Many clinicians support adult clients who experience persistent cycles of emotional distress, relational instability, and self-defeating behaviors. These patterns may include struggles with intimacy, disordered eating, compulsive behaviors, or chronic anxiety and depression. Despite insight and motivation, some clients find it difficult to sustain change.

Therapist and author Kelly McDaniel, LCMHC, witnessed these traits over and over in her practice and discovered a common thread: her clients held a deep yearning for a mother’s love, attention, and care that was not met during childhood.

In McDaniel's first book, Ready to Heal, she named this invisible attachment injury “Mother Hunger,” describing how disruptions in essential elements of maternal care can undermine  secure attachment. The name resonated with many and changed the nature of her practice. To meet the need, McDaniel designed individual, healing Intensives to repair insecure attachment and maternal deprivation in adult women. In 2021, she published her second book, Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance, and her framework has helped clinicians more clearly conceptualize attachment-based distress in adult daughters and apply targeted interventions that address underlying unmet maternal needs.

Drawing from attachment theory and clinical practice, this home study program introduces clinicians to Mother Hunger and operationalizes mothering so clinicians and their clients can identify what was missing and then work to replace it in their adult clients. It examines how early disruptions in nurturance, protection, and/ or guidance shape emotional regulation, self-worth, and relational patterns across the lifespan.

Through recorded video instruction and required reading, participants gain a structured understanding of insecure attachment as it presents in adult daughters and learn therapeutic approaches to support healing and integration.