“It was a morning in July that started like any other day: make breakfast, feed the dogs, take the vitamins, find that lost sock.
I made myself a ponytail before taking my son out of his crib.
After changing her diaper, I felt a strong cramp.
I dropped to the ground with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm.
The happy melody was in contrast to my feeling that something was not right.
I knew, as I hugged my firstborn, that I was losing the second. "
This is how the article that Meghan Markle published this Wednesday in
The New York Times
begins
in which she reveals how she suffered an abortion last July.
A hitherto unknown event that she has wanted to make public in this unusual way in a member of the British royal family, something that proves that her life and that of her husband, Prince Henry of England, are governed by very different norms. those of the palace since they settled in the United States last January.
The newspaper presents Markle as "Duchess of Sussex, mother, feminist and advocate."
She, in her text, continues: “Hours later, I was lying on a hospital bed, holding my husband's hand.
I felt the moisture on her palm and kissed her knuckles, wet with our tears.
Staring at the cool white walls, my eyes went glassy.
I tried to imagine how we would heal ourselves ”.
In her heartbreaking and detailed text, the former
Suits
actress
recalls: “I remembered a moment last year when Enrique and I were finishing a long tour of South Africa.
I was exhausted.
She was breastfeeding our little boy and was trying to keep a brave face in the eyes of the public.
'Are you okay?' A journalist asked me.
I answered him sincerely, not knowing that what he was saying would reach so many people (...) My improvised response seemed to authorize people to be able to speak their own truth.
But answering honestly wasn't what helped me the most, it was the question itself.
"Thanks for asking," I said.
"Not many people have asked me if I'm okay."
Sitting on a hospital bed, watching my husband's heart break as he tried to hold up the broken pieces of mine, I realized that the only way to start healing is to first ask, "Are you okay?"
“Are we okay?
This year has taken many of us to our extremes.
In 2020, loss and pain have affected us all, in tense and weak moments.
We have heard it in many stories: a woman begins her day, as normal as any other, and then receives a call in which she is told that she lost her elderly mother to covid-19.
A man wakes up feeling fine, perhaps a little slow, but nothing out of the ordinary.
He tests positive for coronavirus and in a few weeks, he, like hundreds of thousands more, has died ", continues the text by Meghan Markle, who later cites two real cases and that in recent months have been very controversial in the US." A young woman named Breonna Taylor goes to sleep, just like she did every night, but she doesn't live to see the morning because a police raid goes terribly wrong.
George Floyd leaves a store unaware that he will breathe his last breath under the weight of someone's knee, and in his final moments, he calls his mother. "
"Peaceful protests turn violent," recapitulates the Duchess of Sussex.
“Health quickly turns into disease.
In places where once there was a community, now there is division ”.
And he adds, this time with a nod to the presidential elections held on November 3: “Besides all this, it seems that we no longer agree on what is true.
We are not only fighting for our opinions on the facts;
we are polarized on whether the fact is, in fact, a fact.
We disagree on whether science is real.
We disagree on whether an election has been won or lost.
We disagree on the value of compromise.
That polarization, together with the social isolation necessary to fight this pandemic, has left us more alone than ever ”.
Markle, in this very personal text, addresses more hitherto private issues and recalls her memories: “As a teenager, I sat in the back of a taxi that went through the hustle and bustle of Manhattan.
I looked out the window and saw a woman on the phone crying.
I was on the sidewalk, having a private moment in a very public way.
At the time, I was new to town and I asked the driver if we should stop to see if that woman needed help.
He explained to me that New Yorkers live their personal lives in public spaces.
'We love in the city, we cry in the street, our emotions and stories are there, for anyone to see', I remember him telling me.
'Don't worry, someone on that corner will ask him if he's okay.
“I wish I could go back and ask my taxi driver to stop,” Markle recalls now in his essay.
“This, I realize, is the danger of living in isolation, where sad, terrifying or fundamental moments are lived alone.
Nobody stops to ask you: 'Are you okay?'
"Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable pain, experienced by many, but about which few speak," reflects the wife of Enrique de Inglaterra.
“In the grief of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, between 10 and 20 would have suffered a miscarriage.
Yet despite the uncanny resemblance to this pain, the conversation remains taboo, shameful (unjustified) and perpetuates a cycle of lonely grief. "
Yet Markle also sees hope: “Some have courageously shared their stories;
They have opened the door, knowing that when one person tells the truth, he gives us all license to do the same.
We have learned that when people ask how we are doing, and when they actually listen to the answer, with open hearts and minds, the burden of pain often becomes lighter, for all of us.
By being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps towards healing ”.
“This Thanksgiving, as we plan a vacation like never before, when many of us will be separated from loved ones, alone, sick, scared, divided, and perhaps struggling to find anything to be thankful for, let's commit to ask others: 'Are you okay?'
As much as we disagree, even though we are physically estranged, the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of all that we have endured individually and collectively this year ”, Markle reflects on that famous date, key in the American calendar, to be celebrated this Thursday, November 26.
“We are adapting to a new normal in which faces are hidden by masks, but which forces us to look into each other's eyes, sometimes full of warmth, other times with tears.
For the first time in a long time, as human beings, we are really seeing each other. "
On May 6, 2019, Meghan Markle and Harry from England became parents to their first child, Archie.
A boy who weighed 3,260 kilos at birth.
Enrique was present at the delivery.
"I am very happy to announce the birth of our son, who has been a boy and was born this morning, a very healthy child," said the prince in a brief appearance before the cameras.
“Mother and child are doing incredibly well.
It was the most incredible experience I could have ever imagined ”, explained with a big smile the young son of Diana and Carlos de Inglaterra.
"I am very grateful for all the messages of affection that I have received, they have been incredible," he added before the cameras.
The little boy leads a very discreet life in the United States, where he has spent much of his life.
Since he got there there are hardly any photos of him.
The latest dates from when he turned his first year.