She wrote that she held “an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few.”
Meghan, the Duchess of
Sussex, revealed in a deeply personal essay in the New York
Times Opinion section on Wednesday that she had miscarried her second child
with Prince Harry in July, bringing light to an experience shared by many
grieving families who often suffer in silence.
The steep challenges of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic, racial protests,
political polarization in a nasty election year in the United States — have
“brought so many of us to our breaking points,” she wrote. Her modest step
toward healing, she said, was in asking if people are OK,
as a journalist famously asked her last year.
Experts who help grieving parents immediately praised her decision to share her story, saying it would help break a persistent cultural taboo over talking about miscarriages and baby loss.
“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,” Meghan wrote. “Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.”
The essay went into
visceral detail about her painful experience, both physically and emotionally.
In July, she felt a sharp cramp and dropped to the floor while holding Archie,
the couple’s 1-year-old child, and immediately sensed that “something was not
right,” she wrote.
“Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand,” she wrote.
“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 was the latest public figure to speak openly about the grief of miscarriage, a topic that many struggling parents find difficult to talk about.
In October, the model
and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen wrote about her
experience on Medium. Meghan McCain, a host of “The View,” shared
hers in July 2019. Beyoncé, the superstar pop singer,
has spoken about her multiple miscarriages.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, said in 2016 that
she had lost a baby in 2011. In the royal family, Zara Tindall, the queen’s
granddaughter, said in 2018 she had suffered two miscarriages.
Read Meghan Markle’s entire New York Times op-ed below
The Losses We Share
By Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex
Perhaps the path to healing begins with three simple words: Are you OK?
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.
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.
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.”
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?”
Are we? 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.
On top of all of this, 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.
That polarization, coupled with the social isolation required to fight this
pandemic, has left us feeling more alone than ever.
When I was in my late teens, I sat in the back of a taxi zipping through the
busyness and bustle of Manhattan. I looked out the window and saw a woman on
her phone in a flood of tears. She was standing on the sidewalk, living out a
private moment very publicly. At the time, the city was new to me, and I asked
the driver if we should stop to see if the woman needed help.
He explained that New Yorkers live out their personal lives in public spaces.
“We love in the city, we cry in the street, our emotions and stories there for
anybody to see,” I remember him telling me. “Don’t worry, somebody on that
corner will ask her if she’s OK.”
Now, all these years later, in isolation and lockdown, grieving the loss of a
child, the loss of my country’s shared belief in what’s true, I think of that
woman in New York. What if no one stopped? What if no one saw her suffering?
What if no one helped?
I wish I could go back and ask my cabdriver to pull over. This, I realize, is
the danger of siloed living — where moments sad, scary or sacrosanct are all
lived out alone. There is no one stopping to ask, “Are you OK?”
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.
Some have 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. 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. In being invited to share our pain, together
we take the first steps toward healing.
So this Thanksgiving, as we plan for a holiday unlike any before — many of
us separated from our loved ones, alone, sick, scared, divided and perhaps
struggling to find something, anything, to be grateful for — let us commit to
asking others, “Are you OK?” As much as we may disagree, as physically distanced
as we may be, the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of all
we have individually and collectively endured this year.
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.
