Chrissy Teigen is reflecting on herself following her cyberbullying scandal.
During an appearance on the Today show on Tuesday morning, the 35-year-old author of Cravings: All Together told host Hoda Kotb that she has emerged a stronger person as a result of taking the time to address her past behavior. Teigen was called out earlier this year for her previous social media posts, which she admitted were “horrible” in an essay for Medium, where she apologized amid the controversy.
“Not a single day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for what I’ve said in the past,” she wrote at the time. “There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets. My targets didn’t deserve them. No one does. Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor. I was a troll, full stop. And I am so sorry.”
In reflection, Teigen said on Today, “Having this period of time to digest it all and to look back and to realize that honestly there is always so much time to grow and to learn and to become more empathetic. I look at my kids and I look at what I want their value to be and how I want them to treat people, and to see that in myself, that I wasn’t doing that was — the hardest part for me was realizing, ‘My goodness, this really had an affect on people.’ ”
“I think about how much I’ve changed just in the past year, how much I’ve grown and learned, and then to think of that in the term of a lifetime, how much room there is to always know more and be better,” she added.
In response to the model’s loss of TV gigs and brand partnerships in the aftermath of the scandal, she stated, “You learn a lot in the moments when you lose a lot. Your world has been turned on its head.”
“It was a big moment for me where I realized, ‘Wow, I need to figure out how I can be better, how I can grow from this, learn from this.’ There’s an old adage that says, ‘I’m glad it happened,’ but it truly made me a stronger person. A better individual. That’s when I got sober, when I got clean — I’m actually 100 days sober today, and I’m ecstatic, yeah. I’m in a great mood. I’m feeling very clear-headed.”
“I feel like I’ve done the work, and I hope these people can forgive and accept the fact that hopefully they’ve seen me be better,” Teigen said.
Teigen and husband John Legend have two children: Miles, three, and Luna, five. In her June essay, she explained what she hopes her children will take away from her public apology.
“Almost every day, John tells me how much our daughter Luna reminds him of me. Every day, I try to make her all of the best parts of me, all of the things I aspire to be all of the time but sometimes fall short of,” Teigen wrote at the time. “And we preach kindness to her and Miles every chance we get. Will they eventually realize there is some hypocrisy there? I certainly do. But I hope they recognize my evolution.”
“My goal is to be so good that my children will think this is all a fairy tale,” she added. “Not the phony stuff.” The good with the best intentions, the good who wakes up every day wanting to make her friends, family, team, and fans happy. The good who will still f—- up in front of the world, but only rarely and never without growing only better as a result.”
“I’m going to keep working to be the best version of myself for EVERYONE,” Teigen added. Everyone, including my detractors, deserves better. And you can expect nothing less from me. The world needs more kindness and love, and I want to help. For the past decade, I’ve been on a path of self-improvement, and that path will continue.
