{"id":778438,"date":"2026-02-21T02:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/778438\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T02:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:48:18","slug":"opinion-meghan-markle-the-losses-we-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/778438\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Meghan Markle: The Losses We Share"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/strong>t 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.<\/p>\n

Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband\u2019s 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\u2019d heal.<\/p>\n

I recalled a moment last year when Harry<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you OK?\u201d a journalist asked me. I answered him honestly, not knowing that what I said would resonate with so many \u2014 new moms and older ones, and anyone who had, in their own way, been silently suffering. My off-the-cuff reply<\/a> seemed to give people permission to speak their truth. But it wasn\u2019t responding honestly that helped me most, it was the question itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for asking,\u201d I said. \u201cNot many people have asked if I\u2019m OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband\u2019s 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, \u201cAre you OK?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve heard all the stories: A woman starts her day, as normal as any other, but then receives a call that she\u2019s 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 \u2014\u00a0like hundreds of thousands of others \u2014 has died.<\/p>\n

A young woman named Breonna Taylor goes to sleep, just as she\u2019s done every night before, but she doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

On top of all of this, it seems we no longer agree on what is true. We aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

That polarization, coupled with the social isolation required to fight this pandemic, has left us feeling more alone than ever.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He explained that New Yorkers live out their personal lives in public spaces. \u201cWe love in the city, we cry in the street, our emotions and stories there for anybody to see,\u201d I remember him telling me. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, somebody on that corner will ask her if she\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, all these years later, in isolation and lockdown, grieving the loss of a child, the loss of my country\u2019s shared belief in what\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

I wish I could go back and ask my cabdriver to pull over. This, I realize, is the danger of siloed living \u2014 where moments sad, scary or sacrosanct are all lived out alone. There is no one stopping to ask, \u201cAre you OK?\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 for all of us. In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing.<\/p>\n

So this Thanksgiving, as we plan for a holiday unlike any before \u2014\u00a0many of us separated from our loved ones, alone, sick, scared, divided and perhaps struggling to find something, anything, to be grateful for \u2014 let us commit to asking others, \u201cAre you OK?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

We are adjusting to a new normal where faces are concealed by masks, but it\u2019s forcing us to look into one another\u2019s eyes \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Are we OK?<\/p>\n

We will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a July morning that began as ordinarily as any other day: Make breakfast. Feed the dogs.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,7721,7719,4884,227030,7718,12160,7720,1281,447,7710,519,227029,7711],"class_list":["post-778438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-royals","tag-british-royal-family","tag-duchess-of-sussex","tag-duke-of-sussex","tag-great-britain","tag-grief-emotion","tag-harry","tag-markle","tag-meghan","tag-meghan-markle","tag-prince-harry","tag-royal-families","tag-royal-family","tag-social-conditions-and-trends","tag-uk-royal-family"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116106343575892198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}