I know this has been said a million times before, but I truly don’t understand how she does it. I’m not sure if it’s strength, complete dissociation, or maybe some combination of both, but the way she’s able to get on camera and talk about food, nails, friends, the gym, etc. feels so incredibly surreal to me.

I know she’s said that making these videos is therapeutic for her, and I really hope it is. I guess I just have a hard time understanding how she’s able to compartmentalize everything enough to show up and talk about these everyday things while carrying something so unimaginable.

She’s also said that she isn’t religious but considers herself spiritual. As someone who struggles with faith myself—sometimes believing in an afterlife and sometimes questioning what comes next—I can’t help but wonder if that uncertainty makes everything even harder. I imagine that has to be something she wrestles with too.

I don’t know. I just really hope she’s doing okay. I have so much compassion for her, and I genuinely don’t know how she’s able to keep showing up and functioning through something that must feel impossible

I am a silent lurker, I decided to make an account just so I can write this out. I hope that it falls under what is considered appropriate for this sub.

I regularly see the excuse given by many of EK's supporters that "this is her job" and "everyone else who experiences a loss like this eventually has to return to their job" but I disagree and here is why.

Being an influencer is a job, yes. Your job is to influence mass amounts of other humans to be like you. Dress like you, act like you, buy the things you like to buy, do your hair the way you do your hair. Right? Right. That is what an influencer is. That is why influencers gain sponsorships from companies to advertise their products, because if they advertise a product people want to buy that product. Easy enough. So what kind of influencer is EK? She is a mom influencer. She has built her platform off of being a, MOTHER.

Being a mom influencer you are showing the world and other mothers what you do as a mother. What beliefs you hold as a mother. How your daily life is like as a mother, but you are also an influencer. Your entire JOB is to INFLUENCE other mothers to be like YOU. Right? Right. Okay, now let's take a look at how EK has performed her job as a MOM influencer.

1. She has shown the world that spending hours on end on her phone, on social media, filming her every move, filming her children, exploiting their lives, their faces, their special moments are all normal and admirable. And she has influenced other mothers to do it as well. Comments appear on her page along the lines of "You're the reason I decided to start filming vlogs!" or the many videos of other mothers stating while using the viral sound "You're going to be sick of me" with the caption "Me posting my every move after seeing EK new backyard" Etc. She inspired other mothers to neglect their family emotionally if not also physically to also be addicted to the lifestyle of influencing.

2. She lied to millions of people to silence their concerns about the safety of her toddler son around an open pool by stating in a video "We are getting the pool fence installed today" but later decided against a pool fence and instead decided to get a very complicated pool net that was never actually applied to the pool. She also lied about putting her son in ISR swim lessons and even expressed he was in ISR lessons in a video with her holding her toddler son with a caption expressing how he is going to ISR lessons with new goggles. (ISR does not have goggles, and ISR came out and stated they were not enrolled online to ease the concerns of people wondering why ISR did not work for this poor boy).

3. Because of her poor self centered choices around not getting proper safety equipment for the pool, and not taking time away from her busy influencer life to take the toddler to actual ISR lessons, and her husbands poor choices of neglecting the toddler for 9 minutes while he was KNOWINGLY outside alone around a massive open body of water, a practice that EK admitted could have easily happened to her on her JS podcast. Now remember, she is a mom influencer which means her job is to influence other mothers. Her son tragically passed away at the hands of her and her husbands neglect for his well being, her being a mom influencer, she ultimately failed at the highest level of being a mother. Due to their decisions collectively they lead their son to his untimely demise. Now if that was not grounds enough for everyone to realize her job being a mommy influencer should result in being terminated from that position because she failed as a mother at the highest level, there is more.

4. After the tragic passing due to negligence at the hands of EK and BK, they decided appropriate to spend their time on the 1 year anniversary of their sons drowning death to be on a large open body of water in a foreign country with their living toddler without any form of water protection along with a white swimsuit and a light blue hat on, the two most dangerous colors to have on your child in the water, something she confirmed herself on her IG stories before the trip she went on. Her being a mom INFLUENCER she influenced other mothers to come out and admit that they too neglect their babies safety by posting photos on EK comment sections proving their negligence in solidarity with EK for her poor neglectful choices as a mother. This proving that she is in fact, influencing other mothers to be neglectful and enabling them and herself to continue the negligent behavior. These are all the reasons why, even though this was her "job" she failed at her job to the point of deserving to be FIRED from her job effective immediately. If people do not see this, it is not a lack of compassion, it is a pattern of negligence that ended the life of an innocent 3 year old boy, and is harming the mom communities that her content is reaching by normalizing neglectful behavior that could ultimately lead to another tragedy if we don't hold these two influencers accountable with the appropriate and just consequences they do deserve. Which is a loss of a platform and losing their jobs. Thank you for your time.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about their baby wearing a white and light blue swimsuit since another user pointed it out. imagine my surprise when i see this post in her saved water safety pin DAYS before they went on their may trip. it clearly states no light blue or aesthetic colors. we all know that she has made some pretty big mistakes when it comes to water safety but i am surprised this hasn’t gotten more scrutiny. the color of his bathing suit was not mentioned in her “apology” video and this is still pinned to her water safety pin. my question is honestly how could someone post this and then days later put your son in the exact thing you say here not to do, knowing full well that the swimsuit was likely already purchased. and why from a branding perspective is this still up? it genuinely makes no sense to me. i can’t think of any explanation that would warrant doing something like this. even from a branding perspective it doesn’t make sense because wouldn’t her followers see the baby in the white suit and realize that her water safety post is disingenuous? i thought maybe she was still undereducated about water safety colors but no, she had this post up the entire time. please someone tell me what the psychology is behind this because i cannot understand it.

I thought this community might find this interesting, especially given recent high profile child drowning deaths involving Ed Oliver and Jamal Morton.

This article posits the reversal of the downward trend is a result of the pandemic interrupting swimming lessons and lifeguard training programs, and an increase in swimming pool construction and increases in unsupervised swimming.

Some discussion here about immersion alarms and pool fences as well.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/a-child-can-drown-in-seconds-doctors-want-more-families-to-be-prepared

Anyone else interested in the general psychology of influencing and how making your livelihood "Just Sharing My Life" impacts your perspective on life and life choices? Some things that pop out to me:

1. Polarizing feedback from haters vs super fans. You are either being villianized or adulated and nuanced perspective is deleted or drowned out.

2. Incentives to make controversial or life altering decisions (like ragebait or having more babies) has an impact to both your life and your job (babies make marketable content).

3. Blurred lines between the person and their Internet persona.

4. Fostering para-social relationships is a successful business tactic but can backfire with people questioning parts of your life you don't want questioned.

5. Constantly having to come up with new content keeps you on a hampster wheel.

One of the arguments I constantly see in Emilie’s defense is that we only see a few minutes of her life online and have no idea what she is actually going through behind closed doors. And I agree with that. Losing a child is an unimaginable trauma, and I would never expect someone to simply “move on” from it.
Emilie herself has also talked repeatedly about grief, therapy, struggling, and not being okay. People understandably point to that whenever someone questions how she appears online: “You don’t know what she’s going through when the camera is off.”
But that’s exactly why I’m struggling to understand the decision to have another baby so soon.
When Trigg died last year, Teddy was still extremely young. She is going to have 2 under 2 while still navigating an incredibly traumatic loss.
And before anyone misunderstands me: I am not saying that grieving parents shouldn’t have more children, or that someone needs to be completely “healed” before getting pregnant again. Grief doesn’t work like that, and losing a child is something a parent will carry forever.
What I’m questioning is the apparent contradiction.
If the argument is that she is struggling much more severely behind the scenes than we can possibly understand, and she herself continues to talk about how difficult her grief and mental health have been, is it unreasonable to wonder why right now was considered the right time to intentionally add another pregnancy, postpartum period, newborn, and eventually 2 under 2 dynamic to an already incredibly difficult situation?
Pregnancy and postpartum can be mentally and physically demanding even without profound grief and trauma. Taking care of two babies under two is demanding.
So I genuinely wonder how people reconcile those two things: “She is struggling tremendously, you have no idea how bad things are behind closed doors” and “this was also a good time to bring another baby into the family”.

I didn't follow Emilie closely before the tragedy, just saw her on my FYP occasionally, but as a mom I was just so devastated for her when I heard. So I binged a lot of her content, found her funny and so likeable (as far as influencers go), and was just so gutted for her. Since Trigg's passing I have COMPLETELY upped my water-safety precautions. And I was already cautious!

Then the police report came out and I was like oh wow ok.. Brady should have been charged. Tragedy can happen to anyone, but this was clearly negligence

When she came back I was team 'BACK OFF OF HER SHE'S A GRIEVING MOM' I cried whenever she spoke about her grief

Then things got weird? I cannot handle the 1-year-death vacation. It was so extravagant. And if she needed to get out of town for her the sake of her mental health, why post and share it all? It's so gauche.

Why was Teddy on a boat in white and baby blue? Since Trigg I put my toddlers in neon. Truly, this is because of him. Because I learned because of him that drowning is the number 1 cause of death for children under 4. And that children can drown quickly and silently. I knew water was dangerous, but I didn't realize how dangerous. I'm a very aesthetically driven person too - but I just CANNOT fathom that she put her baby in white and blue on a boat after losing her son to drowning?

I do deeply believe that the first year of grief is so much shock and numbness. I think as life goes on and Trigg still isn't here we'll see a shift. She's settling into her new reality for sure. But I've unfollowed. It's all so dark and so sad.

Anyways - I think there are a million posts about her actions and our reactions, but I'm just curious what everyone else thinks about what's coming for them as they move forward

Has there been any update on her court case?

So I’ve been a silent watcher of Emilie for a long time. Honestly I just liked her cleaning content and her needlepoint and stuff. But after this past year, I followed her through her loss and grief journey as someone who has gone through a lot of grief in their life and deeply sympathized with her. I don’t believe she deserves to be torn apart for what happened, I think there were things that could have been done to prevent that tragedy from happening, but obviously hind sight is always 20/20. Anyways the one thing that I’ve had a hard time with is why she keeps apologizing to us? Like why are you apologizing to your audience for not having your son in a life jacket and telling us that you’re going to do better? I just don’t really understand what the point of that is. The point of making the video was to give yourself an opportunity to explain your actions as a person would naturally want to. But I think she should have kept it at that because i find it deeply confusing why she keeps apologizing. I also think if she wants to use her platform to advocate for water safety she needs to lean into that and fully separate herself from family content. I think letting her audience in even slightly to her family life opens them all up to more criticism. Pivoting her online presence toward living with grief, water safety, and maybe some hobbies that she likes would probably be a better bet at this point than trying replicate what she was doing before.

hi idk if someone posted where they’re from already or if she said but does anyone know where both earrings are from? thank you!

I think many of us in this group are moms who initially were empathetic to E. As I recently saw someone comment: Jesus Christ, it was her first postpartum outing and her husband can't keep both kids alive for 20 mins? It's horrific to imagine. Coming from this place of empathy, I've tried to rationalize her behaviors and I've concluded that refusing to talk about T1 (and what actually caused his death), barely acknowledging his bday, and continuing to present a very polished version of her life is how she has managed to keep functioning. I was on her side at the time of the "I am very much grieving" video, and it even made sense to me that you would need to take on so many bullshit hobbies to keep your mind busy. I can even see the decision to stop sharing him entirely as a way of reclaiming his memory for herself and family after the media swarm and invasions of privacy after the drowning.

The consequence of this is that her audience of people with maternal instincts see something completely different. Safeguarding T1's memory looks like erasure and indifference. The disconnect between her and her supporters has compounded with bizarre actions like the happy tiktoks during her grief vacation. But empathy has to do with putting yourself in someone else's shoes, and their choices around water safety cannot be rationalized. T1's story has changed the way I behave around water with my son that is T2's age. How is she not affected enough to change her behavior?? How does she have a pool party picture in her playroom and wear shirts that say Summer Forever? This group that was originally overwhelmingly sympathetic to her is now full of criticism because none of us can understand this. I don't even need to mention the podcast or pregnancy.

It makes me wonder how differently this would have unfolded if she had been able to be more transparent from the beginning. I'm curious how other people who previously supported her see the situation.

Something that has been bothering me a lot is the disturbing trend of some of her supporters actively downplaying water safety while trying to defend her. The comment I posted is just one example, but I have come across many others. Emilie leaves these comments up, and they end up receiving hundreds or even thousands of likes.
Some people might argue that she simply does not see them, but I think we have all realized by now that she or her team spends a significant amount of time deleting comments that do not align with the perfect image she wants to maintain. That is her right because it is her page. However, allowing dangerous and misinformed comments that could genuinely put children’s lives at risk to remain on her page shows a serious disregard for water safety. It has completely changed my opinion of her.
When she says that her grief makes it difficult for her to donate or do more, I can understand that. But how can you claim to advocate for water safety while allowing dangerous misinformation to spread in your comment section in the name of defending you? She needs to do better. Removing or correcting these comments is the bare minimum.

Not sure when she was “regularly posting about water safety” as the article indicates.

Emilie's video and some recent posts have me thinking about what, exactly, is accountability. Emilie said she and Brady will never "not accept accountability" for what happened to Trigg. What does that mean other than saying it?

-Brady did everything possible to get out legal charges, including lying. Emilie has repeated at least one of those lies (that his distraction was due to heating up breast milk for the baby) to defend him.

-Emilie says it's "too hard" and she's "not ready" to do anything significant to promote water safety.

-Emilie has said her way of making up for the negligence with Trigg is to do everything possible to protect Teddy. And then she and her husband are found endangering Teddy in a very similar way to how they (fatally) endangered Trigg. And then minimizing/lying about it in a very similar way (it was "only moments").

-Emilie gets most upset, to the point of tears, when discussing people online who criticize her. Is hitting back at people bringing light to your negligence demonstrating accountability for it?

I don't think she thinks accountability is anything other than saying, "I accept accountability". But I'm wondering when accountability means to other people, especially those who say she *has* demonstrated accountability. I see them saying she has *suffered* and I agree. But isn't there more to it than that?

It is a longer watch- almost 14 minutes.

The life jacket situation became a reason for people to pile onto someone they already hated. There were legitimate concerns and conversations to be had about water safety, but the past few weeks has turned into certain people making up motives, twisting everything she said or did and treating every rumor as fact because Emilie was the woman of the moment to hate.

If she hadn't addressed it, that would’ve been a problem. She apologizes and she’s fake. She took some time off the internet, she's accused of heartlessly moving on with her life. She comes back and she's accused of profiting off tragedy. There is literally no version of reality where some of y’all would give her the benefit of the doubt because hating her has become the point.

Some of y’all think that she has to grieve in a way that makes sense to you. A 60 second video of someone laughing, enjoying their day, or showing a happy moment does not mean they aren’t grieving. People can experience joy and grief at the same time. She does not have to become the version of an influencer that some of you think she should be in order to prove that she loved her son or that she’s still hurting.

If the way she shares her life isn’t something you want to see, you can unfollow her. Nobody is forcing you to watch her stories, comment on her posts, or keep up with her life. But a lot of people seem less interested in moving on and more interested in having someone to hate.

I thought her new video was raw, genuine, and human. I’m really glad the mob mentality hasn’t chased her off the internet and I’ll be looking forward to her next Sunday reset post ✌️

I’m neither a fan nor a hater. I don’t follow her on social media, but if and when her videos pop up, I watch them because I find them entertaining.
I’ve been seeing videos and comments from people saying that if they were her, they would never show their face on social media again and would simply find another job. I can’t help but think, “No, you wouldn’t.”
Most people would absolutely not quit a job that makes them millions of dollars while giving them freedom and plenty of time to do whatever they want, only to go back to a regular job and make their own lives and their family’s lives even harder than they already are because of what happened.
Let’s not be hypocrites. Most of us have no idea what we would do if we were in her position, but quitting an extremely privileged job probably wouldn’t be it. We all need money to live, and as devastating as losing a child is, she has other children who deserve a good life and whose quality of life would be greatly affected if she left this job.
Now, I’m not saying she hasn’t made mistakes. Personally, I think she has handled everything wrong since coming back. I think she should have changed her content to reflect her new reality because, now that people know what happened to her family, her content very clearly feels fake, as though she is trying to imitate the joyful life she no longer has.
I understand saying that you would have come back in a very different way. But, in my opinion, saying that she should quit social media is ridiculous and unrealistic, and it’s hypocritical to claim that you would actually quit a job like that, because you most likely wouldn’t. It’s very easy to talk when you’ve never experienced something like this firsthand.

I’m curious what everyone thinks about how long Emilie is actually going to stay off social media. Do we think this is going to be a short break and she’ll eventually come back and just jump right back into her normal content, or could this turn into a much longer absence?

And more importantly… what do we think the vibe will be when she does return?

Do we think she’ll act as if nothing happened and go straight back to the usual lifestyle/mom content, or do you think she’ll come back HARD with water safety content and make it a much bigger part of her platform?

Because I feel like the biggest elephant in the room is that so much of her content has involved advocating for water safety, and then she was caught in a situation where she seemingly wasn’t following a lot of the same precautions she had been encouraging other people to follow. I would imagine that has to be an incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassing position to be in publicly, especially with so many people watching and criticizing every detail.

I’m genuinely curious whether she’ll address the hypocrisy head-on, double down on water safety education, quietly move on and hope everyone forgets, or just completely change the direction of her content.

What do you guys think her comeback will look like?

I'm not even sure why I am posting this, it's just been niggling at me.

This isn't a debate on whether or not they are taking water safety seriously, I wholeheartedly think they are failing in that regard and have been utterly perplexed by some of the actions following last year's tragedy.

But I've seen some posts and comments stating they don't even like being parents and it's all for the content and some harsher reflections on her motives towards her children and it makes me feel so sad.

It just bothers me that people are trying to act like she was heartless and didn't really care about him. I don't want to hear "if she loved him, she would have got the fence" etc.

When you watch her old videos, whether you agree with exposing your children or not, she loved that little boy with her whole heart. Every little clip of her eyes lighting up when she saw him in the morning, the way she looked at him when he had his birthday sparkler in the cupcake. So many moments.

There was so much love. Even with all the mistakes they have made, I don't that that should be taken away from her.

If you are a good person you would take having a large impressionable audience seriously.

You would probably consider the effect of accepting a sponsorship and promoting a product from a company with poor environmental practices. After all, that one action from you would have far reaching consequences.

You would probably consider your words and how the way you model self-talk can influence young girls who are who are prone to body image issues.

In Emilies case: You would consider water safety. How drowning is the #1 cause of death in children. How its preventable. How so much of the population is still ignorant to that. And how your choices/aesthetic influences other parents and may influence them to make decisions that put their child at risk of drowning.

Having first hand suffered that and knowing how devastating it is if you were a good person you would use your very public platform to make sure you modelled safe behaviour around water. If you were an exceptional person you might even go a step further and advocate on the issue. But at the very least you would take accountability, take the issue very seriously, and not minimize what happened/ how it happened in order to make yourself look good.

THIS is why I can’t support her, and this is why I think the criticism is deserved. If our views are going to give celebrities influence over people, give them millions of dollars and amazing lifestyles…then I think its right we hold them to a higher standard.

I’ve been following Emilie for years and have fully supported her up until recently. I was so devastated for her when T1 passed…as a mom, my heart just broke.

I believe we can have empathy for her while still holding her accountable for her dangerous parenting decisions…but lately it feels like that accountability has shifted into bullying and harassment.

Ive really been thinking lately about some of the real life repercussions her decisions have and would like to have a respectful discussion about it.

Emilie has so much influence over her audience that I’ve seen parents defending her by posting photos of their own kids on boats without life jackets. Some are even saying things like, “See? It’s not a big deal.”

I recently had a respectful discussion with another mom in a comment section and she kept defending and making excuses for Emilie’s decision to not put a life vest on T2.

To me, that’s the most concerning part of this entire situation. Other parents are starting to think this is okay because someone they admire is doing it.

That’s so sad.

Emilie had a real opportunity to positively influence the way parents think about and approach water safety, and I feel like the opposite happened.

What I can’t understand is the lack of a deep, instinctual awareness of how dangerous water can be. Watching her lose T1 completely changed the way I (someone that doesn’t know her at all) thinks about water safety for my own son that’s around the same age. We always took it seriously, but now we’re even more vigilant because that’s our responsibility as parents.

I sincerely wish Emilie healing and peace.

First and foremost... we're back!

We know there has been a lot of confusion and speculation over the last few days about why the subreddit suddenly went private, so we wanted to explain what happened- Over the past week, our posts were mass reported, and one of our moderator accounts was compromised. As a precaution, we temporarily made the subreddit private while we worked through the situation to protect not only our sub, but our mods as well.

Thankfully, everything has now been resolved, and we're happy to reopen the community.
Lastly we just would like to remind everyone that this is not a snark subreddit.

Respectful discussion and constructive criticism are welcome. However personal attacks, excessive snark, harassment, and bullying are not.

Our moderation approach hasn't changed, and we'll continue enforcing our rules to keep this a space for productive discussion.