TikTok Creator Tara Stilwell Has Been Open About Son Wilder's Death and "Signs" From Him

When TikTok mom creator Tara Stilwell began sharing her story of losing her son, Wilder Stilwell, who was six at the time of his death, she likely had no idea her videos would blow up the way they did. Part of that is thanks to her belief that her deceased son has reached out to her through specific signs, and it's an idea that others have embraced as they've watched her videos and seen her following grow.

But for those who may have stumbled upon her account by accident, there is the question of what happened to Wilder Stilwell. Tara doesn't often go into detail about how her son died or what happened that led to his unexpected death. However, she does often talk about him in other videos, so it's hard for some of her followers and supporters not to wonder what happened.

Tara's TikTok videos range from small details about her life and anecdotes about her family to heartfelt edits of how she keeps the memory of her son Wilder alive. Tara doesn't often speak about how Wilder died, but instead about how she makes sure her other children know who their brother was. According to an online memorial about Wilder, he died in an accident at his father's home in 2021.

The online memorial says that Wilder was riding a dirt bike at his dad's house when he was hit by a car. He was six years old.

Tara's content on TikTok began to gain more traction about 4 years after his passing. Her TikTok bio says "Wilder forever," and she has other children now, in addition to a daughter she had at the time of Wilder's death.

Tara's video which first went viral and brought attention to the death of her son is about Tara's experience with a book about grief and the signs people see in the world around them that help them work through their loss. According to Tara, she asked her son for a sign involving red LEGOs, his favorite color and toy, and for him to send her this sign in "a place where it didn't belong."

She says in her viral TikTok video that she later saw a little boy in the waiting area of her daughter's ballet class. The little boy had a shirt on that happened to be one her son owned. Tara also explains that, through a conversation with the mother of the little boy, she learned that they were only at the class that day to make up a class they had missed, so it was by pure chance that Tara even saw them.

"This little boy was kind of just quietly playing cars on the floor, and he got up and he walked over to me," Tara says in her video. "He looked me directly in my eyes, and he put one singular red Lego in my hands."

After Tara shared her story, tons of comments poured in under that video and others of parents who lost children and other users who lost loved ones. Many shared comments thanking Tara for sharing her story of receiving such a meaningful sign from her son.