Chrissy Teigen’s Heartbreaking Photos Reminded Me There’s No Right Way to Grieve

When Chrissy Teigen and John Legend shared the devastating loss of their third child earlier this month, one of my first thoughts was Oh, God, here come the grief police. Teigen already gets a lot of criticism for being so open online. While I hoped people wouldn’t criticize how open she was about this, I had a feeling it was going to happen—and sadly, I was right. There she was, sharing the worst moment of her life, and people had the audacity to reply to her tweet and suggest that the photos were simply for attention. That they, also having lost a child, felt for her but would never have done that. That this wasn’t what it looked like to grieve the loss of a child. Which is absolute bullshit.

I am personally very familiar with one of the basic truths of grieving: There is no right way to do it. Even if two people are grieving the same loss, the way they handle it can be like night and day. Just because someone’s grief looks different than your grief did in a similar situation doesn’t mean they aren’t gutted and grappling with the same impossible-to-process emotions. It doesn’t delegitimize their pain. That’s something I learned the hard way.

When my mom died of cancer in 2011, my dad, my brother, and I all grieved, of course. My mom was the most precious thing any of us had ever lost. And while we all grieved the same person and same situation, an outsider might have assumed differently based on how those complicated feelings manifested for all of us.

I’m an extrovert and very open to sharing my emotions. I cope best when I can talk about how I’m feeling. As I grieved my mom’s death, I did so openly. I cried and talked with friends or family about how sad I was. I faced the uncomfortable emotions head-on while also trying to distract myself with other things (I was a junior in college at the time).

On the other hand, my brother is quite introverted. He’s not one to call up a friend and unload his emotions. He grieved quietly. His silence made it hard to tell whether he was grieving or just trying to avoid emotion. As someone who is very open and feels compelled to talk about how I feel, I could not relate to how he was handling things—but I knew my brother and knew that if we were different in so many other ways, maybe we just approached this differently too.

And then there’s my dad. He is extremely analytical and logical. He operates best when he has a plan to follow. He’s also, well, a dad. So when my mom died, he had to take control. He worked through the to-do list of logistics. He didn’t unload his emotions on us. He handled his grief in a different way—not only because of his personality but also because his role in our family necessitated it. Also, as my mom’s primary caregiver, he knew more about her condition than we did. He was the first to know when they were out of options, so he started his grieving process privately before we (and the rest of my family) knew it was time to.

So there we were, all in the same household, all suffering the same loss, but behaving quite differently as a result. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this experience taught me how wildly different grief can look. I knew that we all felt the same complicated emotions, but it was clear that each of us expressed them in our own way.

This variation in grief response is totally normal, says Ajita Robinson, Ph.D., author of The Gift of Grief: A Practical Guide on Grief and Loss. “The way that we each express [grief] is unique to us,” she says. “The loss itself might be shared, but the response is unique and individualized.”

That being said, there are some universal emotions that people feel when they lose someone important. Disbelief and shock are usually first, as people try to grapple with the finality of a loved one’s death, Robinson says. Anger, pervasive sadness, and bargaining with a higher power are also common, she adds. “It really is this space of just feeling unanchored.” And then there’s the aftermath, when we learn to adjust to life after loss. That might involve trying to create meaning—for example, if someone died from a specific illness, you might start a foundation in their honor, Robinson says. “But the way we express [these common emotions] can look vastly different,” she adds.

Some people are more active in their grieving. Thanks in large part to how gendered socialization makes people feel like they are or aren’t allowed to grieve, Robinson has found men more likely to “go back to work and get busy.” It can almost look like they’re just returning to normal life and not impacted by the loss, but they’re mostly trying to establish stability after a very destabilizing event, Robinson explains. Keeping busy and getting all the affairs in order can also be a way of honoring and prioritizing the deceased, Robinson says. “And it might be the last time we can take care of them.”

Other people are more likely to seek support and express what they’re feeling, says Robinson. (It me.) Women tend to fall more into this camp, again, because we’re more often socialized to show our emotions, she adds. And then there are other factors that can influence the grieving process. For example, someone with economic and job stability may have the space to take time off work and address their emotions, while someone who lacks that may be forced into survival mode, returning to work because they have to. Other things, like faith and a support system, also impact the way we respond to a loss, Robinson says.

There’s probably only one “wrong” way to grieve, Robinson says. “Not [allowing yourself to grieve] can put you in the position to experience complicated grief,” she says. Complicated grief (also known as persistent complex bereavement disorder or prolonged grief disorder) is when you’re unable to adjust to the loss after six months to a year. The symptoms of grief persist longer than normal and are severe enough to get in the way of living your life. (You can learn more about complicated grief here.) Avoiding the grieving process can also lead you to deal with it in an unhealthy way, like self-medicating or engaging in risky behaviors, says Robinson.

Taking photos to honor a tragic loss—like Teigen and Legend did—is just another way that some people cope. For very visual people, taking photos may be the best way for them to capture that memory and honor the loss, Robinson says: “Some people fear they will forget the feeling and sensation. How do they incorporate this moment into their life? Whether a baby is born and survives or not, it changes the family. To not capture it and honor it denies that something in life has fundamentally changed.”

Of course, it’s 1 million percent okay if taking photos of a tragic moment doesn’t help you. What’s not okay is to judge other people for whom it does. “We don't get to decide how people honor an experience,” Robinson says. Yet...there are clearly so many people who think they can.

Part of that is just humans projecting their own discomfort with death and grief on other humans—another very normal thing. If we’re uncomfortable sitting with these emotions and aren’t comfortable expressing them, it can make it hard to look at and accept those emotions however they manifest in someone else, Robinson says.

“Because we don't often understand what’s happening for us in grief, we impose what we’re experiencing onto other people,” Robinson says, adding that usually there’s no ill intent. “I think it’s often in an effort to not feel alone, but we unintentionally dishonor the experiences of others by doing that.” We, as humans, have a tough time accepting two perspectives as true, she adds. So a person who has also grieved the loss of a child might not be able to accept that their way can be right, as can Teigen and Legend’s. That there doesn’t have to be a right and a wrong way to grieve.

It also doesn’t help that Teigen is a celebrity and we often feel a sense of access and entitlement to weigh in on celebrities’ lives in a way that allows us to avoid humanity, Robinson says.

We, as a society, need to confront the way we’ve been socialized to think about death and grief, Robinson says. Maybe then, we’ll be more accepting of the experience in general. But until then, let’s all stop policing one another’s grief and, instead, have some compassion. Grief is a very normal human experience, one that we’ll all face at some point in life. The way it looks for you may be different from how it looked for me, my brother, my dad, and even Chrissy Teigen. That doesn’t make it any less valid, raw, and real.

Related:

• How Do We Even Grieve Right Now?

• What Losing My Disabled Mom Taught Me About Ableism

• What Happens When Your Grief Doesn’t Go Away?