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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been out of the spotlight for a while now, and while media outlets pondered their disappearance, they had bigger things to focus on, like the general public’s confusion when it comes to The Crown.

It’s not a documentary – it’s a work of fiction.

Please stop being silly.

A recent article penned by Meghan for The New York Times has shed some light on her and Harry’s absence, for the most part, from the public eye.

In it, Meghan describes how, in July, she suffered a miscarriage.

It 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.

She changed Archie’s diaper (or nappy, as we call it here) following which she felt a sharp cramp – “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second”.

A few hours later she was in hospital, holding Harry’s hand.

I recalled a moment last year when Harry 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.

Image: Shutterstock

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 goes on to talk about 2020, and the pandemic.

We’ve heard all the stories: A woman starts her day, as normal as any other, but then receives a call that she’s 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 — like hundreds of thousands of others — has died.

She notes that the divisiveness in American politics, coupled with the social isolation of lockdowns, has left everyone “feeling more alone than ever”, before returning to her experience.

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.

Image: Getty

Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.

Meghan remarks that by sharing stories, doors are opened that make it easier for others to speak up.

You can read the rest of her article here.

For women who know they’re pregnant, about 10 to 15 in 100 pregnancies (that’s 10 to 15 percent) end in miscarriage, with most of them happening in the first trimester before the 12th week of pregnancy.

If you’ve experienced a miscarriage and need some support while grieving your loss, help is at hand here.

[source:nytimes]