Lauren Alaina Shares Emotional Tribute To Her Father 1 Year After His Death

Lauren Alaina marked one year without her father in an emotional post on Wednesday evening (July 23).

Alaina, 30, shared last year that her father, J.J. Suddeth, had died, “and I really don’t have words yet.” She dropped out of a few of her scheduled performances to be with her family. She thanked friends and family who “checked up on me and continued to show up for me,” when she spoke for the first time in the weeks after Suddeth’s passing.

“I’ve spent the last 365 days learning how to live in a world that doesn't have my daddy in it. Some days I still forget and reach for the phone to tell him something. Other days, I sit in the silence and let the grief come in,” Alaina wrote in a statement one year after the loss. “I’ve learned that grief isn’t loud. It’s not always in the big moments. It’s in the little things… the empty chair during a game, the first Alabama kickoff that I didn’t get a ‘ROLL TIDE’ text and not having someone to tell when I heard a new joke. It’s the call I didn't get to make when I found out I was pregnant. It’s the absence in the hospital when the grandparents came to meet my little girl. It’s not saying Happy birthday, happy Father’s Day, Merry Christmas.

“It’s dreaming you’re here and waking up and remembering. It’s life moving forward but your heart feeling stuck in what was. It’s in the way I go about my days now. Slower. Softer. More aware of what truly matters and what doesn’t,” she continued. “There’s a version of me that existed before July 23, 2024. And then there’s me now. This version of me handles things differently. I try to let go quicker. I laugh harder. I love more intentionally. I don’t flinch at the ‘little things’ anymore. A car cuts me off, and I just let it go. Because I know that time is not promised, and life is too short to waste on anything that doesn’t really matter.

“I can’t call my dad anymore,” Alaina wrote. “I can’t tell him about the things happening in my world right now, so I wrote him a song. It’s called ‘Little Things.’ It’s not just a song, it’s an open letter to him. A way of telling him how my heart and perspective have changed since he left us. I want him to know that his passing opened my eyes to so much. To prioritize my mental health. To call people back when I say I’m going to. To share if I’m struggling. To let go of things that don’t matter and focus on what does. To be quick to forgive. To be kinder. To be slow to anger. To love harder and deeper. I hope he would be proud.

“I hope he’s up on a cloud listening to it right now and learning to play it on guitar,” she concluded. “Love you, Daddy. Pinky.”

Alaina and her husband, Cam Arnold, welcomed Baby No. 1 last month. The first-time parents named daughter Beni Doll Arnold after family members. Alaina, now grieving another “tremendous loss” in her family, previously shared that “it has been such a hard year losing my dad in July. And we weren’t even trying to get pregnant. I truly believe my dad got up there to heaven and said ‘we gotta somehow get a baby involved.’” Beni Doll was born shortly before Father’s Day, and the “Heaven Sent” artist shared at that time that if she “could call you up there in Heaven, I would say thank you for sending me my little girl.”

Alaina shared a sneak peek of an unreleased ballad called “Little Things” as she shared a post in honor of her father. Listen to it on the final slide of her Instagram post here: