Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are proving yet again why they are the exact kind of royals we need, opening up about their heartbreaking loss in a bid to bring people together and to help others realize they aren’t alone in their suffering.
In a first-person essay for the New York Times, Markle detailed the “unbearable grief” the couple suffered following losing their second child to a miscarriage in July.
Markle said she was holding the couple’s 18-month-old son, Archie Harrison, when she felt a “sharp cramp” and dropped to the floor holding Archie in her arms. “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” she wrote.
“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,” she continued.
“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, 10 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.”
Markle went on to write about the intensity of the year we’ve all collectively had, referencing the Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic and the US Presidential election. “This year has brought so many of us to our breaking points. Loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020, in moments both fraught and debilitating,” she wrote.
“It seems we no longer agree on what is true. We aren’t just fighting over our opinions of facts; we are polarized over whether the fact is, in fact, a fact. We are at odds over whether science is real. We are at odds over whether an election has been won or lost. We are at odds over the value of compromise.”
Markle referenced the moment a journalist asked her whether she was okay back when she and Prince Harry were touring Africa, saying that the question made her realize how little she’d been asked it. She wrote that she wants people to commit to asking others whether they are okay now more than ever and that though we may be physically distanced at the moment, “the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of all we have individually and collectively endured this year.”
