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In Jennifer Steinman's online documentary "Motherland," six American women go on a mission of mercy to South Africa where they work with hundreds of children orphaned by poverty, pestilence and rampant AIDS.

But that's not the real reason they have come.

They have come to these remote South African villages seeking solace and healing.

For each woman is a mother who has lost a child to a premature death. And that loss has been so overwhelmingly dark and debilitating, the women are consumed with grief, unable to carry on their everyday lives.

This is a tough movie to watch, even if you're not a mother and haven't lost a child. I cannot imagine how tough it might be for a mother who has.

Steinman's documentary - available only on the Web and not in area theaters - shows us how these six women, mostly from California, one from Racine, Wis., come together as strangers in a strange land, then through their work with children, form a therapeutic bond that gives them an outlet for their sorrow.

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