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Last week Chrissy Teigen and husband John Legend shared the devastating news that Chrissy miscarried their third child. She posted heartbreaking photos from the hospital of her loss. The public mourning drew criticism from many including public figures on twitter and Instagram.
Kate Beckinsale saw the attacks levied at Chrissy for sharing her pain and grief of losing an unborn child. She shared her story of miscarrying in a show of support. Kate wrote that the experience of miscarrying at 20 weeks was the loneliest and most soul destroying period in her life. She also described the shame and shock that a woman feels after miscarrying and said there is no acceptable way to grieve such a loss. She accompanied her statement with a handwritten note on pregnancy loss from AllontheBoard. Below is a full transcript from her Instagram:
I’ve noticed people criticizing @chrissyteigen for sharing deeply intimate photos of the loss of her baby. As if there’s some protocol during soul-scouring calamity that, if not observed, emboldens people who do not know her or her family to say how she should be handling the unimaginable. Years ago, I lost a baby at 20 weeks. I had managed to keep my pregnancy quiet and I absolutely collapsed inside and no one would have known. There is grief, shame and shock so often that come with an experience like this, plus the heartbreak of your body continuing, after the loss, to act as if it had a child to nurture. Your milk comes in, with no one to feed. It can be the loneliest, most soul destroying period of time, particularly if you are not in the position of having an emotionally connected, supportive partner like Chrissy has. I think it’s an honour to be allowed into another persons grief, especially with a subject like this which so often puts a woman into that hall of mirrors state of life continuing as if the world hasn’t, for you ,come to a bloody and terrible halt. Sending so much love to the Legend family, but also so much to the women and couples who have kept it quiet and suffered. I know there are so many. Thank you @chrissyteigen for making sure it is abundantly clear how devastating this is, and how life changing it can be without support. Let’s let the grieving decide what’s right for them. Send support or keep quiet . This is a really hard time to bear .Blessings and hugs to all x
[From Kate Beckinsale’s Instagram]
I feel like so many people were hella judgmental about Chrissy sharing her grief and pain so publicly. I think it took so much courage for her to share her experience. As someone who watched my mother grieve over the loss of my sister who was six months and saw how isolated she felt, I can only imagine the millions of women who feel shame, grief and shock when they miscarry. What makes it worse is that miscarriages are such a common event but there is still shame projected onto women for having them.
What was infuriating was women who were attacking Chrissy for sharing her story. However many women who began to share their miscarriage stories like Kate. It took a lot of courage for Kate to share such a personal story in support of Chrissy.
Hopefully this will encourage a more open discussion about miscarriage and infertility. No woman or man should ever feel shame about these sort of experiences. The more we talk about it openly, the less alone women like Chrissy and Kate will feel. People need to stop projecting their feelings and judgments and allow others to express their pain or joy however the hell they please. If you don’t like it just scroll past. It really is that simple. And kudos to Kate for being such a class act.
“If you don’t like it, just scroll past” – I wish a lot more people would do just that sometimes!
Who the hell would criticise Chrissy for sharing that? My god. Those photos were heartbreaking, her words were heartbreaking…. what kind of heart do you have if you see her post and then pile on?! I think she was so brave and “generous” (if that’s the right word) for sharing her story and helping start conversations and helping other women feel less alone. Good on Kate for sharing her story too — again, brave and generous.
sadly, a lot of people – & quite a few people who made it about abortion as well
How does one possibly equate miscarrying to abortion?
Also: men are 100% responsible for ALL pregnancies, wanted or not. If folks want to stop abortions, focus on men who ejaculate inside a woman’s body, particularly focus on men who ejaculate inside a woman’s body without her expressed permission. Not on a woman and her husband who have just suffered the devastating loss of a WANTED pregnancy.
Conservatives with no sense of self-awareness who think a pro-choice woman’s miscarriage is a “getcha.”
I had to unfollow a couple of people on Instagram because they were openly critical of her decision to post those photos. I agree, it was brave and generous for Chrissy to share. It will be validating for other people who have experienced this.
No one perpetuates the unwarranted stigma of miscarriages/stillbirths more than other women. It needs to stop. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 80% of ALL pregnancies fail. So why do we keep making/insisting that women keep the process/grieving to themselves, or do it in a way that makes OTHERS comfortable?
THIS! We are our own worst enemies at times.
There’s a lot of grief and shame carried by other women that never gets dealt with.
For my time as an OB Nurse you see it. The pain is too much to process and others try to make sense of their tragedies. Lashing out is easy. Especially, anyone that shows they’re strong enough to share how vulnerable an experience can make them.
I never had luck carrying to full term. It ended a relationship, but now I’m perfectly happy with my rescue beagles and new husband!
That all said, at my worst, I can maybe see how women are angry Teigen is receiving so much support when they likely had a few months worth of therapy sessions and had to get back to work pushing all that pain away because people think you’ve had enough time. Or you’d be shamed at throwing yourself a pity party.
The people trying to hurt and shame a grieving mother are monsters, full stop. They can eff off into the sun.
Good for Chrissy and Kate for opening up space for conversation around miscarriage, stillbirth, and the grief and complicated emotion that goes with these events. Losing a wanted pregnancy is terrible, and every loss of a wanted pregnancy is uniquely terrible in its own way. Bereaved parents need nonjudgmental support, and the opportunity to talk (or not talk) about their loss on their own terms, at their own speed. It’s not their job to make everyone else feel comfortable while their hearts are breaking. People who aren’t sure what to say can take the opportunity to learn how to listen. We need to learn, as a society, how to sit with grief. It’s not a shameful emotion that needs to be hidden away, like Victorian high society used to do with visibly pregnant ladies. We can comfort one another and be stronger together.
Well said. We’re such a toxically death-denying society; if we put half the energy into supporting the bereaved that we do into trying to shut them down or shut them out, we’d ultimately all be happie.
Mommy shaming is the most toxic crap there is out there. That it literally extends to criticizing how a woman grieves the loss of a pregnancy makes me ill. I’d love one of these experts to put out a “how to” guide, so that we could have a list of the correct the do’s and don’t’s for expressing this kind of grief, since they all seem to know how to do it “properly”. The cruelty is staggering and the fact that so much of it is coming from other women is really depressing.
We lost a baby at 23 weeks. A week short of still born.
This meant it was ‘just a miscarriage’
23 weeks meant I had to labour to produce a baby we knew we would never leave the hospital with.
My work gave me 2 compassionate days and after that I could have sick leave – if a doctor thought it necessary. My husband was given 2 days after an argument with HR
I was floored, by week 23 you think all your worries are over.
My husband was ignored by everyone. I felt shame. Largely I was ignored or felt displaced.
I was so sad to see what had happened to John, Chrissy and their family but I was so glad they were able to show what had happened if that was what they needed. Life isn’t all ups.
20 weeks here – in the US that’s a stillbirth, though we asked them not to use that term and apply “late miscarriage” for us. But that was a personal choice. Like you, its so shocking so far along. And like Kate, darkest period of my life.
I am so sorry for your losses – I lost my first child at 39w – he was stillborn. What it made me realize, the harsh truth, is that there is no safe time in a pregnancy. My subsequent pregnancies and births produced living children, but they were a nightmare of anxiety and stress.
I never not talk about him, not because I want the attention, but because he is part of my story, my fabric, my being, and is as valid as the kids who I am lucky enough to parent. And because maybe, just maybe, it’ll help someone else who is grieving. <3
@ronaldinhio, how heartbreaking. I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry your and your husband’s work minimized the loss; two days isn’t sufficient for the physical loss, much less the emotional one.
I think those both things can be true: 1) Chrissy Teigen suffered a horrific, personal tragedy that should be respected and empathized with; 2) Chrissy Teigen is emblematic of the type of over-sharing that turns off a lot of people these days.
If you want to share every personal aspect of your private life with millions of people on the internet, I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that some of those people are terrible. Prepare yourself to deal with it, or stop sharing.
She does over share. The “vagberries ”. Her dog’s BMs. A lot of it shows the culture that needs that faceless crowd validation. Yes, it’s her brand, but she goes above and beyond.
This sharing doesn’t apply. It was important to share and I’m glad she did it and how she did it.
That’s very well stated. This specific instance of her “over”sharing is absolutely compassionate and a beautiful use of her platform. So many women suffer in silence.
I agree that there are a surprising number of people who feel free to respond to someone’s voiced pain with vitriol, and as a result, we don’t talk about such things. It requires an effort to reach out to shit on someone. Women are made to feel as though they are responsible–at fault–for the loss of pregnancy. That is ignorant and repugnant.
“…there are a surprising number of people who feel free to respond to someone’s voiced pain with vitriol, and as a result, we don’t talk about such things. It requires an effort to reach out to shit on someone.” True, and we’re so quick to use the fact that that the target isn’t living and working privately to erase everyone’s responsibility to show some compassion and self-control.
There are valid criticisms of Chrissy Teigan, but it’s disturbing how every public expression of female pain in particular gets turned into a lecture on how today’s women need to be quiet, hide themselves, or get off social media. Those speeches are better saved for when the subject is just being a jerk, not when they’re grieving, or discussing abuse.
This is absolute facts, Merricat and Otaku. I’ve found myself pulling away from all social media and online platforms because I can’t handle how awful and unempathetic and ethically hypocritical people are being lately. I know it takes time to reach though prejudices and biases, to meaningfully increase how much kindness people are willing to demonstrate to others, but I’m getting impatient for people to be better. Even on this site, commenters were twisting themselves into pretzels to justify sh*tting on a woman who was openly grieving the death of her child because they were so used to sh*tting on her for everything else she does. I’m not seeing the same names/shaming commentary popping up today, so maybe some reflection has happened? I hope so.
So if it turns them off…don’t follow her Instagram or click on her stories? It’s not like social media doesn’t make it abundantly easy to tailor your own online experience. This is the one argument I don’t get because while I don’t share much of my personal life online, I don’t really get people’s issue with it for those who do. It’s one thing if it’s being exploitative of their children or somebody else who can’t consent to the situation, but otherwise, if there’s a celebrity I don’t care about, I’ve never had a problem not clicking on things about them.
The floodgates opened and my family and friends and I are still sharing about miscarriage and grief since Chrissy’s posts. We are so thankful and grateful. It’s been easy to ignore the heartless trolls who over-share their ugly selves.
My darling baby sister went through miscarriage also recently. The grief is real. I’m sending love to all of you.
Cudos to Kate here for standing with Chrissy so publicly. I follow Kate on IG, she is a funny, dry, smart lady, I really like her.
I’m so sorry for everyone who has gone through that, including Chrissy and Kate. I hope people continuing to talk about it makes it easier to share, and process some of the grief.
Hi! Just a kind correction, but Teigen did not experience a miscarriage. She was past 20 weeks and it sounds like he breathed, which is classified as stillbirth (or infant loss). Pregnancy loss is the all-encompassing term, plus “miscarried” implies something went wrong in how he was carried (by Chrissy). It’s kind of a gross word when you think about it in a literal sense. No wonder women feel guilt and shame when they experience it.
I’m a reporter and I did a story about them last week, since it really resonated with people. I talked to an OBGYN who runs a Hope After Loss Clinic, and I asked her about the terms to use and the above is what she said.
And just as a side note, that OBGYN said when she experienced a pregnancy loss, she had already been treating patients and families going through it for years. And she said even though they told her, and she literally saw it first-hand, she had absolutely no idea how deep their grief was until she felt it herself. Something about her saying that really touched me.
Hopefully this experience sheds light not just on early infant loss, but also the fact that there are services that help couples grieve their losses. So many people were judgmental simply because they thought it was “weird” someone would think to take out a camera at this moment — which I can understand. Not as many people know there are organizations that document the experience for families to remember their lost child, and maybe now they do. To me, it seems like an incredibly important part of the grieving process and I hope now more parents will be aware of that offering.
I lost friends because of my losses. People don’t understand this kind of grief. They expect you to go back to normal as if it didn’t happen. I am so proud of them for sharing. I can’t stop thinking about what they are going through, my heart breaks with them.
I’m so sorry that happened to you.
I feel so much for Chrissy. It’s unimaginable to me how deeply devastating a loss her and John are experiencing. The worst trolls have been the pro-life crowd who are using this as an opportunity to further their agenda. I kid you not, people have been telling her that according to her an unborn baby isn’t a real person so how dare she be sad. It’s frankly so disgusting.
I don’t care what she does with the rest of her life, this is a devastating issue which affects so many women and carries shame, stigma and a lot of silence and the more people talk about it and normalise it the better. Thank you Chrissie and Kate and everyone else who is sharing their experiences of this personal tragedy, helping other women feel less alone at such a terrible time.
I was surprised that so many commenters (even here) were against her sharing her story. I thought the pictures were beautiful and heartbreaking. I’m not even a fan of either of them, but I’m glad they shared their grief.
If you don’t like it. Scroll past. That’s so true. I remember seeing that allonsboard in IG and my first thought was Chrissy. It’s so sad and so raw. I feel for her so much, you really cannot see all the stigma and taboo around these subjects. I have a son that is here Thanks God. But the first trimester was horrible, bleeding after bleeding. Not knowing what to say or do. Just wishing and praying for the best. Feeling ashamed of yourself because you think it’s your fault, in my case at least. Cannot even begin to fathom what is going through their heads and the unimaginable pain of losing a baby. I know it’s a cold comfort, but by sharing the story of Jack she is shedding light to someone that is going through this right now. I follow both ladies on IG, and I find them refreshing and knowing what they went through and still go through makes me love them more.
I’ve never been pregnant. But 10 years ago a friend of mine had a baby that only lived 2 or 3 hours. I was at the hospital. I heard the docs when they said she wasn’t crying. I saw her beautiful face when they took her to another hospital. It was excruciating pain for me watching my friend go through that. I can’t begin to fathom what she was feeling but I watched it. I was there… Now she had a beautiful boy that is wonderful. But it still stings…
Then my sister had 2 miscarriages that were horrible and, I’ve learned about both of them over the phone. And it was horrible. We talked about it for a while. And now we don’t. Luckily she has a beautiful child here but my heart breaks for her… Because I know she wanted more kids.
Women can be very cruel towards others. But see… Here we are, talking about it. This is the positive effect of Chrissy’s post and now Kate. Let’s allow people to grieve.