Chrissy Teigen is known for her hilarious personality and quirky antics. From her on-point Twitter clapbacks to her all-too-relatable love of food, she is about as down-to-earth and relatable as a supermodel, Sports Illustrated cover girl, best-selling cookbook author, host of an Emmy-nominated TV show and soon-to-be fashion designer can be.
On top of her long list of professional accomplishments, she can add wife of musician John Legend and mother to their almost one-year-old daughter, Luna.
It’s easy to think that we know everything about Teigen and her apparently perfect life. But the “chronic oversharer” recently penned an essay for Glamour revealing her private struggle with postpartum depression after Luna’s birth.
“To a lot of you, I think, I seem like the happiest person on the planet,” she writes.
Chrissy makes clear that she loves her husband and “adores” her daughter, but when she felt so unhappy for much of the past year, it was difficult to come to terms with.
“How can I feel this way when everything is so great? I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with that, and I hesitated to even talk about this,” Teigen writes. “And I can already envision what will be said about me after this admission. But it’s such a major part of my life and so, so many other women’s lives. It would feel wrong to write anything else.”
In her essay, she candidly recounts the physical and emotional pain she endured in the months after her daughter’s birth, all while returning to her job on Lip Sync Battle, where her role is to be goofy, enthusiastic and entertaining, and working on her second cookbook.
“Getting out of bed to get to set on time was painful,” she says. “My lower back throbbed; my shoulders—even my wrists—hurt. I didn’t have an appetite. I would go two days without a bite of food, and you know how big of a deal food is for me.”
According to Teigen, she spent many days and nights on the couch, and unless she had a work function, there was almost no chance of her leaving the house. She had little energy, and “there was a lot of spontaneous crying.”
In December, she and Legend went to the doctor and she explained her situation.
“I looked at my doctor, and my eyes welled up because I was so tired of being in pain,” she writes. “Of sleeping on the couch. Of waking up throughout the night. Of throwing up. Of taking things out on the wrong people. Of not enjoying life. Of not seeing my friends. Of not having the energy to take my baby for a stroll.”
He diagnosed her with postpartum depression and anxiety, and though exhausted, Teigen felt excited to finally start getting better. However, she also felt guilty because in her eyes, she had let so many people down professionally and personally.
“The mental pain of knowing I let so many people down at once was worse than the physical pain,” she writes. “To have people that you respect, who are the best in the business, witness you at your worst is tough. Even though this was something I shouldn’t have to apologize for, I did want to apologize.”
According to Teigen, Legend has been extremely supportive, comforting her on her bad days and helping her feel “happy, silly, and energetic” again. And postpartum hasn’t changed their hopes of giving Luna siblings.
Teigen explains that while she has a great life and is incredibly grateful, postpartum doesn’t discriminate.
“I’m speaking up now because I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone.”
Important note: please don’t feel like you have to tiptoe around me! It is the most uncomfortable feeling ahhhh only downside to sharing PPD
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) March 6, 2017
As if we could admire her any more, her honesty in this essay proves she is just the strong, down-to-earth woman we know and love.