NEED TO KNOW
Emilie Kiser is grappling with how grief will color her holiday season ahead of her first Thanksgiving since the death of her 3-year-old son, Trigg.
In an eight-minute TikTok shared on Wednesday, Nov. 26, the influencer discussed some of the ways she is mentally preparing for the upcoming weeks. She admitted that “every holiday is hard” as a grieving parent, though she specified that she anticipates Christmas being particularly challenging for her.
“I’m setting zero expectations for myself. No matter what feeling I’m gonna feel on any of these holidays, I’m allowing myself to fully feel it, not try to push it away,” said Emilie, who shares both Trigg and 9-month-old Teddy with her husband, Brady.
“I’m just allowing myself to feel every single feeling that comes, and if that means some of the days feel like I can bear them, I allow myself to feel that,” she continued. “But if I need to step away or just can’t do certain things on the holidays, I’m also completely okay with that.”
The Arizona mom maintained that one of her greatest motivations for speaking about grief is that hopefully her words will help those in similar positions. Emilie reiterated how, in the effort to co-exist with grief, it’s “so important” to allow oneself to feel emotions and “allow yourself to really sit in those moments.”
She also shared a significantly personal feeling she said she’s been experiencing lately, also in the interest of helping a potential viewer in need of support.
Emilie Kiser/Instagram
“I don’t even know if this is gonna make sense, and this is vulnerable for me to share, but like I said, I just know it’s gonna help someone,” Emilie began. “Lately, and honestly … since I lost my son, I have just been feeling so weird about my life and how it constantly feels like I’m living a past life, almost.”
Emilie details how it’s been hard watching her younger son grow up and reach new stages of development, parts of which remind her of raising Trigg.
“It feels like I had this life, and then I don’t have it anymore. It feels almost like I’m repeating my years with Trigg with Teddy, because I’m going through all the same milestones I’ve gone through before, but he’s not here anymore,” she admitted, becoming tearful.
The influencer spent several months on hiatus from social media after Trigg’s fatal drowning incident in May. She returned to social media on Sept. 20 and has since resumed regular content uploads, which have featured a mix of standard, day-in-the-life vlog content and more honest expressions of heartbreak following the tragedy.
She offered another honest holiday reflection in October, on her first Halloween without Trigg. The Arizona mom posted a photo of her son Teddy’s Winnie the Pooh costume and his trick-or-treating bag on her Instagram Stories. In overlaying text, she opened up about her approach to the holiday amid her grief journey.
“Doing my best today to make memories for Teddy but also not force this Holiday,” wrote Emilie, who shares both of her sons with her husband, Brady. She added, “Spending time with family and dressing him up will be the highlights of it.”
Earlier this month, she posted a tribute to Trigg to mark six months since his tragic death. “The second it hit midnight this morning it’s like my body knew,” Emilie wrote in a post on Instagram on Nov. 12. “What felt like any ordinary day six months ago turned into the worst moments of my entire life. The day my son Trigg drowned.”
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Later in the post, she offered advice to “save families from the pain of losing a child to a preventable accident, such as drowning” — urging families to “get a pool fence,” enroll kids in swim lessons as early as six months and watch their children “at all times.”
“I miss him with every fiber of my being,” Emilie continued of Trigg in her emotional message. “Every ounce of me yearns to hold him again, hug him again, tell him how special he is, and how much I love him. I miss his voice, his hugs, his smile, his laugh, the way he added a ‘k’ sound to any word ending with the letter ‘s’ and the way he lit up every room he walked into.”
