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Emily Kaiser said she is grieving for her 3-year-old son, Trigg, as the holiday season continues.
On Monday, Dec. 1, the influencer shared one of the unexpected triggers she experienced after her son drowned and died in May. Emily posted a message on her Instagram Story explaining how social media around the holidays has affected her grief journey.
“Honestly, I don’t think I expected this month to be this sad because of social media,” her post began.
She admitted that she had “prepared” herself for the events that would occur in her “personal life”, “but not for what I would see every time I opened my phone.”
Emily Kaiser/Instagram
Emily said she knows she is “in control” of her mental health. She noted that she uses techniques to “protect” her mental health, such as staying away from her phone and not scrolling as much. “But when I see so many moms doing Elf on the Shelf, it gives me such painful flashbacks of the memories and traditions we loved so much.”
“To be honest, I forgot that today is December 1st and last night was the start of the Christmas wave,” she continued. Emily has a 9-month-old son, Teddy, with husband Brady, but she said he is “too young” to participate in traditions such as Elf on the Shelf.
“And to be honest, I don’t have it,” she said. “It’s a moment when everything becomes heavy and confusing because of grief.”
“Last December was so different, so special, and full of Trig,” the grieving mother wrote. “It’s not going to feel the same this year or every year going forward. It’s still special in its own way, but it’s never going to be the same.”
She concluded her post by saying, “I want to help others who are going through something similar.”
Emily Kaiser/Instagram
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The day before Thanksgiving, Emily posted an eight-minute TikTok discussing how to mentally prepare for the coming weeks. She acknowledged that “all holidays are difficult” as a grieving parent, but said she expected Christmas to be especially difficult.
“I have no expectations for myself. Whatever emotions I feel during this holiday, I allow myself to fully feel them instead of trying to push them away,” she said. “But if you need to take time off or can’t do certain things on your day off, that’s totally fine.”
The Arizona mother also said, “I feel very strange about my life and I always feel like I’m living a past life.”
“I feel like I had a life like this, but I don’t have it anymore,” she said. “I feel like I’m repeating the days I had with Trigg and Teddy, because I’m going through the same milestones that I went through before, but he’s not here anymore,” she tearfully admitted.
After Trigg’s death, Kaiser took a break from social media for several months before returning in September. Since then, her uploads have been a mix of standard daily vlog content and more honest expressions of heartbreak following the tragedy.
