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. 

Chapters:

00:00:00 Navigating the Pain of Loss 

00:02:56 The Impact of Pregnancy Loss 

00:05:57 The Spiritual Dimension of Grief 

00:08:59 Motherhood and Identity 

00:12:05 The Journey of Healing 

00:15:07 The Role of Technology in Parenthood 

00:18:04 Grief and Hope in Parenthood 

00:21:01 The Uniqueness of Each Loss 

00:23:46 Coping with Maternal Grief 

00:26:58 Finding Meaning in Loss 

00:30:51 The Intersection of Grief and Love 

00:40:03 Motherhood and Climate Activism 

00:49:31 The Messiness of Motherhood and Loss 

Featured in this episode:

Dr Karen O’Donnell from the University of Cambridge, and author of The Dark Womb; Lizzie Harvey, head of content & communications at Theos; Professor Dominic Wilkinson, medical ethicist and neonatal intensive care doctor; Dr Sarah Apetrei of the University of Oxford and author of The Reformation of the Heart: Gender and Radical Theology in the English Revolution; Lorna Powell and Bongi Kellner  from Mothers Rise Up. 

The Team: 

🎙️ Hosts: Chine McDonald (@ChineMcDonald) and Madeleine Pennington (@mlmpennington) 

🎬 Executive producer: Stephanie Tam 

🎧 Audio editor and sound engineer: David Benjamin Blower 

🎛️ Recording engineer and assistant producer: Daniel Turner   

💡 Produced by the ‪@thinktanktheos‬ www.theosthinktank.co.uk/