In the final episode, Chine McDonald and Madeleine Pennington explore what motherhood teaches us about loss, grief, change and death. 03/04/2025

Warning: This episode includes discussion of stillbirths, pregnancy loss, miscarriage and death. 

In the final episode, Chine and Maddy explore what motherhood teaches us about loss, grief, change and death. What does a mother’s grief – even a mother’s fear of grief – reveal about what it means to be human?  

We explore the painful and difficult realities of stillbirth, pregnancy loss and the death of children after birth, as well as how parents deal with their own mortality. We look at both the potential and limitations of technology in saving premature babies’ lives, and ask how parents cope with the grief of life not turning out how they had hoped for their children, including anxiety about the climate and the state of the world. How does grief – about the climate or the loss of children – lead women into different forms of activism? We ask whether machines can help us grieve, or whether grief is an inevitable part of motherhood; and take a look at the most famous example of maternal loss: Mary, the mother of Jesus, who in the traditional Pieta imagery, cradles the dead body of her son. 

Listen here.

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