Emilie Kiser posted a TikTok update last Thursday, and honestly, I don’t think anyone was ready for how raw it was. It’s been about a year and a half since her 18-month-old son Trigg drowned in May 2025, and she’s pregnant with her third child. And she’s not doing well. She said it herself – “I don’t know how I’m surviving.”

The Update Nobody Wants to Give

Look, grief content on TikTok is a whole thing now, and sometimes it feels performative. But this wasn’t that. Kiser, who’s 27, started the video by admitting she’s been avoiding these check-ins because they’re “scary.” Which – yeah. Talking about the worst thing that’s ever happened to you to millions of strangers? That’s terrifying.

But here’s what got me: she said she’s been using that fear as an excuse not to talk about it at all, and she knows that’s not good for her mentally. That’s the kind of self-awareness that comes from really, really hard therapy. Or from being so deep in grief that you can see your own patterns because what else are you gonna do at 3am when you can’t sleep?

“Constantly, every day I’m just hit with this reality that this is my life and that I can’t believe that this is my life,” she said in the video. And then she added something that kind of stopped me cold: “I don’t think the shock of losing my son will ever go away. I don’t expect it to and I don’t want it to.”

That Last Part Though

She doesn’t want the shock to go away. I mean, think about that for a second. Most people assume healing means the pain gets smaller, the shock fades, you “move on” (whatever the hell that means). But Kiser’s saying no, actually, I want to stay shocked. I want to keep feeling the weight of this. Because maybe that’s the only way to honor how massive this loss is?

I’ve seen a lot of grief stories in my years covering… well, everything. And this hits different. There’s no silver lining here. No “but I’m finding strength” or “he’s watching over me” comfort narrative. Just – this is unbearable and I’m bearing it anyway because what choice do I have?

Pregnant and Drowning (Sorry, Poor Word Choice, But Also Not)

The thing that makes this even more complicated – and I hesitate to say “worse” because how do you rank suffering – is that she’s pregnant right now. With her third baby. While grieving her second. Gypsy Rose's Haunting Words About Ken, Revealed After His Death show what it looks like when hope and grief occupy the same impossible space.

She got choked up in the video talking about it: “I am mentally having such a hard time with this pregnancy.”

And like, of course she is? Pregnancy is already this bizarre mind-fuck where your body isn’t yours and your hormones are doing whatever they want and you’re supposed to be glowing and excited. Now do that while your nervous system is still in crisis mode from losing a child. While you’re probably terrified that something could happen to this baby too. While people are definitely asking you intrusive questions about whether this baby is “replacing” Trigg (it’s not, that’s not how children work, but people are unbelievably stupid about grief).

“I don’t know how I’m surviving.”

What We Get Wrong About Grief Timelines

Here’s what drives me nuts about how we talk about loss, especially child loss. There’s this unspoken expectation that by a certain point – a year, maybe 18 months – you should be “better.” Not healed, because everyone knows that’s unrealistic, but like… functional. Smiling in photos. Posting about other things. Getting back to normal.

But Kiser’s update is a reminder that there is no normal after this. There’s just before and after, and the after is a completely different life that you didn’t choose and don’t want. She’s a year and a half out and still in that “I can’t believe this is real” phase. And maybe she’ll be in that phase forever. Maybe that’s just what it means to lose a child.

The fact that she’s checking in at all, that she’s trying to talk about it even though it’s scary, that she’s being honest instead of packaging her grief into something more digestible – that actually feels more like survival than anything else. Not thriving. Not healing. Just surviving, one impossible day after another. The 37-Year-Old Who Changed ALS Forever died last week with the same kind of unflinching honesty about what it means to keep going when your body won't cooperate.

No Neat Endings Here

I don’t have some profound takeaway about resilience or the human spirit or whatever. Kiser’s not inspiring, she’s suffering. She’s a 27-year-old woman who lost her toddler and is somehow still breathing, still showing up, still growing another human inside her body while her brain probably screams at her constantly about worst-case scenarios.

If there’s anything worth saying, it’s this: maybe we need to stop expecting people to be okay after tragedy. Maybe “I don’t know how I’m surviving” is enough. Maybe that’s actually the most honest thing anyone can say, and we should just… let it be awful. Because it is.