Influencer Melissa Mae Carlton opened up about grieving her daughter Abigail just weeks before her younger daughter, Molly, died on Christmas morning.
“I’m in [a] hard and confusing place in my grief. I’m happy but also very sad,” Carlton wrote via Instagram on December 2, recapping the family’s November. “I heard someone say as grievers, we don’t get much. We get a funeral … and then life moves on the same as normal.”
She added, “But when we lose someone, we are constantly losing them in many different ways, and we ‘bury’ them over and over again. Some days I don’t want to wake up in this body and feel this pain again.”
Melissa and her husband, Tom Carlton, announced in April 2024 that Abi died at the age of 9.
“I am very blessed with much in this life,” Melissa added in her post shared earlier this month. “I believe we truly have a taste of Heaven here on earth with friends and family. But it just isn’t fully complete until were them all 💔.”
Melissa later revealed that she didn’t want to have an “aesthetic Christmas” celebration without Abi.
“One thing child loss has taught me is that I’m done wanting my house to feel like a show home,” she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post on December 11. “I want it cozy. Lived in. With clear evidence that children live here. I regret ever having two Christmas trees. One for us and one for the kids. From now on, the tree is the kids’ tree. All of their ornaments. Everything they’ve made for it.”
To honor Abi, Melissa and Tom had their other children make “Abi angels” for the Christmas tree and even framed their late daughter’s holiday pajamas framed for the wall.
On Christmas morning 2025, the couple’s youngest daughter, Molly, died following an undisclosed medical complication and brief hospitalization. (Melissa and Tom also share kids Lily and Harry.)
“I hesitate to share a medical update already because we still don’t have an official diagnosis, but I do feel it’s important to let people know that we have some answers this time,” Melissa wrote on Saturday, December 27. “The doctors believe Molly had a genetic heart condition and suspect this may have been the case with Abi as well.”
She continued, “This understanding came because Molly was able to be monitored in the hospital, which we were not able to do with Abi. I’ve never felt satisfied with the answers we were given for her. [With] this type of condition, we’ve been told that even a minor illness could potentially trigger a sudden cardiac event.”
According to Melissa, Molly’s “little body fought so hard” against the currently unknown illness.
Influencer Melissa Mae Carlton and her husband Tom Carlton are mourning the unexpected death of their daughter Molly, one year after the loss of their daughter Abi. “On Christmas morning, our sweet Molly girl, and her big sister Abi were reunited 💔,” Melissa wrote via Instagram on December 26, referring to daughter Abigail. “This is […]
“We’ve been told that this type of cardiac event is, in most cases, not survivable,” she continued. “I hope we will get more answers soon and will be doing more genetic investigation for our family now we have possibly a clearer avenue to explore.”
While addressing Molly’s death, Melissa further acknowledged that she was still navigating her grief over losing Abi.
“I have not been very active on here lately because, truthfully, I’ve been in a very heavy place with my grief and have been feeling uninspired,” she noted on Saturday. “The reason I shared our situation [with Molly] is because I believe in the power of prayer. We were on our way to the hospital, and at that point we thought she was already gone. And yet, I still believed God could grant a miracle if it was His will. I held onto that faith right to the very end.”
