SUM/INDEX/LEN with date

Hello everyone,

I'm using the following formula to extract a count of multiple values in a cell:

=SUM(INDEX((LEN($A$1:$A$100)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE($A$1:$A$100,H2,"")))/LEN(H2),0,0))

I need to add a portion to the formula that looks for a date range in E:E (which are formatted MM-DDD-YYYY), specifically month to month. I'm not sure if a date criterion should go at the end of the formula, or in it. I'm used to using COUNTIFS, which are simple by comparison. I'm still learning more complicated functions, so apologies for submitting a question that probably has an easy answer (that I haven't found yet).