The second episode in Meghan Markle’s new podcast series Confessions of a Female Founder has been released – and it sees the Duchess of Sussex chat to Reshma Saujani, a lawyer and politician who founded ‘Girls Who Code’
Meghan Markle has opened up about her miscarriage and having to let go of something you love. In the second episode of her new podcast series, the Duchess of Sussex chats to American lawyer and politican Reshma Suajani, who set up the non-profit organisations ‘Girls Who Code’, which aims to increase the number of girls in computer science, and ‘Mom’s First’.
During the chat, Meghan asks Reshma about her experience of miscarriage while setting up and running Girls Who Code, which she previously had talked about publicly. Meghan also suffered a miscarriage, revealing her heartbreaking ordeal in an essay in 2020. Prince Harry also wrote about it in his memoir Spare.
Meghan told her guest: “I have spoken about the miscarriage we experienced. And I think in some parallel way, when you have to learn to detach from the thing that you have so much promise and hope for and to be able to be OK at a certain point to let something go, something go that you plan to love for a long time.”
And Reshma added: “Yeah. I feel like you are reading my diaries as that’s really insightful as I don’t think anyone has said it that way for me but that’s right because here I was for so many years trying to get pregnant, having miscarriages because I had auto-immune issues and I got into this kind of scary habit where I would be in a doctor’s office and they’d be like, you have no heartbeat.
“And I should have just gone home and gone to sleep and curled up with my husband. But I would just take a breath and I would just show up in a living room, on a stage and just perform. And often times I was just performing to these children that I desperately wanted and I just got really good at that but it was eating me up inside.”
Meanwhile, Meghan and Reshma, who is now a mum of two, also talk about juggling bringing up children alongside work – and the expectation that women “aren’t allowed to break” and “have to keep smiling”.
Meghan explained: “Oh my gosh, I love being a mom so much, it’s my favourite thing. But then sometimes, you’re like I just need a break, I just need a minute, but then the second you step in the other room, I’m like, ‘let me scroll through pictures of them endlessly on my phone’. And my husband is like ‘my love’ can you just give yourself a minute, why don’t you go work out, or go take a bath. And I go, ‘I know but I just want to cuddle them. It is the parenting paradigm, where it is so full on but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“But I think what’s really key about what you said is that in the pandemic, when working from home and parenting from home, completely converged – and it can feel incredibly overwhelming.”
Confessions Of A Female Founder is the latest in Meghan’s flurry of output after her much-criticised Netflix lifestyle series With Love, Meghan and her new brand As Ever. She has promised the series will feature “girl talk” and advise on how to create “billion-dollar businesses”.
The first episode was released last week on the same day Prince Harry appeared at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the latest stage in his legal challenge over the level of security he is given when he is in the UK.
In the opening episode, Meghan chatted to Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of the dating app Bumble. During the chat, Meghan talked about her experiences of being a mum and revealed she suffered from a ‘huge medical scare’ after giving birth.
She explained: “We both had very similar experiences — though we didn’t know each other at the time — with postpartum, and we both had preeclampsia. Postpartum preeclampsia. It’s so rare and so scary.
Meghan added: “And you’re still trying to juggle all of these things, and the world doesn’t know what’s happening quietly. And in the quiet, you’re still trying to show up for people – mostly for your children — but those things are huge medical scares.” Whitney replied: “I mean life or death, truly.” Postpartum preeclampsia is a rare condition that causes high blood pressure after birth.
According to the NHS, symptoms for postpartum preeclampsia include severe headaches, vision problems, pain below the ribs, vomiting and sudden swelling of the feet, ankles, face and hands. Without immediate treatment, it can lead to serious complications including in rare cases, convulsions, liver and blood clotting disorders and strokes.
