It has now been a little over a year since Emilie Kiser experienced an unimaginable tragedy — the death of her 3-year-old son, Trigg, after he drowned in the backyard pool. The influencer has been open about her grief on social media ever since, but she is now sitting down for her first interview to talk about the painful aftermath in depth.
Emilie appeared on Jay Shetty‘s On Purpose podcast on Tuesday, where she got real at one point about mourning the loss of her child while also parenting her younger son, 1-year-old Teddy. As you may recall, the social media personality had not been home at the time of the fatal accident on May 12, 2025. She went out to dinner with some friends five weeks postpartum. But about 10 minutes after she arrived, her husband Brady called her with the horrible news: Trigg fell into the pool while he was taking care of their newborn, and that the toddler “wasn’t breathing.”
Related: How Emilie Kiser ‘Forgave’ Husband Brady After Trigg Drowned In His Care
Trigg was rushed to the hospital, but he sadly didn’t make it. He died six days later, on May 18. Losing a child is the hardest thing a parent can go through. And since his death, Emilie has had a lot of “different emotions” during the grieving process, especially when it came to raising Trigg’s brother. She explained she mainly felt like an “unfit” mother to him:
“I’ve gone through many different emotions with parenting since we lost Trigg. And just being completely honest, feeling not good enough, feeling unfit, feeling scared. Losing a child really shows you in the scariest, most real way possible just how quickly life can change, and how quickly life can be literally taken away.”
Knowing that, Emilie shared that she felt “really scared” with Teddy afterward:
“There are so many things in my control that I can do, preventative measures I can take, ways I can be better. I mean, there’s a list of things as a parent that you can do to protect your children. But there’s also so many stories and stories that I heard after we lost Trigg where I was like, that was completely freak accident, not preventable. And that’s an element that’s been hard in parenting him is realizing that there’s only so much I can control.
However, the content creator didn’t want her fear and doubt to take over her life anymore than it already had by that point. She continued:
“I always try to remind myself that I have a choice to make. I can either let this completely derail me more than it already has, and not really feel like I’m fit or able to take care of my younger son, or I can do everything in my power to be the best mom I possibly can for him, and give him the same love that Trigg had and has.”
In fact, Emilie recalled she promised Trigg before she died that she would “take care of Teddy” no matter what, and it’s one she intends to keep:
“And I made a promise to Trigg right before we lost him that I was going to take care of Teddy. That was actually like my final promise to him was like, I will take care of your brother because at that time I felt like I couldn’t. It really just was too much. It felt I could I couldn’t even take care of myself. But that has kept me going of I made a promise. I’m going to fulfill it and I’m going to give Teddy the best life I possibly can. And that means showing up for him, showing up for myself, doing everything I possibly can to make sure that that happens.”
Although she and Brady will never be the same following the tragedy, she wants to be “better” for her youngest son:
“This is actually something that did make me really sad when we lost Trigg was so many people naturally said, ‘Oh, Teddy’s going to have such a terrible life. He’s never going to have the same parents that he did.’ So many comments. And it’s true. He’s never going to have the same parents Trigg has. We are fundamentally changed by this, but I will be even better. I think I almost took that as motivation of I will give him the best life I possibly can. I will be the best mom I possibly can to him.”
We’re sending so much love to Emilie. Talking about this terrible incident mustn’t have been easy, but she showed so much courage and vulnerability throughout. Watch the interview (below):
[Image via Jay Shetty Podcast/YouTube, Emilie Kiser/Instagram]