A Unique Program Just for Daughters
Healing from Early Adulthood Mother Loss
Our 10-week winter Motherless Daughters Support Circle โ just for daughters who were between 22 and 30ish when their mothers died โ help daughters understand how this early loss impacts and shapes the rest of your adult life, and offers tools for finding peace, connection, and growth on the other side.
โFor the first time since losing my mom, I feel truly seen, understood, and not alone. We laugh, cry, and grow together โ itโs been completely life-changing.โ
โ Jennie Z.
Does your momโs death still echo in ways you never expected?
Maybe youโve built a beautiful life for yourself, and yet a quiet ache persists, a feeling of emptiness you donโt know how to fill.
You just havenโt had the chance to process your loss in the company of others whoโll hold you gently and truly understand.
If youโre ready to revisit your story with self-compassion, insight, and compassionate support, youโre in the right place.
You are not broken, youโre ready.
Why So Many Women Call Support Circles โLife-Changingโ
Our Support Circle program is more than a course or a bereavement support group โ itโs a companioned journey back to your mom and yourself.
In ten 90-minute sessions, youโll:
Understand how early mother loss affects your relationships, confidence, and self-image
Learn tools to process emotions that you had to suppress or bypass in the past
Build authentic friendships with other women who โget itโ
Create a shared vocabulary to describe what youโve been carrying for years
Begin rewriting your story to create a narrative of empowerment, self-compassion, and growth
โJoining a Support Circle has been one of the most healing and loving things Iโve ever done for myself. In this small group of motherless daughters, I felt truly seen and understood. Every meeting felt like a homecoming, and the grief I carry has softened. A year later, Iโm still connected with my circle sisters โ a gift that continues to support me.โ
โ Monica S.
Whatโs Included in Your Support Circle Experience:
10 live, 90-minute sessions
Weekly journal prompts and worksheets
Recordings to rewatch or catch up if you miss a session
Private WhatsApp group to stay connected between meetings
Private Circle web page with all readings and materials
Direct access to your facilitator, Zanne, throughout the program
10% discount on future Motherless Daughters Community Calls
2 follow-up check-in calls with your facilitators
The Format (how weโll spend our time together)
Each week builds on the previous week as we explore different topics (below) from the book Motherless Daughters. Youโll discuss, reflect, write, and connect with yourself and your Circle โ in ways that gently allows space to uncover meaning and offer new healing, helpful insights.
Between sessions, youโll receive optional journal prompts and reflection exercises to deepen your learning.
For detailed information about each weekโs topic, click on the plus (+) sign next to each session title below.
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Meet your facilitators and the other women taking this journey with you, and start sharing your story with them. Weโll also cover the basics and let you know what to expect in the next 14 weeks.
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In Week Two, weโll unpack the messages you receive(d) about grief both then and now, and explore how those messages have impacted you. Weโll help you develop a healthier and more empowering relationship with grief moving forward.
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Age at time of loss matters โ a lot. In Week Three, weโll look at the developmental tasks associated with each age group, reflect on which ones may have been skipped or scrambled after your mom became ill or died, and learn how to start filling in those gaps today.
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How a mother died is important to a daughterโs long-term adjustment. Your mother may have died suddenly, from a long-term illness, or from a combination of the two. Weโll discuss the difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD, and help you distinguish between stories of a death and stories of loss. Youโll have an opportunity to revisit and rewrite some influential moments in your past.
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Numerous studies show that what happens after a mother dies can have as much effect on a child as the loss itself. Support from a warm, consistent, loving adult is critical after a parent dies. Weโll look at how relationships with fathers, grandparents, siblings, and other family members changed when a mother died, what coping strategies we developed to feel safe, and how we navigate our family relationships today.
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Mother loss is a relational trauma. It can affect our adult interactions with romantic partners and friends. In Week Six, weโll learn more about different attachment styles, discuss separation anxiety and separation sensitivity, explore what โbeing aloneโ means to us, and discover what helps us feel emotionally safe when weโre in relationship with others.
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When a mother dies, a daughter's relationship with her becomes frozen in time. Maybe you still feel a living connection to your mom in the present, or maybe you donโt feel one at all. Either way, Week Seven offers a deep dive into the art of Re-Membering and introduces new ways to welcome your mom back into your story.
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Daughters who lose mothers frequently have heightened fears of falling ill and dying young. In this session, we help you identify your specific fears, find ways to stay grounded and manage thought spirals, and learn tips for reducing anxiety.
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Mother loss is painful and often tragic. Mother loss also can inspire a profound new sense of meaning and purpose. Both things can be true. In Week Nine, we turn our gaze to the future and the stories we want to write ourselves into moving forward.
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In our final week together, weโll reflect on what weโve learned both individually and from each other. Weโll bear witness to each otherโs intentions for whatever next steps we now hope to take.
What Makes a Support Circle Unique (and different from our other programs!)
Circles are an intimate, weekly group of a maximum of 16 women. Everyone has a chance to share each week, usually multiple times.
Weekly curriculum topics are discussed in-depth and enhanced by additional activities, readings, and reflective writing in the weeks in between.
Youโll build deep, sustained relationships with the facilitators and with other women in your Circle.
Unique exercises based on Hope Edelmanโs 30+ years of experience with motherless daughters are included.
These exercises intentionally link your past, present, and future to help you honor your experiences, release unhelpful messages and create a new and more empowering life narrative moving forward.
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Weโll Meet on Thursday Evenings
Start Date:
December 4, 2025
Meeting Time:
5 - 6:30 pm PT / 8 - 9:30 pm ET
Meeting Dates:
December: 4, 11, 18 โ (off Dec 25)
January: 8, 15, 22 โ (off Jan 1 + 29)
February: 5, 12, 19 โ (off Feb 26)
March: 5 (final curriculum session)
March 19 & April 2: 1-hour follow-up Circle sessions
Other Support Circle Opportunities
If you experienced mother loss at a younger age, you may resonate more deeply with our Motherless Daughters Support Circle for Women Who Were 0โ21 at the Time of Loss, facilitated by Hope Edelman.
Currently in Progress
Began Monday, October 20, 2025
This Circle explores how early mother loss continues to shape your adult life โ in relationships, identity, and self-understanding โ and offers a compassionate space for healing with others who share a similar story.
Interested in joining a future 0โ21 Circle?
A Note From Hope
Hi, Iโm Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters, Motherless Mothers, and The AfterGrief, and founder at MotherlessDaughters.com.
For the past nine years, Iโve been creating and offering programs that bring women together in person to share their stories and find healing in community.
In our weekly Community Calls and our popular four-day Motherless Daughters Retreats, Iโve witnessed the very special kind of magic that occurs when women whoโve lost their moms long ago lift each other up.
You deserve this kind of support. You deserve a place where you feel you belong.
And you deserve to find freedom from outdated, internalized messages from the past.
After a mother dies, a daughter naturally develops a story that makes sense to her. This is true no matter her age at the time.
Allowing that story to change over time is beneficial, too. Because sometimes even as a daughter ages, parts of her story remain stuck in time.
Itโs good when a story grows up. Especially with gentle guidance and support from a community of others who understand.
Lots of research backs this up as a way to start feeling โunstuckโ. And feeling stuck is the #1 reason why women come to our weekly calls, support circles, and retreats.
Thatโs exactly why I created the Motherless Daughters Support Circles program: to bring 30 years of knowledge together in one place, online, where change can happen.
Please note: our 10-week Motherless Daughters Support Circles are for daughters living with the long arc of loss. These are not grief support groups for recent mother loss. Click here for recent loss support.
A Motherless Daughters Support Circle program is a perfect way to take a step forward in your healing process; to build upon what youโve already received at a retreat; or to supplement your weekly Motherless Daughters Community calls:
Join us to meet the new sisters whoโll accompany you on this next part of your journey โ and who will remain your support system for years to come.
We canโt wait to see you in a Circle this winter !
Meet Your Facilitators
Zanne Hollingshead
Facilitator, MD Support Circles Program Director, Certified Life Coach and Trauma Support Services Provider.
Fellow Motherless Daughter Zanne lost her mom to brain cancer when she was 10 years old. As a lifelong seeker and supporter who leads with a compassionate heart, Zanne believes that deep healing and transformation can happen through courageous, intentional, exploratory inner-work coupled with therapeutic modalities and peer support. She is a midlife wellness advocate, Martha Beck-trained life coach and group facilitator, dedicated to harnessing her experience of mother loss, sibling loss, and peer loss to walk alongside others, helping them navigate life's great challenges. Zanne also co-facilitates the Tuesday and Thursday Motherless Daughters Community Calls with Hope, and provides 1:1 support for private clients in a coaching capacity. She is ever-captivated by the healing power that community and peer support brings.
Sandra Minto, Support Circles co-facilitator.
Sandra was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Sheโs a daughter, wife, friend, sister and elementary teacher. She was 28 years old when she lost her mother, Betty, to sepsis in 2021. Sheโs been an active member of the online Motherless Daughters Community since 2022, where she found support, solace and sisterhood. When she isnโt tending to her grief in her support groups, she can be found doing pilates, reading, watching reality TV, or spending time with her husband and loved ones.
Join the Winter Support Circle
Next Circle begins December 4th!
$100 non-refundable deposit plus $239/month for four months.
Put down only $100 in November to secure your spot
Then 4 monthly installments of $239 on Dec 1, Jan 1, Feb 1, and March 1
In need of financial assistance? We have a limited number of scholarship funds available. Contact zanne@hopeedelman.com to inquire.
For any payment inquiries, please email Sabrina at info@hopeedelman.com
Cancellation policy for Support Circles:
Your commitment to the Circle is a valuable investment in yourself. You will become part of an intimate group based on trust and safety. This sacred space starts forming as soon as Circle participants sign up. Our time together is short but meaningful, and deep relationships form. We ask that you trust in this process and commit to following it through to completion to receive the maximum benefit. We have waiting lists for our Circles, and your enrollment secures a space we cannot fill after the Circle begins. For this reason, after the first session there will be no refunds or payment plan cancellations.
Refund Policy for Support Circles:
Initial payments are fully refundable until 14 days prior to the start date, minus the $100 non-refundable deposit.
From 14 days prior to start date and up until the first weekly session, 50% of your first payment will be returned and your credit card will not be charged moving forward. The $100 deposit is non-refundable.
After the Circle begins, there will be no refunds or payment plan cancellations.
Please note: The 16- person small group format allows for trust and safety to build quickly. For this reason, we cannot start new members after the 3rd Circle session. If you have to miss the first 3 sessions in a row, we regret we will not be able to accommodate you after that point and will have to end your Circle participation. However you will still be responsible for any remaining installment payments, as we will not be able to enroll someone from the waiting list at that time.
Watch our FREE INFO SESSION from last fall where we discuss Motherless Daughters Support Circles and answer frequently asked questions from attendees.
Learn more about how the Circles operate, whatโs included, and how they differ from our retreats and weekly community calls.