New online group launches for K-W women who lost their mothers when they were young

A young woman who lost her mother to cancer at 17 has launched an online support group for motherless daughters, women who lost their mothers at a young age and who have to navigate life's milestones without their support.

Ashley Collier, who is now 23, said she wishes such a group had existed when she lost her mother.

"I felt very alone because none of my friends at the time understood," she said.

"None of them had gone through a loss like that. It was hard to talk to anybody because, as a young teenager, especially, like, that age range, you never really stop to think, 'What if my parents were gone next year?'"

She hopes that connecting with others in similar situations will help her heal, she added.

Collier launched the group after discovering Hope Edelman's book Motherless Daughters while browsing the psychology section of a local bookstore. 

The book has spawned support groups all over the world.

Reached by phone in Iowa, Edelman said she thinks it's fantastic that Collier has launched the group in the region and offered to provide resource materials to Collier if she decides to reach out to Edelman.

"I'm thrilled when I see new ones starting because it's so important for women to find ways to connect and contact each other," she said.

Women who experience the loss of their mothers early in life often share common experiences that surface at different points in their lives, Edelman said. 

Frequently, she said, their families didn't talk about the death, leaving women feeling disconnected from  their relationships with their mothers and with a sense that a part of them is developmentally "stuck" at the age they were when their mothers passed. 

It is also common for women to re-experience grief when they reach different milestones in life such as turning the age their mothers were when they died or seeing their children reach the age that they themselves were when their mothers died. 

Women need to have those experiences normalized and validated, Edelman said.

Collier was less than halfway through Grade 12 when her mother died. Her response, she said, was to stubbornly insist she was OK.