”A podcast about death? That‘s kinda morbid.” - You, probably. But it doesn‘t have to be. Come breathe life into the conversation around death, grief, & bereavement.
Dead Mom Club & Early Childhood Loss ft Miranda Malone
This episode is a special one...
Maria has spent years in the death and grief space, but rarely has she had the chance to sit down with someone who understands her specific experience. She's rarely met someone else whose mom also died when she was very young. Today's guest is Miranda Malone, and she is, unfortunately, also part of the very unique Dead Mom Club that Maria is in.
Miranda is a grief therapist and the creator of The Dead Mom Club. It's a community you never wanted to join but are so glad exists. Through her work, she's challenging outdated ideas about what grief looks like, pushing back on the misconceptions that make grieving people feel like they're doing it wrong, and building a space specifically for those navigating life after losing a mother.
In this conversation they talk about:
What it means to lose a mom before you were old enough to remember her, and how that particular grief lives differently in the body
The "Dead Mom Olympics," which is the strange experience of having your loss compared to others, even by people who are also grieving
Gratitude and grief sitting in the same space, and why that's more complicated than it sounds
The misconceptions around grief that Miranda is actively working to dismantle
What it means to build community around a loss this specific
About Miranda MaloneMiranda Malone is a grief therapist and the founder of The Dead Mom Club — a growing community for people who have lost their mothers. Through her work, she's normalizing conversations around maternal loss and building spaces where no one has to grieve alone.
📱 Follow Miranda — @deadmomtherapist🌿 The Dead Mom Club
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11 Aug 2026
My Greek Moms Recipes – Gus Constantellis
In this episode, Maria sits down with Gus Constantellis to talk about losing his mom Julia, how her cooking and larger-than-life personality inspired his viral content, and how grief became the unexpected push behind putting together this cookbook.
4 Aug 2026
The Death of Play – Let the Kids Be Cringe
Let the Kids Be Cringe: Toy Story, Play, and the Loss of Make-Believe
It's 2010. Maria is on her first date with her high school crush. They're in a movie theatre watching Toy Story 3. And they're both staring at the ceiling, trying desperately not to cry.
Sixteen years later, there's a new Toy Story in theatres and Maria spent a whole weekend rewatching every film in the franchise to get ready for it.
In this episode, Maria draws on her essay from Musings of Mortals to explore what Toy Story 5 got right about the world Gen Alpha is actually growing up in, with a world of screens before speech, cringe culture as social policing, and play as something increasingly rare and even seen as embarrassing.
This one covers:
What Toy Story 5 gets right about the pressures kids face today
How Gen Alpha is growing up
What researchers mean when they call pretend play a "metaphoric multivitamin" for the developing brain
The steep, decades-long decline in free, unsupervised play and how this is impacting mental health
Cringe culture as a social fence
Why play isn't just for kids, and what it means to never stop being in a creative practice, no matter what form it takes
Because grief literacy is life literacy, and so is knowing how to play.
Read the Full Written Version📖 Let the Kids Be Cringe — Musings of Mortals
Research & Resources Referenced
Impact of social media on Gen Alpha — Annie E. Casey Foundation
The decline of imaginative play in early childhood — Frontiers in Psychology
The power of pretend play for children — Child Mind Institute
Pretend play and early childhood development — Florida Atlantic University
The decline of play and rise in children's mental health disorders — Peter Gray, Psychology Today
Anxiety and depression in young people — PMC
Benefits of play for adults — HelpGuide
Adult play and wellbeing — National Institute for Play
Ocean Vuong on cringe culture — Rolling Stone Philippines
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.3 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
10 ratings
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