“It was a July morning that began as ordinarily as any other day. But after changing his diaper I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” Meghan Markle wrote in an article published by the New York Times.
In the article, The Duchess of Sussex revealed that she suffered a miscarriage this year in July. She talked about the heartbreaking incident when she felt a sharp pain while holding her 18-month-old son, Archie.
“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.“
She continued, “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.”
Continuing, she remembered a question put forth by an interviewer in South Africa, last year. The reporter had asked, “Are you ok?”
It was that period of time when she was already exhausted, breastfeeding and attempted to keep a “brave face in the very public eye”.
“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?’” she wrote.
Meghan Markle went on to talk about how this year has taken a toll on everyone and how each one of us is at odds over the value of compromise.
She concluded by saying, “Losing a child means carrying 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 a miscarriage.
“Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.”
“We have learned that when people ask how any of us are doing, and when they really listen to the answer, with an open heart and mind, the load of grief often becomes lighter — for all of us,” she wrote.
“In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing.”
You can read the whole piece here.