Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is telling her story of how she experienced a miscarriage in July.
In an op-ed published in The New York Times titled, “The Losses We Share,” Markle connects her miscarriage with the pain others face at this time.
She opens the op-ed by taking the reader back to the day she realized she was having a miscarriage.
“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,” Markle said.
She added, “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.”
Markle recounted a moment from 2019 when she was by a journalist, “Are you OK?”
She replied, “Thank you for asking. Not many people have asked if I’m OK.”
Markle explained, “I realized that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, ‘Are you OK?'”
She turned her attention to the COVID-19 pandemic and how so many have lost their loved ones.
Markle mentioned the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
“Peaceful protests become violent. Health rapidly shifts to sickness. In places where there was once community, there is now division,” she wrote.
Markled added, “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.”
She explained conversations around miscarriages are not common.
“Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few,” Markle said.
She noted out of 100 women, between 10 to 20 of them will have suffered 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,” Markle added.
She concluded her op-ed by encouraging others to ask each other, “Are you OK?”
