Chrissy Teigen believes that her pregnancy loss “saved” her in a way — leading her down a path to therapy and sobriety she may have not originally taken.
At the beginning of February, Teigen sat down with Ellen DeGeneres – who called the model and cookbook author “super brave” for sharing “raw” photos from the hospital after she and husband John Legend lost their son Jack at 20 weeks in late September.
And four months later, Teigen shares: “Looking at those pictures now, it seems like so long ago. And also, of course, everything was such a blur,” she says. “Even thinking back to it now, I am still in therapy about it and I’m still coming to terms with it.”
“I have maternity clothes, and there are things that I bought for my eighth month and my ninth month,” the star continues. “So it’s just hard because he would’ve been born this week, so you look at those things and you have these constant reminders.”
That being said, Teigen believes it is “really helpful” that she was “raised in a household that was very open about loss,” as it helps her reflect on how it “can be a beautiful thing.”
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“It was a really transformative thing for me and in a way it really saved me, because I don’t think that I would’ve discovered therapy and then sobriety and this path of feeling good about myself and feeling like a new person,” she tells DeGeneres, 63.
She went on to explain how son, Miles Theodore, 2½, and daughter Luna Simone, 4½, are keeping their brother’s memory alive daily. “It’s been so beautiful to see my kids, the way they talk about him,” Teigen says. “We’ll be going to the beach or something and they’ll say, ‘Is baby Jack with us right now? Do you think he’s up in the clouds?’ It’s just so beautiful and so sweet.”
“Of course,” Teigen says of the loss, “you don’t ever imagine it happening to you — I think that was the crazy part for me is, ‘I hear these stories about other people. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me.’ So when it does, you’re just so shocked.”
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“And then you think about all the people that go through it in silence and you get really sad for them. Ours was so public, so so many people were so supportive,” she adds. “You really gain this incredible amount of empathy. And I really, somehow, think I’m a better person now. And I just have the best support system ever.”
Teigen went on to say she was “perplexed” when it happened: “You really don’t know the meaning of the word ‘unimaginable’ until something like that happens to you.”
“And then afterwards, there’s such a spiral of things you could’ve done differently and you start to get really tough on yourself,” Teigen says. “But what you learn through it about yourself is such a wild, incredible thing, and this week, we’re thinking about [Jack] especially.”
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