Meghan Markle Opens Up About Her Heartbreaking Miscarriage

In a revealing piece in The New York Times, Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle openly discusses the "pain and grief" of a miscarriage she experienced in July. She opens the piece by describing an ordinary summer morning, during which she'd awoken, made breakfast, taken her vitamins, and gone to get her young son Archie from his crib. Upon picking him up, she felt a sharp cramp and sunk to the floor, singing a lullaby to comfort both herself and the little boy in her arms. She says she new in that moment that something was "not right."

"The cheerful tune [was] a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right," she wrote. "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."

Meghan's decision to go public with the pain she and her family experienced this past summer was twofold: First, to encourage the lifting of the stigma surrounding miscarriage; and second, to encourage our collective empathy for one another as the holidays approach during what is, for many, an unprecedentedly difficult year.

"In the pain of our loss," she wrote, "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 went on to praise others who have shared their stories, saying, "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."

Further, she asks that we all check in with the people we love this season, saying that "loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020," and urges readers to "commit to asking others, 'are you OK?'" over the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S." Meghan and Harry are U.S. residents these days, living in California since stepping down as senior royals in January. Per the BBC, a spokesman for Buckingham Palace said, "It's a deeply personal matter we would not comment on."