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.

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.

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.

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.

The death of your mom may have been the first big loss you faced, or maybe you had prior experience with major loss. Either way, you may have noticed how a loss in the present can reactivate pieces of a loss from the past. When this happens, you may experience emotional flashbacks or regressive behavior. In Week Five, we’ll discuss how and why this happens, and practice tools for self-regulation. We’ll also create individual loss timelines to see how the past informs the present, and project ourselves into a more resilient future.

Support from a warm, consistent, loving adult is critical after a parent dies; multiple studies show that what happens after a mother dies can have as much effect on a child as the loss itself. We’ll look at how relationships with fathers, grandparents, siblings, and other family members changed, what coping strategies we developed to feel safe, and how we navigate our family relationships today.

Mother loss is a relational trauma. It can affect our adult interactions with romantic partners and friends. In Week Seven, we’ll learn 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.

When your moms died, your relationship with her became frozen in time. Maybe you still feel a connection to her in the present, or maybe you don’t feel one at all. Either way, Week Eight offers a deep dive into the art of Re-Membering and introduces new ways to welcome your mom back into your story.

Daughters who lose mothers frequently have a heightened fear of falling ill and dying young. In this session, we help you identify your specific fears, find ways to stay grounded and avoid thought spirals, and learn tips for reducing anxiety.

TBD

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 Eleven, we turn our gaze to the future and the stories we want to write ourselves into moving forward.

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.