Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have tragically suffered a miscarriage. Meghan is now telling her story to help normalize the stigma and taboo nature surrounding miscarriages while reassuring readers.
Meghan Markle's Tragic Miscarriage
Brave Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has just penned a beautiful opinion piece for the New York Times sharing for the first time that she suffered a miscarriage during the pandemic. Meghan explained, "It was a July morning that began as ordinarily as any other day: Make breakfast. Feed the dogs. Take vitamins. Find that missing sock. Pick up the rogue crayon that rolled under the table. Throw my hair in a ponytail before getting my son from his crib."
It was then that she had the most horrifying moment that millions of mothers around the world have experience: "After changing his diaper, I felt a sharp cramp. I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right."
"I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second."
"Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we'd heal."
Meghan has used this trauma to reflect on what she can learn from suffering. "I recalled a moment last year when Harry and I were finishing up a long tour in South Africa. I was exhausted. I was breastfeeding our infant son, and I was trying to keep a brave face in the very public eye."
"'Are you OK?' a journalist asked me. I answered him honestly, not knowing that what I said would resonate with so many — new moms and older ones, and anyone who had, in their own way, been silently suffering. My off-the-cuff reply seemed to give people permission to speak their truth. But it wasn't responding honestly that helped me most, it was the question itself."
"'Thank you for asking,' I said. "Not many people have asked if I'm OK.'"
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"Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine, I realized that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, 'Are you OK?'"
Meghan is not the first Royal to lose a pregnancy, Zara Tindall, the Countess of Wessex also suffered two miscarriages before she had her second daughter Lena. In her piece The Losses We Share, Meghan hopes to help rid the taboo nature of sadly common miscarriages.
"Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few. In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, ten to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning."
Meghan praised those who "bravely shared their stories; they have opened the door, knowing that when one person speaks truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same."
Prince Archie's mother explains how so many of us are suffering left and right through this pandemic and the polarizing turmoil around the world while simultaneously giving hope that we will make it through pain when we help each other.
The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle elegantly ended her public letter with, "We are adjusting to a new normal where faces are concealed by masks, but it’s forcing us to look into one another’s eyes — sometimes filled with warmth, other times with tears. For the first time, in a long time, as human beings, we are really seeing one another.
Are we OK?
We will be."
If you would like to read Meghan's powerful piece in its entirety, you can find it here:
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