Hi, I’m Mary Ellen Collins, PhD. I’m the Founder and Board Chair of the Motherless Daughters Ministry. I started this ministry because I know first-hand how painful and isolating it is to walk through life’s hardest storms without a mother. I created this space for women like us—women who are searching for shelter, for family, and for healing.
Life doesn’t wait for sunny skies. Storms come. Sometimes, they come out of nowhere, and sometimes, they’ve been building for years. And when they hit—when the wind knocks the breath out of you and the sky cracks open—you need something, or someone, to hold you steady.
In a healthy family, that something is each other. Families shield one another. They show up. They wrap around each other like a raincoat—keeping the worst of the storm from soaking through. You don’t run from someone else’s rain. You stand in it with them. You become their shelter.
But what happens when you’re in the middle of the storm—and your mother is gone?
That’s the reality so many of us live. Whether your mother died, emotionally abandoned you, or was never safe to begin with—when the storm hits, that void is undeniable. You feel exposed. Uncovered. Alone. You’re soaked through and freezing in a world that doesn’t pause to notice.
And that’s why we created the Motherless Daughters Ministry. We are your family. We are your raincoat.
We exist for those moments when the rejection is too sharp, the grief too heavy, the silence too loud. We are the ones who show up and sit with you when no one else can. When the rest of the world moves on or doesn’t know what to say—we do. Because we’ve been there. All of us.
One of the most painful storms to weather is rejection. And if you’re a motherless daughter, you likely know this pain intimately. Sometimes it’s subtle—feeling overlooked on Mother’s Day, or invisible when your coworkers talk about their moms. Other times it’s a tidal wave—like the moment you realize your mom won’t be at your wedding, or the day you give birth without the one woman you want in the room.
When that kind of storm hits, most people don’t understand. They don’t know what it’s like to grieve a relationship that never got a chance. To mourn someone who is still alive but has emotionally left. To carry a longing so deep it lives in your bones.
But we do.
Many years ago, a woman in our ministry went through one of those soul-wrenching moments. Her story is etched into our hearts. Her storm became our storm. We circled around her like family—our hearts broke with hers, our voices prayed when hers couldn’t, our arms held her tears when they fell. We’ll never forget it. Because it was one of those defining moments when the words “Motherless Daughters Ministry” meant exactly what they were supposed to: a family in the storm.
Strong families protect each other. They lean in when life falls apart. They don’t try to fix the weather—they just stay close and hold tight until the light comes back. That’s who we are for each other in this ministry.
We see you. We hear you. We believe you.
We are the ones who understand that healing isn’t linear. That grief comes in waves. That some days you’re standing, and some days you’re not. And that’s okay.
We don’t expect you to be strong all the time. We’ll be strong with you. And for you. And sometimes, when you’re too weary to hope, we’ll hold that too.
You may have grown up without a mother to protect you in life’s storms. But now—you have us.
You have a community of women who won’t flinch at your pain. Who won’t minimize your story. Who will look you in the eyes and say, “Me too.” Women who get what it’s like to be left, to be let down, to still ache for something you never had.
And that kind of community changes everything.
We don’t just support each other. We heal together. We sit in the grief, but we also rise in strength. We laugh, we cry, we pray, we grow. We show up when it’s hard and celebrate when it’s good.
This isn’t just a ministry. It’s a movement of healing. It’s what happens when women stop walking through pain alone. It’s what happens when broken hearts are honored, not rushed.
So, if you’re reading this and you’re in the middle of a storm—know this: you don’t have to go through it alone.
You may not have had the mother you needed. But you have sisters now.
You have us.
We are your raincoat in the storm.
We are your circle of strength.
We are your Motherless Daughters family
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