Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle Opens Up About Her Miscarriage. “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn
The Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle has done something that no royal has ever done. . . again.
The mold-breaking royal penned an opinion letter for the New York Times detailing a miscarriage she suffered during the summer. In the letter titled "The Loses We Share" Markle says “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.”
The Duchess shares, in great detail, the day she lost her child saying that it was a “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."
“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.”
Markle is one of the few celebrity women who have come forward lately to talk about their pregnancy loss and shed light on a taboo, and little discussed, subject. "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."
She empathized with those of us who have shared this type of loss as well of others asking "Are you ok?"
"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. We’ve heard all the stories: A woman starts her day, as normal as any other, but then receives a call that she’s lost her elderly mother to Covid-19. A man wakes feeling fine, maybe a little sluggish, but nothing out of the ordinary. He tests positive for the coronavirus and within weeks, he — like hundreds of thousands of others — has died.
A young woman named Breonna Taylor goes to sleep, just as she’s done every night before, but she doesn’t live to see the morning because a police raid turns horribly wrong. George Floyd leaves a convenience store, not realizing he will take his last breath under the weight of someone’s knee, and in his final moments, calls out for his mom. Peaceful protests become violent. Health rapidly shifts to sickness. In places where there was once community, there is now division."
The courage she displays in the face of an uncaring public is to be commended. Not too many people can be the most bullied person in the world and still show grace and kindness to others. We're praying for the couple and hope that, when the time is right, they'll conceive again.