In this deeply moving episode, Dr. Patty and Lizzie sit down with Jessica Malmberg, LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist who brings both professional expertise and lived experience to supporting families through miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, and fertility struggles.

This conversation is medicine for anyone navigating perinatal loss, supporting someone who is, or healing from childhood grief that was never fully witnessed. We explore how grief lives in the body, how it shapes our parenting, why rituals matter, and how nature, community, and attachment all play vital roles in metabolizing loss.

In This Episode We Explore:

1. Why perinatal loss is uniquely painful: the invisibility of grief when others never met your baby
2. How to support children through sibling loss
3. The power of play therapy and sand tray work for kids processing death
4. Why anniversaries are so potent — and how to plan rituals around them
5. How attachment styles shape the way we grieve
6. The difference between isolating and intentional solitude in grief work
7. The myth that "being fine" is the goal — and why metabolizing grief requires both constriction and expansion

Favorite Episode Ideas

"Grief needs to be digested, like compost! It mixes with everything. We're starving from those nutrients. Composting grief can actually feed us."

"Our DNA is made for a village. That's how we're supposed to heal."

About Our Guest

Jessica Malmberg, LMFT, is a trauma-informed psychotherapist with over 25 years in the healing arts and extensive training in grief work with Francis Weller. She specializes in supporting women and families through miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, and fertility challenges. An infant loss survivor herself, Jessica integrates brain spotting, co-created grief rituals, and depth-oriented approaches to help clients restore grounding, meaning, and presence. She offers therapy, grief retreats, and professional trainings in Northern California and online.

Links & Resources

→ Jessica's website: https://jessicamalmberg.com

→ Follow Jessica on Instagram: @jessicamalmbergtherapy

→ Francis Weller's work on communal grief rituals

→ Sacred Treehouse programs: https://sacredtreehouse.org

If this episode spoke to you, please leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear that their grief is valid, their baby mattered, and healing is possible — not by rushing through, but by allowing the depth.

Lizzie and Patty introduce an exciting new series launching this January: Foundations.

Rather than focusing on quick parenting tips, this series dives deep into attachment, bonding, trauma, and healing — exploring how our earliest relationships shape not only our children, but us across the lifespan.

Attachment isn’t built in one perfect moment. It’s formed over time through thousands of small interactions, ruptures and repairs, presence in exhaustion, and love even in the midst of grief.

In this episode, we share why this series matters, who it’s for, and how understanding attachment can bring clarity, self-compassion, and healing — whether you’re expecting a child, navigating fertility or adoption, supporting someone you love, or simply wanting to understand yourself more deeply.

This conversation sets the stage for a series that honors complexity, grief, resilience, and the profound possibility of breaking generational cycles.

• Expecting parents, adoptive parents, and those navigating fertility
• Parents in early childhood, adolescence, and beyond
• People healing their own attachment wounds
• Partners, fathers, family members, and support systems
• Anyone curious about why they relate the way they do — and how healing is possible

Healing is possible. Not just for what happened to you — but for what was passed down to you.

By doing this work, we don’t just change our own lives. We change our family lines.

Stay tuned for the Foundations series, and thank you for being part of The Bonded Podcast. Please leave a review to support the growth of this important educational and inspirational message!

In this tender Christmas Eve episode of The Bonded Podcast, Dr. Patty and Lizzie hold gentle space for one of the deepest human longings: to feel that life itself is a gift worth receiving.

For many who experienced early attachment wounds, trauma, neglect, or unreliable caregiving, being alive can feel more like a burden than a celebration. If you’ve ever carried a quiet (or loud) sense of “I shouldn’t be here,” “Life is something to endure,” or “I have to do it all alone,” this conversation is for you.

With deep compassion and lived experience, Dr. Patty and Lizzie explore how these early imprints live in the nervous system, how they can block our ability to receive love and care, and — most importantly — the real hope that healing is possible. This isn’t about forcing positivity; it’s about slowly softening, opening, and reclaiming the truth that your birth was, and is, a gift.

Key Themes & Takeaways

• Early attachment experiences shape whether life feels safe, welcoming, or threatening
• Common signs today: chronic self-protection, difficulty receiving care, deep shame, a sense of not belonging, or life feeling like something to “manage” rather than enjoy
• Healing isn’t about blaming parents
• Receiving is the gateway and often the first step toward feeling life as a gift
• Energetic and systemic healing can be profoundly gentle — no need to re-live trauma verbally; the nervous system unfolds at its own pace
• Mindfulness and self-compassion practices build inner trust and create safe space for deeper work

Upcoming Generational Healing Opportunity

If this episode stirred something in you and you’re ready to gently explore healing the mother wound in a safe, trauma-informed container, we invite you to join our intimate January 2026 workshop: The Love of the Mother with Maria do Carmo.

This full-day experiential gathering uses systemic and energetic practices (including elements of family constellation) to restore the flow of nurturing energy — no verbal re-telling of trauma required. Space is very limited for depth and safety.

Details & registration: https://sacred-treehouse.mykajabi.com/systemic-healing