Welcome to the Motherlove Project. My name is Janet and my mom Cass died when she was 49 from breast cancer. It was 1995 and I was 18, right on the precipice of my adult life. My entire world shattered the day she died, I was evicted from my own life that day. I have spent the last 25 years mourning her and reeling from the secondary losses that followed.

I started this Project on the 25th anniversary of her death, as a way to memorialize her and give other motherless daughters a pace to do the same. We may not have met or ever live in the same part of the world, but we recognize a wound that it so deep within each of us. This Project is for all of us. You can read my story here.

Motherless daughters come in all shapes and sizes, cultures, religions, backgrounds, countries and languages. My mom was larger than life, I’ve said this before. But missing her has defined more of my life than having her in it. She’s been gone longer than my 18 years of loving her. She’s been gone long enough for me to process the many losses I suffered. It’s allowed me to understand that losing her meant losing a lot more than I realized. But I also gained. Losing her freed me to be myself. Writing those words is extremely painful but necessary.

Submissions are open and my hope is that through bringing together first-person stories, we can build a narrative of grief, strength, resilience and hope for others.