Supermodel / cookbook author / television hostess / Mrs. John Legend Chrissy Teigen has written a remarkable essay for Glamour magazine that we wanted to share here. We have made the point on this blog more than once that it’s valuable when public figures share their mental health issues because it contributes to removing the stigmas attached to mental illnesses, and we have also made the point that mental disorders aren’t discriminating– they can affect anyone at any level of society, fame or wealth distribution. Mrs. Teigen acknowledges both of these truths very humbly and openly. If you recognize yourself or someone you love in her account of living with postpartum depression, and you live in the greater Cleveland area, we hope you’ll reach out.
…I had everything I needed to be happy. And yet, for much of the last year, I felt unhappy. What basically everyone around me—but me—knew up until December was this: I have postpartum depression. 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, as everything becomes such a “thing.” During pregnancy, what I thought were casual comments about IVF turned into headlines about me choosing the sex of my daughter. 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. So here goes.
I had such a wonderful, energetic pregnancy. Luna sat inside me like a little cross-legged Buddha facing toward my back for nine months. I never saw her face in a sonogram, just her butt or the back of her feet. Every time we kinnnnd of saw a nose, she would quickly dodge, and I was left guessing again. John, my mom, and my sister were all in the delivery room. John was DJ-ing. Luna, fittingly, popped out to the song “Superfly.” The first lyric is “Darkest of night. With the moon shining bright.” I immediately put her on my chest. And she had a face! I was so happy. And exhausted.
After I had Luna, our home was under construction, so we lived in a rental home, then a hotel, and I blamed whatever stress or detachment or sadness I was feeling at that time on the fact that there were so many odd circumstances. I remember thinking: “Maybe I’ll feel better when we have a home.”