Why Chrissy Teigen Travels With Her Late Son’s Ashes

Chrissy Teigen’s not sure she’ll ever fully understand why she suffered a stillbirth last year—but she revealed in a new interview that keeping her late son’s ashes close has helped her family cope with the loss.

“We told them that we lost him, but it wasn’t really until we got his ashes back, I think, that they started to be able to say, ‘OK, this happened,’” she said of the two children she shares with her husband, musician John Legend.

“We talk about it a lot. What felt comfortable for our family was him always being around. Whether we go on a vacation or something, they always say, ‘Don’t forget baby Jack.’ And then I have to pack him up. And then we get to where we’re going, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, he must be thirsty.’ This might sound crazy to people, but they’ll put a little glass of water next to his little box of ashes. And they really love being a part of it.”

The past year has been tumultuous for Teigen. The model lost her son in the second trimester last year and then faced bullying allegations over the summer. But now, Teigen says that she’s been able to move past the trauma and get on with her life after much self-reflection.

“It took a lot to get there,” she explained in an interview with Scary Mommy.

She confided that before her miscarriage, she had become complacent with her unhealthy lifestyle—and eventually decided to give up booze.

“I needed to be shaken up, and I needed to be humbled,” she admitted. “Before I had gotten pregnant...I wasn’t living a healthy life. The way I was treating my body was not great, with the alcohol. I was the kind of person that made fun of working out.”

But she also revealed that the miscarriage may have been a wake-up call.

“If I got the chance to have him, I wouldn’t have learned how precious life is and how precious my body is. Now I look at my body as something that I can’t yell at and I can’t be upset with,” she said. “It’s gotten through so much, and so much more than people even know. What it has persevered through has been incredible.”

During the summer of 2021, Teigen faced a wave of intense backlash and took a break from social media after old Twitter messages surfaced in which she attacked model Courtney Stodden.

“She wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself,” Stodden revealed in a May 10 interview with The Daily Beast. “Things like, ‘I can’t wait for you to die.’”

Now, the 35-year-old insists she’s matured—with the help of therapy.

“I was kind of an angry brat before. I would get riled up at the smallest things,” she told Scary Mommy. “I was a jealous person. Whether it was other people’s successes—I was not bad to my friends, but I wasn’t good in the way of communication, and it was kind of a thing where my friends had to accept that I was going to be in and out. Something that always loomed over me was that I always wanted to be a better friend.”

Despite it all, the model says that she’s calm now and doesn’t “hold any anger.” But Teigen acknowledged it might take some time for her to feel healed while on her road to recovery.

In the meantime, writing her third cookbook, Cravings: All Together: Recipes to Love, and sharing the meals with her kids has been a simple way to feel more at ease.

“When everything happened, all I wanted myself was comfort recipes, so I decided I wanted to be fully immersed in this cookbook process,” she said. “After I was done with the book, I realized, ‘Oh, it’s time to address a lot of things. It’s definitely time for therapy, and time for some healing.’”