My Son Died. I’m Still Here. Help Me Rebuild.
Hi, I’m Maile.
I’m a mom, writer, podcast host, and founder trying to rebuild my life after losing my son, Kingston, to pediatric cancer.
I wish this fundraiser were for something simpler. A one time emergency. A broken car. A rent bill. Something clean and easy to explain.
It’s not.
This is for the long middle. The part nobody prepares you for. The part after the funeral, after the support slows down, after the worst thing that could happen already happened and you are somehow still expected to function like a normal person in a normal world.
I am raising my daughter, trying to survive financially, and building work that I believe can genuinely help other people, especially families living through grief, pediatric cancer, trauma, and the kind of life collapse that does not fit neatly into a motivational quote.
Here’s what I’m building:
Honestly, I’m Fine
This is my podcast about grief, survival, rebuilding, dark humor, spirituality, parenting after loss, and trying to stay alive emotionally while life keeps asking for productivity. It is honest, messy, funny in places, brutal in others, and made for people who are tired of fake healing language and polished nonsense. It is not about pretending to be okay. It is about telling the truth.
Books and writing projects
I’m writing across multiple formats because different pain needs different doors. That includes children’s books, grief resources, personal essays, and memoir. Some of this work is for bereaved parents. Some of it is for children. Some of it is for people trying to understand what loss actually does to a family. All of it comes from lived experience, and all of it is meant to make people feel less alone.
The Live Like Kingston Foundation
I am also building a nonprofit in Kingston’s honor. The goal is to support families facing pediatric cancer and child loss with practical help, advocacy, emotional support, and resources that fill the gaps families fall into when the system fails them. This is deeply personal work. I am not building it because it sounds nice. I am building it because I know exactly where families get abandoned.
This fundraiser helps me keep building all of that while also keeping my own life afloat.
I am not doing this from a place of stability. I am doing it while actively rebuilding. While parenting. While grieving. While trying to generate income. While dragging these projects forward with the same exhausted determination women have used for centuries when nobody was coming to save them.
Your support helps me keep creating the podcast, writing the books, building the foundation, and continuing work that turns devastating loss into something useful, honest, and human.
If you donate, thank you.
If you share this, thank you.
If you have supported me in any way already, thank you.
I hate needing help. But I believe in what I’m building, and I know it matters.
You can learn more about my work here:
Thank you for helping me rebuild something meaningful from the wreckage.
Organizer
