherless daughters during significant times?
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. So we know that loss under the age of 25, for example, we know that that can cause social isolation, loneliness, it can significantly disrupt and impact a daughter's sense of identity. So forming that identity and maintaining that identity. And then we know that mother loss later on in life as an adult also poses significant challenges as well because there's a greater adjustment issue at play.
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?
Mothers and daughters have this unique special bond and we know through research also that the same sex or same gender parent-child relationship is so powerful and profound and unique and we know also that daughters tend to gravitate towards their mums more so as we get older in life we look to you know familiarise ourselves with her and be like her in many cases and
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What challenges do motherless daughters face on Mother's Day?
0:02–0:47
2
How does grief impact mental health for motherless daughters?
0:47–1:05
3
Why is the medical community dismissing the grief of motherless daughters?
1:05–1:58
4
What unique struggles do adult women face after losing their mothers?
1:58–2:43
5
Why does the mother-daughter bond require special attention in grief support?
2:43–3:33
6
How can society better support motherless daughters during significant times?
3:33–4:56
7
What practical steps can friends take to support someone who has lost their mother?
4:56–11:42
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Briefing
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