The shaming of America's original mommy influencer after tragedy that divided the nation: 'They tell me I deserved to lose my daughter'

One hour after her daughter died, Morgan Beck Miller received a telephone call. It was from celebrity news site TMZ. They were issuing an ultimatum.

'They told me I had 24 hours to deal with this on my own and release a story,' Miller recalled in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.

'We were forced to deal with it publicly quicker than we probably would have... and there's obviously some anger about this even eight years later.'

Miller lost her daughter Emeline on June 9, 2018. The little girl was just 19 months old when she wandered, unnoticed, into a neighbor's backyard and drowned in their pool as her mother sat chatting with her friend.

She had thought Emeline was playing indoors and by the time she registered that everything was just too quiet, it was too late. Miller plunged into the pool and pulled Emeline out. But though she had a faint pulse when she was rescued and rushed to hospital, Emeline's brain had been deprived of oxygen too long. She was pronounced dead the next day.

As one of the original mommy influencers, Miller, now 39, had retired from her professional volleyball career to start a family, frequently sharing the adventures of her picture-perfect, blonde-haired children and handsome husband, skier and six-time Olympic medalist Bode Miller, 48, with her millions of online followers.

Now that choice was being weaponized against her. She had put the daily lives of her family out there, this was the quid pro quo demanded in return for the 'likes.' Nothing was sacred - not even her most private grief.

'I still get messages on Instagram where people say that I deserved to lose my daughter,' she said. 'Instead of any human connection you become dehumanized. Your character is attacked. I mean, in what world would I ever have wanted this to happen?'

Miller, now a mother of eight - she still counts Emeline in that brood - may have been one of the first influencers to be judged as her private grief played out in public, but she was far from the last. Indeed, since her own experience, the list of parents who have lived out their tragedies under the lens of public scrutiny has grown - and so has the fury of public judgment in the age of rampant social media sharing.

Earlier this month, influencer couple Jesse and Ashley Ridgway told the world in an Instagram Story that they terminated a pregnancy after an amniocentesis test showed signs of Down syndrome.

The fallout came fast. Many decried their decision - House Speaker Mike Johnson called them 'evil' - and the couple received death threats.

However, they remain steadfast in their decision to share the news in such a public manner and have carried on posting - and defending their actions.

Ashley told the New York Times: 'I don't regret how we went about everything. We are open and honest with our audience because we have a close and personal relationship with a lot of them.'

Having an online profile drew similar ire for Kelly Hopton-Jones, a parenting influencer who accidentally ran over her 23-month-old son, Henry, with her car in April. He was hospitalized with fractures to his pelvis and abrasions, but survived in what was, Hopton-Jones said, 'a true miracle.'

Afterward, Hopton-Jones used the accident to raise awareness on her channel and give safety advice for parents, but many criticized her for posting online the very day her son had been taken to hospital.

That intense fury from followers is something that Arizona mother and content creator Emilie Kiser experienced too. Last May, she shared the devastating news that her three-year-old son, Trigg, had drowned. Her husband Brady was the only adult at home during Trigg's drowning in the couple's backyard pool.

At the time, the Chandler Police Department recommended that Brady be charged with a class 4 felony of child abuse since he had left Trigg alone in the yard for nearly ten minutes.

Ultimately, no charges were brought as the Maricopa County Attorney's Office said that there was 'no likelihood of conviction.'

But backlash from Kiser's fanbase was swift, especially once she resumed posting her usual day-in-the-life content after a social media hiatus that lasted for several months. Many asked how she was able to forgive her husband.

'You don't heal from the loss, you learn to live with the grief,' she said. 'Lots of therapy and consistently. As well as realization that everyone deserves love, empathy and forgiveness. And not giving a crap about other people's opinions, which therapy helps with.'

Recently, Kiser was asked about the 'frenzy' of public attention in the aftermath of her son's drowning.

She said: 'It was crazy, but I was just so uninvolved in that at the time that it wasn't until after he had passed away that I think I really realized how big it was and how many people were talking about what had happened to him.'

Miller has viewed these very public shamings with a deep sense of misgiving: 'Honestly, all of this is really unfortunate. It's almost like sharing this is more for the story. Here's the thing, there are going to be all different levels and variations of disasters and mistakes, but to be put on a worldwide stage, that is something hard to overcome. It can break people.'

For her part, Miller said, she felt she 'owed it' to her daughter to do her best to control the narrative - speaking out rather than letting an outlet like TMZ tell her story for her. She believes someone from the hospital that treated Emeline leaked the news of her death.

She quickly realized that the only way to preserve some sense of sanity was to avoid reading anything about herself, Bode or her kids. It's a practice she maintains to this day.

'I will never read anything about myself online again,' she said. 'It can feel unfair and unjust, and it doesn't paint the true picture because you don't have any control over the narrative.

'As a mother, I decided to stop wasting time on anyone who doesn't know me, who has no impact on me. I decided to anchor myself in my truth and what I value. You learn to be selective about the people you keep around you. You learn to seek out people who will inspire you to become better and grow.'

Since Emeline's death, both Miller and her husband have become passionate advocates for swimming and pool safety, recently partnering with Latham, The Pool Company, on an awareness campaign.

She said: 'It's one of the most surreal experiences to lose a child to drowning and, when you learn that drowning is the number one cause of death for kids under five, it's horrific.

'We lean into a system of pediatricians and doctors that we fully rely on and support and trust and listen to and they give us a lot of great info but, at the end of the day, this is the number one thing that can take a child from us and so it should be the number one topic.'

Nearly 70 percent of toddler drownings occur when there is neither locked fencing nor alarms around the pool and no adults present - and it can happen in just 30 seconds.

For Miller, not a day goes by that she doesn't think of what she could have done to prevent her daughter's death.

'I never thought to be hyper aware of the pool in the backyard, but that's where this is most likely to happen,' she said. 'When I think of what I could have done differently, I would have locked all the doors so she couldn't get outside. I would have moved Emmy in front of me instead of the playroom to the right of me. I think about this all the time.'

One of Miller's biggest regrets is that Emeline used a puddle jumper during family swims in the pool - a life jacket with arm floaties - which she believes conditioned the child to believe she could swim and gave her a false sense of security.

'She didn't understand that it was the puddle jumper that kept her afloat,' she said. 'We're putting our trust in these puddle jumpers and are exacerbating the problem. Every parent I've ever connected with who has lost a child to drowning used them.'

Water awareness is critical, Miller said, and it starts with the parents.

'If you put a flotation device on your child without explaining how it works, they will believe they're safe in the pool or can jump in the water on their own.

'The other thing is that a child has to ask permission to get into the pool and they need to know that they can only go in when there is an adult in the pool with them.'

The Millers have since put all of their children into swimming lessons at six months.

'The rule in our house is that if you crawl, you can float and if you walk, you must be able to swim,' she said. 'All of our kids have taken swimming lessons that teach them survival swim safety. Learning those survival instincts and how to manage water at that age is lifesaving.'

Revisiting this trauma with the goal of helping other parents is important work but, Miller admitted, it takes a toll.

'It takes a lot of emotional bandwidth to separate the mission from the grief,' she said. 'I'm not speaking from a place of "I know this stuff." I have experienced this with every cell in my body in the most unthinkable way.'

Miller, who married Bode in 2012, was five months pregnant with her third child - a son, Easton - when Emeline passed. Together, she and her husband have navigated grief while raising their children: Nash, 12, Easton, 7, twins Asher and Askel, 6, Scarlet, 4 and Bode's children from previous relationships, Nate, 15 and daughter Dace, 20.

'People would say, "I'm so surprised you guys have survived that," she said. 'We didn't see it any other way, and we never had any challenges in that. We respected each other's grieving process, and we also understood that with another baby coming into the world and other children to care for, we had responsibilities that required us to show up. We wanted to be a good example of that to our kids.'

Still, Miller said she doesn't recognize the person she was on the day her daughter died: 'That moment changed my perspective on everything. It was the most unthinkable thing in my entire life, and nothing will ever compare, but honestly it forced me down a path of having to heal and explore and understand myself better.'

With time, she has found a way forward.

'I can look back and find so much beauty in the work that we have done to create awareness and have gratitude for the people that have shown up,' she said. 'I'm living this duality of suffering and grief and gratitude for how much my daughter was able to show me and teach me.'