A new mother has spoken of the profound grief she feels that her own mother never met her baby, describing it as "really cruel that she didn’t get to be a grandmother" and lamenting that the chance to "share that motherhood journey together was ripped away". Despite the heartache, a supportive community of "motherless mothers" has provided her with strength.
Seona Wells, 34, from Aberdeen, welcomed her daughter Mara into the world in June 2025. However, the joy of new parenthood has been inextricably linked with the sorrow of losing her mother, Christina, to cancer in November 2024.
Christina, who was 58, received a diagnosis of a rare, aggressive sarcoma in March 2024. The family quickly learned the cancer was untreatable, and Christina spent her final months receiving palliative care.
"We were so close, we spoke every day, my mum and I – it just feels unbelievable that she has never met my daughter," Seona told PA Real Life, adding, "It doesn’t seem possible."
When Christina’s diagnosis came, Seona and her now-husband Scott were in the midst of planning their wedding for summer 2025. They had already considered starting a family after the wedding, but Christina’s illness brought their future plans into sharp focus. They brought their wedding forward to July 2024, ensuring Christina could be there to celebrate with them, and soon after, they began trying for a baby.
"I didn’t know how much time she was going to have or if she would ever get the chance to know that I would be a mum, let alone meet her grandchild," Seona explained. "I couldn’t really imagine becoming a mother without her."
Fortunately, Seona conceived in time to share the news with Christina, just three weeks before her mother passed away.
"That was a very hard time, because I was going through the first trimester, with sickness and things, and then I was also trying to nurse my mum with my family," she recalled. "She was at home at that point, she wanted to die at home. We’re a very close family, I have two younger brothers, and we were all there with her."
Sharing her pregnancy news with her family, even in its early stages, created a complex emotional landscape. "It was just such a weird time, because it’s supposed to be really happy news," Seona said. "I think for them… it kind of gave a bit of hope… (Mum) was so happy to find out that I was pregnant."
Even in her final days, heavily medicated, Christina’s joy was evident. "When she was on quite a lot of pain medication, near the end, she was still kind of booping my tummy if I was standing next to her," Seona added. "She literally would smile and say aloud ‘I know what’s in there’ when she booped my tummy."
While Seona is "so happy" she could share the news with her mother, she feels it will "just never be enough."
"It just feels so cruel: could she not have lived long enough to have met my daughter, become a grandmother herself? She’d always wanted that," she expressed. "She was one of these women that just loved children. She was actually a neonatal nurse herself, so she’d had this career of looking after babies… It just feels really cruel that she didn’t get to be a grandmother and look after her own grandchild."
Seona had always envisioned sharing the journey of motherhood with her mum. "I’d always looked forward so much to that point in our lives, where we could share that motherhood journey together, and it just was ripped away."
Following her mother’s death, Seona found solace in her strong support network, including her brothers, father, husband, friends, and crucially, her mother’s close friends. "She had a lot of female friends that were kind of almost like aunties to me, and that’s been so important," she said. "I feel like I’ve got all these aunties that are looking out for me, and that’s just because of who my mum was. She had these people that loved her so much that they are still looking out for me… that kind of feels like that’s still her looking out for me, in a way."
While grateful for this extensive support and access to grief counselling, Seona also sought connection with others who understood her unique experience. She discovered The Motherless Mothers, a community for women navigating similar loss or estrangement, finding "having that peer support has been immensely valuable."
"It’s just full of women looking after each other, looking out for other women that have been through very similar things," Seona added. "And even though everyone’s got a unique motherless mother story… you’ll say something – if something’s been a bit triggering, or you’ve had a bad day – and there’s just instantly a bunch of women who know exactly how you feel, and are quick to respond."
Seona maintains near-constant contact with The Motherless Mothers through their WhatsApp groups. The community also provides free, one-to-one counselling with qualified British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy counsellors, alongside other resources and free drop-in sessions.
"Sometimes speaking to someone who’s in that exact, weirdly specific situation to understand how you’re feeling, I think is really helpful," Seona noted. "It’s just that solidarity, it makes you feel less lonely – because it is a very lonely thing, having a child without your mum there, that’s how I felt. Everything is kind of bittersweet."
Seona strives to "let the joy in" and remember "it’s OK to be happy," though she admits every milestone in her baby’s life is tinged with sadness. She also draws strength from the knowledge that her mother, Christina, was herself a motherless mother. Christina’s mother died of cancer at 60, when Christina was 33. Seona reflects, "I think about that so much now – my mum was going through the same thing, just with older children."
"I remember having such a great childhood and such a loving mother, and I understand now, I think, exactly what she must have been going through," she said. "She managed to do it, she was strong, she managed to show up and be this incredible mother to us."
Seona’s ultimate goal is to honour her mother’s legacy: "One of the ways of trying to honour my mum is just to try and be as good a mum to my daughter as she was to me."
The Motherless Mothers is a UK charity dedicated to supporting women raising children without their own mothers, offering online and in-person community spaces. Further information and support can be accessed via their website: www.themotherlessmothers.com.
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