Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex has opened up about the grief she and Prince Harry experienced after suffering pregnancy loss.
In an op-ed for The New York Times titled “The Losses We Share”, the Duchess describes feeling sharp cramps one July morning when she was holding baby Archie in her arms.
“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.”
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She goes on to explain how so many women experience this same loss all over the world, yet it remains a topic we hardly ever talk about.
“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 also recalls a moment when a journalist asked her “Are you OK?” and how much that meant to her:
“Thank you for asking,” she responded at the time. “Not many people have asked if I’m OK.”
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The Duchess explains how the process of healing begins with this very question.
“Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine, I realised that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, ‘Are you OK?'”
But her op-ed goes beyond her own private suffering.
It discusses what a difficult year 2020 has been for everyone, how racial injustice continues, how much loss and isolation we’re experiencing due to the pandemic and how polarised the world seems to be becoming.
But she hopes that we might all ask each other that same question too: Are you OK?
Because “as much as we may disagree, as physically distanced as we may be, the truth is that we are more connected that ever because of all we have individually and collectively endured this year.”
Meghan’s words are an important reminder that we never know what someone is going through, but maybe, just maybe, by showing some care and being present, we could be the reason they begin to heal.
Read her full article HERE.
(Feature Image Credit: Alan Fraser Images/Shutterstock.com)
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And: Misunderstandings of Miscarriage: Interview with Aussie Model/Director Tahyna MacManus