Dear Meghan, I’m So Sorry

Dear Meghan, I’m so sorry.

I’m so sorry you know the gut-wrenching grief of miscarriage.

I’m so sorry you know the heartache of losing a child you didn’t yet know but already loved. 

I’m so sorry you know the physical pain of the actual loss—the bleeding, the hormone crash, the crippling exhaustion, all of it.

I’m so sorry you know the bitter hurt of watching your husband’s heart break in futility and sadness. 

I’m so sorry you know the anger of questioning why your own body betrayed you when it had just this one job. 

I’m so sorry you know the confusing loss of a sibling for your living child, the loss of the memories they were supposed to make together.

I’m so sorry you know the challenge of appearing whole but concealing a jagged heart that somehow keeps beating while a piece of it lives in heaven.  

I’m so sorry. 

I know what it’s like, too. 

Pregnancy loss doesn’t care. 

It doesn’t care if you’re married to a prince or a pharmacist.

It doesn’t care if you live in a palace or a 3-bedroom ranch.

It doesn’t care if you’ve had one baby or four or 14.

It doesn’t care if you jet-set around the globe or make eight Target runs each week. 

It doesn’t care if you’re Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex or Average Mom, Driver of Minivan. 

And if there’s one thing I know deep down in my soul since experiencing my own miscarriage, it’s this: not enough of us are talking about it out loud.

It’s uncomfortable, yes. It’s graphic and painful and heavy and raw. It’s the kind of thing we’re only supposed to acknowledge with hushed whispers and sympathetic glances.

But miscarriage happens to more of us than we could ever imagine—until you start the conversation and realize the truth. 

When I wrote about my own miscarriage, it was like opening a door to a parallel universe I had no idea even existed. It was full of silently grieving parents I knew in “real life”—some of them for decades—but I had no idea they’d experienced loss, too. I heard from dozens of mothers and fathers who talked about their own miscarriages, some fresh and still stinging, others scars faded by the passage of time. 

The common theme? We will never forget.

Those babies—whether they were the size of blueberries or mangoes or full plates of turkey dinners—may have been lost, but they and the way they change us are never, ever forgotten. 

Of course, there will be healing, both physically, and at a slower, more tender pace, emotionally. Maybe there’ll be a rainbow baby in your future or mine. You might experience pregnancy after loss that would undoubtedly reopen wounds but also bring deep joy. I might have a baby who wouldn’t have existed without the loss that came before him.

Life, as it does, as it must, goes on. 

But we will never forget. 

So thank you, Meghan, for saying something out loud. 

Thanks for talking about your own pain so we can confront ours. 

Thanks for reminding us one of the most powerful things we can do for a hurting heart is simply to ask, “Are you OK?”

Thanks for showing us even fairytales have dark chapters—but it’s only part of the story.

Thank you . . . and I’m so sorry. 

Read the NYTimes piece by Meghan Markle where she opens up about the miscarriage she and Prince Harry suffered this summer here.