How to help someone who has lost their mum
With Mother’s Day looming, the celebration often brings pain for those who’ve lost their mums. Meet two Melbourne women putting the joy back into the day. Here’s how to help someone who has lost their mum.
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When Eloise Baker-Hughes got married five years ago, she cried tears of joy — and much sorrow. But she had two soulmates by her side to share her tangled emotions.
One was husband Tim Hughes. The other was Danielle Snelling, a woman she met on Facebook just 18 months earlier but with whom she had forged an unbreakable bond.
Like Baker-Hughes, Snelling is a motherless daughter. The pair met through a US Facebook page soon after Snelling’s mother Rosa lost her two-year battle with a rare form of cancer
in 2012.
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Baker-Hughes was just 13 when her mother, Janet, died from a heart attack in 2002. The shock of losing her so suddenly has been with her every day since.
Though they lost their mothers in very different ways and at very different times of their lives, the two women understand the magnitude of each other’s loss and the ripple effect it has on their entire lives.
“I had only recently lost my mum and I wanted to find someone else who could
relate, because I wanted to create some sort of network and I was hoping to find someone
to do that with,” Snelling says. “So I put a social media post up on Facebook on an American grief page.
“I said, ‘Hi, this is my situation’. A few people commented and Eloise did. We arranged to meet at a cafe at Fountain Gate. It was like a weird internet date, but we ended up sitting there for five or six hours talking.”
The women’s overwhelming grief and a desire to better support other women going through a similar ordeal inspired them to found Motherless Daughters Australia. More than 1600 women around Australia are now part of their not-for-profit support network.
“The dynamics of the group vary greatly — some have recently lost their mum, others lost their mum decades ago,” Snelling says.
“We have women who never met their mums, women who were adopted, women who lost their mum at such a young age that they don’t remember her, women who didn’t have the
best relationship with their mum.
“We have women who lost their mum before reaching any of life’s major milestones, such as graduation, engagements, weddings, pregnancy, having children.
“We also have women who were adults with children of their own. All walks of life and all equally sharing a grief associated with losing their mum. It just shows how profound this loss is.”
The group also holds an annual pre-Mother’s Day high tea to bring together women ahead of a day that can be a painful reminder of what they have lost.
“It’s a really beautiful and supportive platform,” Snelling says. “I mean it’s sad that it has to exist. We would give it all away to have our mums back for five seconds.
“It would be nice to not have to do all this stuff. I wish she was still here. But this is how
we can honour our mums and help other people in the same situation.”
The organisation is a passion project for Baker-Hughes and Snelling, and has forged a bond like sisterhood.
Snelling was an obvious choice for Baker-Hughes to call upon to join her bridal party.
Baker-Hughes had been dreading the idea of getting married from the day she buried her mother.
“I remember sitting at her funeral thinking about all the things she wouldn’t be part of — me getting my braces off, getting married, having children …” she says.
“Getting married became a fear. I didn’t want to go into one of those bridal dress shops without her. I cried the whole way down the aisle.”
Snelling understands that feeling.
“It’s such a bittersweet thing,” she says. “One day I’ll get married, too, and that will be nice, but it’s going to be awful as well — all the milestones that she will miss. All the big things in life.
“But it’s even the little things. Like I was at the supermarket the other day and the woman who served me was so rude and I walked out and thought, ‘I wish I could call Mum and tell her about it,’ because no one else would give a s--- about that, but your mum would.”
Baker-Hughes was determined the mother she lost would be part of her big day.
“I wore my mum’s dress and her jewellery as well,” she says. “I was lucky that one of her friends could alter the dress for me because I couldn’t face going into the shops.
“I had a memory table. She was very present. I just needed to pay tribute to her.”
Both women say there is still a lot of awkwardness surrounding death.
Many people do not know what to say or do to help a person who is grieving. And there can be an expectation for those who have lost someone to put on a brave face to avoid making others feel uncomfortable.
“Initially I wanted a seat kept empty for Mum and our celebrant was quite taken aback by that,” Baker-Hughes says of her wedding. “They felt it would be quite daunting for people so we didn’t do that. We just did the memory table and lit a candle so that she was present.”
Jackie Tarabay, specialist counsellor at the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement, says death is still considered a taboo topic.
“It’s like cricket,” she says. “Cricket’s a topic I don’t know a lot about, so it’s not something I feel confident bringing up in conversation or to ask questions about because I’m not sure I’ll say the right thing.
“It’s the same with death for many people. They’re terrified of saying the wrong thing, so they say nothing and that leaves the person who’s grieving to feel isolated.”
Tarabay urges people to reach out to those who have lost loved ones, especially around significant events, such as Mother’s Day.
“It’s so important just to check in and ask how someone is doing,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions about the person they’ve lost.
“Grief used to be something we expected people to get over or move on from. Now
it’s about continuing that bond and having a relationship with the deceased person in a different way.
“That might be going on a hike because the person had loved to do that. Or having a vegetable garden because they were someone who loved their vegie patch.”
For as long as Baker-Hughes can remember, she has felt apart from others because she doesn’t have a mother. She has also felt unable to be open about the depth of her pain.
“Basically from the day my mum died I was hurried to get back to school,” she says. “Dad just wanted things to get back to normal.
“And I just remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to walk through those gates’. As soon as I was in there, I thought, ‘Everyone in this school is living a different existence to me. They’re on a different wavelength’.
“I had just lost my mum and they’re worried about what shoes they’re going to buy. There were lots of mother-and-daughter days as well, which were pretty painful for me. I just had to battle those by myself. I was very shy and so I didn’t really talk about it a lot.”
Snelling also felt isolated by her loss. She was 21 and studying teaching at university when her mother was diagnosed with a rare form of uterine cancer. She didn’t think twice about jumping in to help care for her mum, even though it ultimately fractured many of her friendships at the time.
“It stopped me being able to relate to and maintain friendships that I had at that time,” she says.
“I was over going out and getting drunk and all of that stuff.
“I just stopped doing that because I was looking after my mum.
“My dad stayed home with my younger brother Dean because we are from Inverloch and it was two hours to get to Peter Mac (the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre). My friendships changed. I didn’t have many friends at all when my mum died because I just had grown apart from them.”
After her mother died, Snelling stepped in to fill the maternal role at home.
“Dean was 14 so I sort of became Mum for him,” she says. “We are incredibly close now.
“It’s huge. I think when you lose your mum really young it forces you to grow up really quickly and take on responsibilities that you wouldn’t if your mum was still there.”
Snelling sought grief counselling before deciding to reach out to others on Facebook.
“You can talk yourself into knowing they’re going to (die), but when they actually do go,
you can never ever prepare yourself for what that is going to feel like,” she says.
“Everyone flocks to you. The house is full. You plan the funeral and then everybody goes. And they say, ‘We are here for you’.
“Those people don’t realise how much it hurts when they say that and then they go away and are never actually there for you. Just don’t say it unless you mean it. People are uncomfortable with grief and we need to fix that.”
Snelling and Baker-Hughes, both 30, urge people to reach out to friends and family members who have lost their mums.
“But don’t say, ‘I’m here if you need anything’, because that then puts it back on that person,” Snelling says.
“It becomes their responsibility to let you know what they need.
“Send them a bunch of flowers. Or rock up with the flowers. Send them a text or a card. Actions speak louder than words.
“I value the friends of mine who have gone that extra step and said, ‘Tell me about your mum’ or asked me questions about her.
“I want to talk about her. A lot of the women in our group are just hanging for opportunities to talk about their mums.”
Snelling wants people to know how delicious Rosa’s homemade lasagne was. And that no one can make Vegemite toast the way she did.
Likewise, Baker-Hughes is proud of her mother’s craft work. She treasures a quilt her mum made for her in the year before she died.
It’s not just on Mother’s Day that their pain is acute.
Baker-Hughes was plunged into sadness when Richmond finally won the Grand Final in 2017 because her Tiger-tragic mum wouldn’t be there to see them take the AFL premiership cup.
“We need to change the dynamics around grief so that hopefully in 10 years’ time people don’t feel so awkward about it and they know what to say,” Baker-Hughes says.
Snelling adds: “Don’t underestimate a hug. If you don’t know what to say, a hug will work wonders.”
HOW TO SUPPORT SOMEONE WHO HAS LOST THEIR MUM THIS MOTHER’S DAY
* Make contact.
* Ask questions about the person who has died.
* Don’t try to find a bright side by saying things like, “Well at least they had a good innings.”
* Offer to spend time with them. Then listen and share in their loss.
n Suggest starting a regular ritual, like lighting a candle together or doing something the person who died enjoyed, such as going for a hike or sharing a glass of Champagne.
SOURCE: Specialist bereavement counsellor Jackie Tarabay
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