1 in 3 new mothers are navigating motherhood without their own mothers.

When that statistic landed, it wasn’t just data to me. It represented the thousands of women Lou and I have met who feel invisible in their grief while trying to navigate the most transformative transition of their lives. It confirmed what we’ve known since the beginning: while third-sector support is vital, we need to change the system itself.

To truly move the needle, we needed to back our “Grief-Aware” mission with a clinical foundation. I realised that to transform maternal care at a national level, we needed to bring our community’s lived experience into the world of evidence-based research.

A New Chapter

Driven by that mission, I am beyond thrilled to share that I have been awarded a PhD studentship by the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The Grand Union DTP is a collaboration between the Open University, the University of Oxford, and Brunel University London. Over the next few years, I will work with the OU’s PHeW Research Group, evaluating the Grief-Aware Maternal Framework—a clinical roadmap I designed and developed to help midwives and clinicians better support maternal loss.

The Village Behind the Work

This journey belongs to a village of incredible supporters. Louise Kirby-Jones, my co-founder and equal partner. I’m so proud of what we’ve built at TMM, and I’m so excited for the upcoming research you are leading on grief in the workplace!; my supervision team, Dr. Felicitas Rost, Dr. Zoe Boden-Stuart, and Prof. Geert Smid; and my mentors, Professor Aleksandra Torbica and Dr. Jeanne Magagna, who have provided invaluable guidance for my professional development over many years.

I’m also deeply grateful to our TMM team, especially Clare and Stephanie, for your constant support and for your instrumental work in taking our mission directly to the frontline.

What’s Next?

This PhD isn’t a pivot away from TMM; it is an expansion of it. My goal is to ensure that “1 in 3” is no longer a statistic of isolation but a catalyst for better care. I’ll be sharing the breakthroughs, the challenges, and the research journey right here.

This is just the beginning.

The Motherless Mothers team — Adina, Louise, Stephanie, and Anne — at Mother Loss Awareness Day, Houses of Parliament, October 23rd, 2025.

When I became a mother, I felt something I hadn’t expected: I was learning to mother without being mothered, carrying a grief I could barely name. Every late-night feed, every first smile, every first word, and every moment of doubt reminded me of what I had lost — and of the support I never had. Motherhood and grief are both identity-altering experiences. When they intersect, whether weeks or decades apart, the impact can be profound.

That experience is what led me, in 2024, together with Louise Kirby-Jones, to found The Motherless Mothers charity and community. Our goal was simple: to ensure women who become mothers without mothers of their own feel seen, supported, validated, and connected. But support was only the beginning. The deeper need we uncovered was systemic — how maternal health services, clinicians, and policymakers understand — and often fail to understand — women navigating early motherhood without maternal support. That need led me to develop Grief-Aware Care™, and more specifically, Grief-Aware Maternal Care.

Cover image: “The Hidden Crisis of Motherless Mothers” — the first large-scale study on maternal loss and maternal mental health, in partnership with Peanut.

What the Research Shows

In partnership with Peanut, we conducted the first large-scale study exploring the impact of mother loss on maternal mental health: The Hidden Crisis of Motherless Mothers (2025). The findings were stark:

• 1 in 3 new mothers are “motherless”.

• These mothers are 5.4× more likely to experience postnatal depression in the U.S. (3.4× in the UK).

• 81% report anxiety or depression.

• 85% say motherhood reopened their grief.

• 95% reported feeling isolated or unsupported in the past 12 months.

• 74% were never asked about maternal support.

What’s particularly striking – and deeply concerning – is how many women tell us they were diagnosed with postnatal depression when, in reality, they were grieving. Their distress wasn’t solely hormonal; situational and relational factors are frequently central. This distinction matters.

We urgently need more research to understand the overlap and differentiation between postnatal depression and grief in motherless mothers. How many women are being treated for a hormonal imbalance when what they truly need is validation, compassion, and grief-aware care? Until we begin asking these questions and recognise grief as a legitimate perinatal mental health experience, we will continue to treat symptoms rather than understanding the story beneath them.

These figures reveal a critical blind spot in maternal healthcare—one where grief is invisible, relational loss is misread, and mothers remain unsupported.

Why It Matters

Becoming a mother is a profound psychological transition, what we call matrescence, akin to adolescence in its intensity and identity transformation. Like infants or adolescents, new mothers also need a safe base: a steady, trusted figure who can hold their uncertainty and help them integrate the emotional and physical upheaval of this change. For many women, that figure is their own mother — a source of grounding and reassurance during early motherhood. Maternal support is one of the most powerful, yet least recognised, protective factors against postpartum depression. When a maternal figure is present, she provides emotional scaffolding and is someone who can affirm her instincts and remind her that she’s doing enough. When she is gone, the transition into motherhood can feel unmoored and far more destabilising.

Motherless mothers are learning to mother without being mothered and often doing so while actively grieving. In clinical work and through our research, I’ve seen that when maternal support is absent, mothers are more vulnerable to emotional overwhelm, heightened anxiety, and a pervasive sense of disconnection from both themselves and their babies.

During my MA in Child Psychotherapy, I carried out weekly infant observations, watching and witnessing a mother and her baby form their bond from birth to two years of age. What stood out from that experience was how essential attunement is – a mother’s capacity to read and respond to her baby’s cues and needs – and how fragile that capacity can feel when grief is present.

A grieving mother may suddenly doubt their instincts, become hypervigilant, or live with a persistent fear that something will go wrong. Those reactions are not pathological; they are a profoundly human response, informed by attachment processes and the loss – or the longing for what was never safely available – of a safe base.

Entering motherhood while grieving is like walking through two life-altering thresholds at once. Grief can appear suddenly, triggered by ordinary moments — a bath, a laugh, a feeding. It intertwines with the psychological and emotional changes of matrescence, reshaping how women experience themselves, their baby, and their capacity to mother.

Many describe it as feeling at sea, navigating new waters without a compass, sometimes overcompensating to fill the emotional gap left behind. Yet grief can also reveal unexpected depth and heightened attunement. Motherless mothers often develop a finely tuned awareness of their child’s emotional states, able to hold joy and sorrow simultaneously — a capacity they often describe as “bittersweet”.

What Is Grief-Aware Care™?

Grief-Aware Care recognises that becoming a mother can reopen losses. It means seeing the invisible grief a woman carries into pregnancy and early motherhood and making space for it. It’s not about fixing grief. It’s about supporting women as they learn to walk with it during one of, if not the most, vulnerable times of their lives.

We see two key gaps:

1. Awareness — recognising that grief, loss, and estrangement can resurface strongly in pregnancy and postpartum and can increase risk for perinatal mental health conditions.

2. Pathways — providing grief-aware support once women are identified as vulnerable.

Right now, many motherless mothers are left to cope alone. Grief-Aware Care™ asks a simple but powerful question:

“Do you have maternal support?”

That question brings context, relational history, and risk into view. It reframes assessment from a purely medical lens to one that recognises the emotional scaffolding underpinning early motherhood. Grief can appear in many forms: rage, numbness, anxiety, or disconnection. Not every motherless woman needs specialist care, but many need more than they currently get: a conversation, a question, a moment of recognition.

Grief-Aware Care offers:

• A space to speak grief without judgment

• Support without needing a diagnosis

• Recognition without minimisation

Practical examples include:

• Asking about maternal support at booking appointments

• Flagging maternal loss sensitively in maternity notes

• Providing a mother loss resource pack and signposting to services

• Check-ins at 10–12 weeks post-birth, when grief often peaks

These are small, human touches.

From Research to Reform

On October 23rd, 2025, we marked the first ever Mother Loss Awareness Day in the UK. Standing inside the Houses of Parliament as we launched our report with Peanut, I felt something shift. What began as a personal story — one shared by millions — was finally being recognised as a public health issue.

It was more than symbolic. It was a moment of acknowledgement — that maternal loss isn’t peripheral to maternal health; it’s central to it.

That’s what Grief-Aware Care™ is about. It’s not a new therapy or intervention. It’s a framework — a way of seeing, listening, and responding. It gives professionals the language and understanding to meet women where they are, with curiosity, compassion, and awareness.

Recognition is the first step. Too many grieving mothers are met with silence, or worse, avoidance. Grief doesn’t need fixing; it needs holding — a safe space to be witnessed, whether through therapy, peer support, or even one kind, attentive moment with a healthcare professional.

Our research found that 74% of motherless mothers were never once asked about maternal support. That silence compounds risk and isolation. 82% told us clinicians should routinely ask. 76% said they want Grief-Aware training for all healthcare professionals.

These numbers tell their own story — one that’s urgent, human, and entirely possible to change. Grief-Aware Care™ does that. By recognising maternal loss as a determinant of wellbeing, it has the power to transform outcomes through small, simple shifts in how we see and respond to mothers without mothers.

Celebrating Mother Loss Awareness Day at the Houses of Parliament with members of The Motherless Mothers community.

There’s a part of me that loves it. The connection. That part? I love. And that’s what social media used to be, right? It started as a digital photo album. A place to reconnect with high school friends. To post vacation pictures and life updates. I think there are still many people who do still use it in that way with private accounts solely for friends and family. Others have given up entirely and don’t post at all.

Personally, I love how you can share something small—a photo, a moment, or a thought — and someone across the world might resonate. I love that it can be a place for updates, laughs, family stuff, old friends, and silly memes. Seriously, who doesn’t love the funny memes? Those memes bring joy to my life. IG (or the algorithm, I should say) knows me; the memes are always so relevant to my life (creepy, but also thank you?).

But then there’s this other side of it. And that side makes me feel weird. Sometimes even grossed out.

People preying on people’s pain. Giving advice they’re not qualified to give. Talking like experts when they’re not. Selling hope, or healing, or “the answer” — for a price. And honestly, a lot of people are desperate. They’re looking for something to hold on to. And this space makes it so easy to take advantage of that.

Everyone’s a brand. Everyone’s a coach. Everyone’s a guru now. And the people who are truly educated or experienced often get buried under the noise.

There’s no regulation. No accountability. It’s just… whoever posts the most, or says it the loudest, wins. And that’s scary.

And what does all of this say about us as a society?

That we’re hungry, I think. For connection. For meaning. For being seen. It says we want to matter and perhaps don’t know how unless we’re being seen. But somewhere in that craving, we started performing more than we connect. Selling more than we share.

And I’m not pretending I’m above any of this — I’m on there too. I post. I share. I scroll. The irony is not lost on me. I’m part of this system.

This may (or may not) surprise you, but honestly, I struggle to post at all. It often feels cringey. Performative. Like I’m adding to the noise. I usually have to talk myself into it. Probably not something my literary agent will like to hear, but it’s the truth.

Every single time I go to share something, there’s this voice in my head asking, Why am I even doing this? But then I remind myself that I share because I hope that maybe, just maybe, someone out there is going through something — and something I’ve lived, learnt, or struggled with might help them feel a little less alone. And for me, if it reaches one person who needed to hear it, that’s enough.

By the way, if you’re wondering if I have some sort of answer to all of this, I’m sorry to say, but no, I don’t have a grand conclusion here. Just questions.

But I still believe social media can be good. Community. Humour. Friendship. Little moments of humanity. I just think we have to be really intentional about who we follow. What we believe. What we post. What we amplify.

And I’ll keep posting. Not every day. Not to keep up. But when something feels true, helpful, or even just kind.

Maybe social media can still be about community, laughter, updates, art, and thoughtfulness — not just commerce or performance. Maybe we can show up not (just) as brands, but as humans.

Be a light, if you can. There’s still good out there. Look for it. Share it. Add to it.

How to Tell If Someone Online Is Actually an Expert (or Not)

This isn’t perfect, but it’s a helpful gut-check list to share or keep in mind:

1. Check their credentials.
   Can’t say this enough. Look beyond the bio. Do they have formal education, training, or certification in what they’re talking about?

2. Do they cite sources or speak in specifics?
   Real experts reference studies, frameworks, or established knowledge. Not just "I feel like..."

3. They talk about nuance — not one-size-fits-all.
   Watch out for absolutes. If someone claims to have “the answer” for everyone, that’s a red flag.

4. They admit what they don’t know.
   Real professionals set boundaries around their expertise. They don’t try to speak on everything.

5. They aren’t selling you the solution they’re warning you about.
   If someone’s making you feel broken — and then conveniently selling the fix — pause.

6. Their content isn’t just emotionally powerful — it’s intellectually grounded.
   Feeling seen is great, but emotion alone doesn’t make something true.

7. They’ve been doing this work offline too.
   Were they doing this before social media and/or offline too?

They are made of both of you. Children are wired to identify with both parents; it’s part of how they build their sense of self. When you attack the other parent, they often internalise it: "Part of me must be bad too."

What if one parent is emotionally abusive, neglectful, manipulative, or unsafe?

Protecting your child doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. But it does mean choosing how and when you share information in a way that your child can emotionally handle—and that supports their development, not your release. You can still be honest—but with care, intention, and emotional boundaries.

• Speak to your child in a way that supports their healing, not your venting.

• Get support elsewhere—therapy, trusted friends, journaling.

• Children should never be the container for adult pain.

Here's the thing: honesty and protection can co-exist.

But the honesty must be age-appropriate, measured, and centred on the child's needs—not your pain. You’re still telling the truth. But you’re doing it in a way that doesn't shatter their sense of self or force them to pick sides.

Let’s do better for them.

Sharing this in case someone else needs the reminder too. It's not always easy finding support and getting a break as a mother, let alone a motherless one, but it's so, so important.

Passing along in case someone needs this reminder today.

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