Our Story 

Our Story

Forgotten Daughters, Inc. was not born in a boardroom or built from a business plan. It was born from a lived experience — from knowing firsthand what it feels like to be overlooked, underestimated, and forgotten during the moments when support matters most.

Our Founder, Kathie, spent years carrying her own story of hardship, resilience, and transformation. Through a long and deeply personal healing journey, she arrived at a truth that would not let her go — that too many women were navigating that same road alone. Women who had survived trauma. Women rebuilding after incarceration. Women pushed to the margins by systems that were never designed to catch them. Women who were still standing, still hoping, still reaching — but invisible to the world around them.

In 2025, before a single document was filed or a mission statement was written, Kathie and Aleia spent an entire year showing up. They attended nearly three dozen community events hosted by organizations large and small across Milwaukee — listening, observing, and learning. What they found shaped everything. It was the smaller, newer, community-rooted organizations — the ones closest to the people — that were doing the most intimate and life-changing work. And it was in those spaces that the vision for Forgotten Daughters came fully into focus.

Forgotten Daughters, Inc. was founded to respond to a critical gap — the space between crisis and stability where dignity, connection, and consistent support matter most, but where too few organizations are present. We exist for women navigating life after trauma, incarceration, and systemic marginalization. Women who have endured harm and hardship and still found the courage to keep going. Women who are not broken — they are becoming.

Our work is rooted in a simple but powerful belief: every woman deserves to be seen, valued, and treated with dignity. Not when she has it together. Not after she has proven herself. Right now — exactly as she is.

We understand what it means to move through the world carrying trauma while still longing for connection, safety, and belonging. We understand because we have lived it. And we exist to walk alongside women in those moments of transition — reminding them that they are not alone, that their stories matter, and that being forgotten is not the end of their story.

It is the beginning of ours. 💜