Lauren Alaina is finding joy in the midst of a lot of deep heartbreak. The 31-year-old is opening up about the grief of losing her father, J.J. Suddeth, in 2024, along with the incredible joy she gets from becoming a mother to Beni Doll, her daughter she welcomed with her husband, Cam Arnold, in 2025.

“It is actually the craziest thing I’ve ever gone through, to be living out the happiest season of my life and the saddest season of my life at the same time,” Alaina tells Everything Nash. “Losing my dad was the hardest thing, is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. It was very unexpected, very sudden, and I was very close with my dad. And I had just gotten married. I wasn’t even six months into my marriage when my dad died.

“And then two months later, we very surprisingly got pregnant with our daughter, which is by far the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she continues. “So the worst thing and the best thing happened within two months of each other. I’m not gonna lie; I’m very much struggling with the loss of my dad. Having my daughter has helped so much because she is joy. She is love and happiness and everything that’s wonderful in this world. But then also, the flip side of that is that I haven’t gotten to share any of that with my dad too. So it’s been really hard to navigate. I have my moments.”

How Lauren Alaina Honored Her Late Father On His Birthday

 

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Alaina recently visited her father’s grave for the first time since he passed away, on what would have been his 55th birthday.

“I woke up on his birthday and I thought ‘I’m gonna go over there, and I’m gonna take my daughter, and we’re gonna sing him happy birthday,” Alaina recalls. “So that’s what we did. And it was really hard. But it was a big step for me to do that. And I’m so proud.”

Alaina told her father all about Beni Doll, and her new Stages album, out now, a record that includes a duet with her brother, Tyler Suddeth, on “Babies Raising Babies.”

“It was a big step for me to do that,” Alaina boasts. “And I’m so proud. … It was actually really crazy. My daughter blew kisses at his grave. It was healing for me, just kind of a place to go pay respect to him. But it’s been really hard, opening up about the loss of my dad. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and talk to me about their own grief, and the people they’ve lost. There’s so much grief out there, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t also have joy. So I do try to share both. I feel a lot more comfortable usually sharing the joy because the grief is really hard to share. But I think it’s also important to share.”

Alaina is being refreshingly honest about her own personal pain, in hopes that she can help others with their own grief.

“I try to share my journey as much as I can, and hold space for both, because it’s okay for both of those things to be true at the same time,” Alaina says. “Your heart can literally be broken into a million pieces and you can be happy about the other things happening in your life. But it has been such an interesting thing for me to navigate. Very difficult season and a very fruitful season.”

Photo Credit: Katie Kauss