You've seen these movies a hundred times. You know every word, every song, every scene. But have you ever stopped to notice how much death is woven through them?
Aladdin. Frozen. Beauty and the Beast. The Little Mermaid. Tarzan. The Lion King.
Every single one of these films includes death. Whether explicitly shown or simply implied. From missing moms and parents, to dying heroes or slain villians.
This is what we watched as children.
In this episode, Maria shares her talk she did at the 2026 Dying Series Festival in Toronto to explore what Disney films are actually teaching kids about death, grief, and loss, and how this can actually shape the adults they become.
This episode covers:
Why Disney films are one of the most powerful and underexamined sites of early grief education
What peer-reviewed research reveals about how children understand death through film, and what the distinction between a protagonist's death and a villain's death actually teaches them
How adult reactions in the room shape what children learn grief is "allowed" to look like
Why euphemisms like "they went to sleep" can cause more harm than honesty
Maria's personal experience growing up without her mom, and what it felt like to carry grief in spaces that had no language for it
In Canada, roughly one in fourteen children will lose a parent before age eighteen, and what our systems are and aren't doing to support them
How New Jersey became the first US state to mandate grief and loss education in public schools in 2024
Why grief education belongs in schools, not just in crisis moments
What it means to treat bereavement as a public health priority — and why The Lancet agreed in 2024
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