Meghan Marle, Duchess of Sussex, has revealed she suffered a miscarriage in July.
Markle disclosed the sad news in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
According to the Duchess, she “felt a sharp cramp” while changing the diaper of her first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.
“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,” the Duchess wrote. “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.”
“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?'” she wrote. “Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few,” she said.
“Despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning,” Meghan wrote.
Notwithstanding the heartbreak, sources close to Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, say that the experience has brought them even closer as a couple. Harry was also reportedly supportive of his wife’s decision to write the article — it’s not known whether the royal family knew about the article before it was published online.
“In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing,” she concludes in the piece. “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.”
