The Duchess of Sussex recalled how she had been sitting in the back of a taxi in New York when she saw a woman “in a flood of tears” on the pavement. She asked the driver if they could stop to see if the woman needed help, but the driver just told her it was normal for New Yorkers to live out their personal lives in public spaces. He told Meghan not to worry, because someone on the corner will stop and ask her “if she’s OK”.
He said: “We love in the city, we cry in the streets, our emotions and stories there for anybody to see.
“Don’t worry, somebody on that corner will ask her if she’s OK.”
Recalling this moment, Meghan said she now regrets the fact that she didn’t stop.
She wrote: “Now, all these years later, in isolation and lockdown, grieving the loss of a child, the loss of my country’s shared belief in what’s true, I think of that woman in New York.
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Meghan Markle recalled a time when she saw a woman crying in the street (Image: GETTY)
Times Square, New York showing the busyness of the city (Image: GETTY)
“What if no one stopped? What if no one saw her suffering? What if no one helped?
“I wish I could go back and ask my cab driver to pull over.”
Meghan pointed out that, in this new world of coronavirus lockdown and separation from loved ones, certain moments of pain and sadness might go unnoticed, because there is no one stopping to ask if you are OK.
The Duchess harked back to an iconic moment last year on the ITV documentary ‘Harry & Meghan: An African Journey’.
Meghan Markle’s interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby (Image: ITV News)
ITV’s Tom Bradby asked Meghan how she was doing with the strain of public and press scrutiny in her royal role, and she gave the memorable reply: “Thank you for asking. Not many people have asked if I’m OK.”
Most heartbreakingly, Meghan recalled the very day she suffered the tragic loss of her baby.
It had started like any other day: having breakfast, feeding the dogs, tidying up.
She had been changing Archie’s nappy when she felt a “sharp cramp” and knew something was wrong.
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Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their son Archie (Image: GETTY)
She wrote: “I knew, as I clutched my first born child, that I was losing my second.”
Meghan then recalled being in a hospital bed holding her husband Prince Harry’s hand, wet from all their tears.
She wrote: “Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine, I realised that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, ‘Are you OK?’”
Meghan cited an astonishing statistic that in a room of 100 women around 10 to 20 of them will have suffered a miscarriage, and yet it still remains a “taboo” topic.
However, she noted that when people speak up, that gives license for others to express their own experiences.
She described the feeling of losing her child as “almost unbearable grief”.
Meghan also noted other awful things that have happened this year: 1.4million people dead from coronavirus, the killing of black people by police in the US like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
She also touched on the fact that US President Donald Trump called into question “whether an election was won or lost”.
The Duchess of Sussex then encouraged the reader to ask people in their own lives whether they are OK.
She wrote: “Let us commit to asking others, ‘Are you OK?’
“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.”
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex wrote about this in the New York Times.
For help or guidance related to mental health difficulties please call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org.
