Reconnect with the Part of You That Still Misses Your Mom and
Start Healing in a Whole New Way
Our 12-week Motherless Daughters Winter Support Circle for women in their 20s and 30s helps you understand how your early loss continues to shape your adult life — and how to find peace, connection, and growth on the other side.
“TESTIMONIAL - short but impactful:
Have you ever felt like your mom’s death still echoes in ways you can’t fully explain?
Maybe you’ve built a beautiful life, but there’s still a quiet ache, a place that feels unfinished.
You’re not broken, you just haven’t had the chance to heal in the company of women who truly understand.
If you’re ready to explore your story with compassion, insight, and support, you’re in the right place.
Welcome to YOUR Winter Support Circle
A 12-week small-group experience where your history can be explored, your learning paced, and your story treated with care.
Why So Many Women Call This “Life-Changing”
Each Support Circle is more than a class or discussion group — it’s a journey through understanding, connection, and healing.
Over 12 weeks, you’ll:
Understand how early mother loss affects your relationships, confidence, and self-image
Learn tools to process emotions that were too big or confusing when you were younger
Build authentic friendships with women who “get it”
Find language for what you’ve carried for years
Begin rewriting your story — one rooted in self-compassion and growth
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What’s Included in Your Support Circle Experience
10 live, 90-minute sessions
2 follow-up check-in calls with your facilitators
Recordings to rewatch or catch up if you miss a session
Private WhatsApp group to stay connected between meetings
Access to a private Circle website with all readings and materials
Direct access to your facilitator, Zanne, throughout the program
10% discount on future Motherless Daughters Community Calls
The Format (how we’ll spend our time)
Each week, we’ll explore a different theme inspired by Motherless Daughters. You’ll discuss, reflect, write, and connect — in ways that gently uncover meaning and offer new insight.
Between sessions, you’ll receive optional journal prompts and reflection exercises to deepen your learning.
For detailed information about each week’s 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. We’ll also cover the basics and let you know what to expect in the next 14 weeks.
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In Week Two, we’ll unpack the messages you receive(d) about grief both then and now, and explore how those messages have impacted you. We’ll help you develop a healthier and more empowering relationship with grief moving forward.
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Age at time of loss matters – a lot. In Week Three, we’ll 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 daughter’s long-term adjustment. Your mother may have died suddenly, from a long-term illness, or from a combination of the two. We’ll discuss the difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD, and help you distinguish between stories of a death and stories of loss. You’ll 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. We’ll 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, we’ll learn more about different attachment styles, discuss separation anxiety and separation sensitivity, explore what “being alone” means to us, and discover what helps us feel emotionally safe when we’re 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 don’t 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, we’ll reflect on what we’ve learned both individually and from each other. We’ll bear witness to each other’s intentions for whatever next steps we now hope to take.
How It’s Different
How Is a Support Circle Different from a Retreat or Community Call?
The Circles are an intimate, weekly group setting with 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.
In a Circle, you’ll build even deeper, ongoing relationships with the facilitators and with other women in the group.
Unique exercises are included to add to your experience.
These exercises intentionally link your past, present, and future to help you release old messages and create a new and more empowering life narrative moving forward.
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Meet Your Facilitator
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.
Victoria Mercado
MA, LPC-S, Clinical Advisor for MDSC Curriculum
Victoria is a licensed trauma therapist in Dallas, Texas. She worked with Hope and Zanne to create Motherless Daughters Support Circles and make sure they follow a trauma-informed curriculum. At age 15, Victoria and her mother were involved in a car accident that left her mother a quadriplegic. Then at age 23 she lost her mother to complications due to pneumonia. Finding solace and encouragement within the Motherless Daughter community through a nearby support group inspired Victoria to pursue a career as a licensed professional counselor. Victoria has also attended and co-facilitated Motherless Daughters Retreats.
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, what’s included, and how they differ from our retreats and weekly community calls.
Date and times for the Winter Support Circles
Thursday Evening Support Circle
For women who were 22 - 30s when their mothers died.
Begins December 4, 2025
Meeting time:
5 - 6:30 pm PT / 8 - 9:30 pm ET
Circle Dates:
Dec: 4, 11, 18 — (off Dec 25 + Jan 1)
Jan: 8, 15, 22 — (off Jan 29)
Feb: 5, 12, 19 — (off Feb 26)
Mar: 5 (final curriculum session)
Mar 19 & Apr 2: 1-hour follow-up sessions
A Note From Hope Edelman
Hi, I’m Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters, Motherless Mothers, and The AfterGrief, and founder at MotherlessDaughters.com.
For the past nine years, I’ve 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, I’ve witnessed the very special kind of magic that occurs when women who’ve 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.
It’s 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 “unstuck”. And feeling stuck is the #1 reason why women come to our weekly calls, support circles, and retreats.
That’s 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.
Our 10-week Motherless Daughters Support Circles are for daughters living with the long arc of loss. Please note: these are not grief support groups for recent mother loss. Click here for recent loss support.
The Motherless Daughters Support Circle program will help you:
Reflect on your past and revisit key, impressionable moments in your history;
Ground yourself in the present with self-compassion and curiosity;
Project yourself into the future with actionable steps for creating a more empowering life story, while honoring what you faced in the past.
This small-group (max. of 15 women) experience gives you time to share and process and reflect on your story, and time to discuss and reflect on the exercises we do together.
A Motherless Daughters Support Circle is a perfect way to take a step forward in your healing process; to build upon what you’ve already received at a retreat; or to supplement your weekly Motherless Daughters Community calls.
Join us to meet the new sisters who’ll accompany you on this next part of your journey — and who will remain your support system for years to come.
We can’t wait to see you in a Circle this Fall !
Join the Winter Support Circle
Next Circle begins December 4th!
$100 non-refundable deposit plus $239/month for four months.
Your first installment of $339 (including the deposit) is due upon registration.
Then 3 monthly installments of $239 charged on Nov 1, Dec 1, Jan 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: 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. 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. 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.