I feel like I have been reaching out for longer than I can remember. First, as a kid, for the father I was slowly losing to alcoholism. Later, after he died when I was 14, for ways to understand what I had lost. And now, in my 40s, with my mum also gone and three children in the house, for an identity as a mother that I can hold on to. 

I know how it feels to hope the internet might provide someone, anyone, who understands. Without the woman who mothered me, I am unmoored. 

My questions, about whether this or that is normal, about what I was like at this age or stage, float in my mind unanswered. Am I doing ok? I have no idea. Is this what motherhood looks like? I draw a blank. 

Mum died 10 years ago and my memories of her have faded. I cling instead to the photographs, looking into her eyes in washed out 1980s snaps in search of, well, I don't know what. One sentence of hers rings constantly in my ears: "you just have to get on with it, Helen". She had no time for wallowing, no patience with weakness. I know I'm expected to soldier on. So I push down the pain, plaster on a smile. 

"You just have to get on with it." A message that seems to echo down through the generations. In that one sentence I hear the heavy sighs and deep in-breaths of generation after generation of women steadying themselves and pushing on regardless. 

Digital connections can lead to real-world communities that change lives, and that's how The Motherless Mothers began: with a Facebook post, as one motherless new mother, Louise Kirby-Jones, reached out into the void for support, and Adina Belloli, also mothering without her own mum, reached back. Sometimes it’s only those in your same situation that can truly understand and bonds forged in the fire of motherlessness are strong. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell bonded immediately on meeting, on the set of A League of Their Own in the early 1990s, identifying each other as motherless daughters and remaining close to this day. 

For what is the cost when there's no one to reach for at all? When The Motherless Mothers, now a charity that offers everything from WhatsApp groups to in-person supper clubs, teamed up with Peanut to do some research into motherless motherhood, they found that motherless mothers are 3.4 times more likely to develop postnatal depression and that 81% experience perinatal mental health difficulties. Shouldn't we be doing something about that?

At the moment, the health service ignores the problem entirely; across three pregnancies, three births and multiple post-natal complications, I wasn't asked once if I had any family support. I assumed my grief was irrelevant. 

It's not though, is it? That same research also found that 85% of motherless mothers felt motherhood had reopened their grief. It has undoubtedly reopened mine. I may not have experienced depression, but the sadness is ocean-deep. And it comes for me incessantly and without prejudice, at birthday parties, school events, at the end of the yoga class I took to find some headspace. 

It's particularly connected to the kids and as my eldest stands on the cusp of turning seven, I feel a dizzying grief for the versions of her now passed. It's a grief that feels sharper having lost so much already. I cling to memories of my kids' babyhoods, their toddler years, their first days of school, obsessively photographing because I cannot bear to lose anything more. Am I mourning for my kids' past selves or for my own lost innocence? 

There's a darkness to my record-keeping too: I do it because I fear I won't be here when they're older. Perhaps my letters to them, written every birthday, will be all they have of me. Perhaps history will repeat itself. 

Because I never saw my mum as a grandmother, I cannot imagine myself as one. There is no frame of reference. I try to conjure up an image of her holding my babies but it's as thin as a cloud and wafts away if I try to hold onto it. I feel so sad for her that she never knew the joy so many women tell me they feel when their own babies have babies themselves. What a privilege it is to be there for that. 

And that brings me to the anger. It's unattractive, savage even, but it's there. It surfaces on Mother's Day in the pub when I feel a day that should be mine slipping away, hijacked by bitter jealousy as I watch other mothers bask in the warm glow of holding the generations each side of them at once.

It comes with me to the school assembly, settling in my chest as my daughter takes to the stage in front of an audience of doting grandparents, not one of them her own. And it poisons so many conversations, rising as a lump in my throat as friends casually mention their mum's big birthday celebration, or worse, the childcare she does for them. I have become a master at manipulating conversations around difficult topics, verbally ducking and weaving as the mention of grandparents looms. Most people in my day-to-day life know I have no parents; not one of them truly knows what that means. And, oh, the privilege of that. 

It's all so desperately unfair. There are ways other mothers are supported that I cannot imagine, casual arrangements with grandparents who seem to be always on call, able to drop in and help out, to cover inset days and last-minute work clashes. Sometimes I wonder what my career would look like had I had that sort of support, but I am too scared to open that can of worms. Who knows who I could be if I hadn't spent my life grieving. 

There is such a powerlessness to mothering while motherless. The one person we're told should be there for us through it all is absent. 

There's a void nobody else can see and a misunderstanding that runs so deep I can no longer summon the energy to bridge the chasm with those who can never truly get it. 

Motherhood alone is destabilising enough; add grief on top and it's a crisis. Yet there is no acknowledgement, from the health service or anywhere else: when I became a mother in 2019, I didn't even have the language for it. 

Now thank goodness, I know that the loss I carry is carried by others too. Just having this knowledge makes life a little bit easier. And so, we just get on with it, together. 

If Helen's words feel familiar, The Motherless Mothers charity offers community support through WhatsApp groups, supper clubs and others who simply understand without needing things explained. Find them at themotherlessmothers.com or follow their journey on Substack.