The Motherless Mothers

This is the final episode of Season 2, and before we dive into a brand new season, we're taking a moment to pause and reflect.

Over the past year, we've had so many honest conversations about what it means to mother without your own mum. We've explored grief, estrangement, identity, resilience, and the many different ways mother loss shapes our lives and our experience of motherhood.

In this episode, we're talking about what we've learned, what has stayed with us, and what this season has taught us—not just as hosts, but as women and mothers ourselves.

We're also sharing a personal update, chatting about what's next for us and the podcast, and giving you a little glimpse into Season 3.

Whether you've listened to every episode or you've only just found us, thank you for being here. This community means so much to us, and we're so grateful you're part of it.

Love,

Lou & Adina xx

In this deeply moving episode, we sit down with Nafisah, founder of Nest to Nurture, to explore her journey of losing her mum at just 15 years old – and how that loss has shaped her life, her motherhood and her career.
Together, we unpack the cultural practices, expectations and unspoken nuances of grieving within a Muslim community, and how faith and tradition can both support and complicate the grieving process.
Nafisah shares how her personal experience of navigating motherhood without her own mother inspired her to create Nest to Nurture – a compassionate postpartum support service helping other women feel held, nurtured and never alone.
Love,
Lou & Adina
We share these stories to uplift community voices; views are the contributors’ own and we don’t assume responsibility for their accuracy or content.

In this episode, we’re joined by Sam Rose—Emmy Award-winning TV producer, NY Times bestselling ghostwriter, and author of the memoir Giving Up the Ghost.
After losing her mother to suicide in 2020, Sam found herself grappling with a kind of grief that resists easy understanding—shock, unanswered questions, and the search for meaning in something that feels inherently senseless.
What began as note-taking became something deeper. Through writing—and through unexpected experiences that followed—Sam began to piece together not just her mother’s story but also her own.
In this conversation, we explore mother loss through suicide, the complexity of grief without answers, and what it means to lose your voice—and slowly find your way back to it.
This is a conversation about silence, identity, and the courage to step out of the shadows.
We’re honored to share these community voices—what’s shared reflects personal views, and we can’t take responsibility for the accuracy or content.
Love
Lou & Adina 
You can find Sam’s book Giving Up the Ghost here.
Sam’s website is here.
Find Sam on IG here.
Follow TMM on IG here, and our website is here.

We’ve told our stories before, but this feels like a different conversation. More about where we are now, what’s changed with our grief, what’s still the same and how being in this work is shaping our own experience of grief in ways we didn’t necessarily expect. TMM is two years old, and we are working so hard to bring this dream to life – but what does that feel like for us and our own experiences of losing our mothers? We realised we’ve never really sat down and had this conversation—just us. Not about what happened, but about what it feels like now. In this episode, we talk about the reality of living with mother loss at different stages of life, how it shows up in our motherhood, and how doing this work has shaped our own grief in ways we didn’t expect. It’s a conversation about difference, overlap, and everything that’s still evolving.
Love,
Adina & Lou

Clare has experienced a form of grief and loss that started in childhood. She felt unsupported growing up, which developed into her feelings towards her mum being invalidated by the rest of her family. Clare has journeyed a painful path, but one that she has also led to empowerment as she focuses on raising her own two grown-up boys. 

Clare talks to us today to set the record straight on that impossible choice of cutting contact, a choice only few people seem to understand, making it an often lonely path to journey.

Love,
Lou & Adina

We’re honoured to share these community voices—what’s shared reflects personal views, and we can’t take responsibility for the accuracy or content.