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Meghan Markle’s description of miscarriage is extremely powerful

<p>Meghan Markle </p> (PA)

Meghan Markle

(PA)

Since reading Meghan Markle’s incredibly raw and emotive piece for the New York Times, I’ve spent time wondering how she must’ve felt once the words that were private to her, became the subject of the world’s glare.

Writing is often therapeutic, but finding yourself the topic of everyone’s debate is not. Especially when that topic is one of the hardest, most painful experiences you’ve ever had to endure and you’re inviting 7.5 billion people to share in that.

Meghan knows all too well how cruel and harsh her many critics can be and she would’ve known the spin they would’ve put on it, but still she wanted to speak her truth.

Miscarriage, we’re often informed, is incredibly common – one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. However, sometimes the problem with knowing something is common means that it gets brushed aside. We know it exists, we know it happens, but we deal with it, and we move on. Rarely to be discussed again.

The language Meghan has used in her extremely candid piece demonstrates just how devastating miscarriage is. She describes the physical pain of the ‘sharp cramp’ as well as her heartbreak and Prince Harry’s distress. “I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand,” she writes. “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 and Prince Harry's baby is due any day nowAP
Meghan and Prince Harry's baby is due any day nowAP

It’s a powerful inclusion, because while it is the pregnant woman who goes through the physical element of miscarriage, the partner is deeply affected too. Something I think we often fail to remember. I could almost picture Harry and Meghan in the hospital as she described, trying to process how quickly their lives had changed in the most tragic of ways; their minds playing catch up, whilst having no control over what the body is fated to do.

Thanks to Meghan, conversations would have taken place yesterday – all across the globe. Family members and friends would have learnt things about each other they didn’t know the day before, because Meghan has started a conversation: in sharing her grief, she’s enabling others to do the same.

It’s not just with words that we can break down stigma and enable conversation, images are just as powerful a tool, as we found in September when Chrissy Teigen chose to share photographs of her stillbirth.

Both women’s experiences hit me in different ways. I’d not long discovered I was pregnant myself when Chrissy bravely shared her harrowing loss and I looked at those photos nervously. I felt sheer anxiety, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Whereas with Meghan’s story of loss, I’m now two weeks post-miscarriage. And while Meghan’s experience isn’t the same as mine, I still read her words in a knowing way. I get it, I’m a member of that club.

I’ve read many hateful comments, needless criticism and judgmental words since both Chrissy and Meghan shared their stories with us, I’ve also read words of thanks and gratitude from both men and women. Something I hope will give comfort to two women who will likely feel sadness and grief for a long time to come.

We’re reminded to talk and share our feelings and emotions. But often when we speak up, especially on social media, we’re chastised for attention seeking. We’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Somethings are to be kept private, we’re told. And this is what breeds stigma. Brushing our experiences and feelings under the carpet as if it’s a bit of dirt we don’t want our judgmental visitors to see.

If ever there was a year that would be remembered as isolating- it’s 2020. We’ve had to separate from our loved ones to protect them. But we should remember the importance of connection and sharing our stories - that is how we weather life’s misfortunes.

As Meghan wrote, “When one person speaks truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same.”

By Rachel Hawkins

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