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Emilie Kiser is sharing how she’s grieving her 3-year-old son, Trigg, as the holiday season continues.
On Monday, Dec. 1, the influencer shared one unexpected trigger that she’s been experiencing following the fatal drowning of her son in May. Emilie posted an Instagram Stories message explaining that social media around the holiday season has been impacting her grief journey.
“To be honest, I don’t think I anticipated how sad social media was going to make me this month,” her post began.
She acknowledged that she “prepared” herself for things in her “personal life” to trigger her, “but not for what I’d see every time I opened my phone.”
Emilie Kiser/Instagram
Emilie said that she knows she’s “in control” of handling her mental health. Noting she’s utilizing techniques to “protect” her mental health, including staying off her phone and “not scrolling” as much. “But seeing so many moms doing Elf on the Shelf is giving me such painful flashbacks of memories and traditions we loved so much.”
“I honestly forgot today was December 1st, and that last night would kick off the Christmas wave,” she continued. Emilie also shares 9-month-old son Teddy with her husband, Brady, but she noted he is “too young” to participate in traditions such as Elf on the Shelf.
“And honestly, I just don’t have it in me,” she said. “These are the moments where grief makes everything feel heavy and confusing.”
“Last December was so different, so special, and so full of Trigg,” the grieving mother wrote. “This year, and every year from now on, won’t feel the same. It can still be special in its own way, but never the same.”
She concluded her post by saying she wanted to “help someone else who’s going through something similar.”
Emilie Kiser/Instagram
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The day before Thanksgiving, Emilie posted an eight-minute TikTok discussing some of the ways she is mentally preparing for the upcoming weeks. While she admitted that “every holiday is hard” as a grieving parent, 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,” she said. “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 also shared, “I have just been feeling so weird about my life and how it constantly feels like I’m living a past life, almost.”
“It feels like I had this life, and then I don’t have it anymore,” she said. “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.
Following Trigg’s death, Kiser was on a social media hiatus for several months before she returned in September. Since then, her uploads have featured a mix of standard, day-in-the-life vlog content and more honest expressions of heartbreak following the tragedy.
