Meghan Markle is speaking out about her decision to share her personal battle with suicidal ideations.
On Sunday, the Duchess of Sussex and her husband, Prince Harry, spoke with CBS Sunday Mornings host Jane Pauley about their new initiative aimed toward bringing awareness to the dangers social media poses to children.
In the interview, the couple spoke about working closely with parents whose children have lost their lives due to the negative impact of bullying faced on social media. While speaking about the topic, Meghan was asked about her candid sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, where she shared that she told a senior royal staff member about her own thoughts of suicide that just got brushed off.
“There is a through-line, I think, when you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma,” Meghan said about her decision to speak frankly in 2021. “I believe part of our healing journey, certainly part of mine, is being able to be really open about it. And I haven’t really scraped the surface on my experience, but I do think that I would never want someone else to feel that way and I would never want someone else to be making those sort of plans and I would never want someone else to not be believed.”
During her bombshell interview with Oprah, Meghan — who was pregnant with her and Harry’s daughter, Princess Lilibet, at the time — recalled speaking to someone at the institution about feeling like she didn’t “want to be alive anymore” and was refused the proper help.
“I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help. I said that ‘I’ve never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere,'” she recalled. “And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”
In Sunday’s interview, Meghan spoke about the importance of speaking out about her experience, despite how uncomfortable it may be.
“So, if me voicing what I have overcome will save someone, or encourage someone in their life to really just annually check in on them, and not assume that the appearance is good, so everything’s OK, then that’s worth it,” she said. “I’ll take a hit for that.”
Harry, 39, and Meghan’s pilot program, The Parents’ Network, is through their Archewell Foundation and works to bring awareness to the dangers of social media with children and teens. For the couple, the small program is an important vessel for change.
“I think you have to start somewhere,” Meghan said. “I think the simplest thing that anyone watching this or anyone that’s able to make change, look at it through the lens of what if it was my daughter, what if it was my son. My son or my daughter who come home, who are joyful, who I love and one day, right under my roof our entire lives change because of something that was completely out of our control. Look at it through the lens as a parent, there is no way to see that any other way, than to try and find a solution.”
Harry and Meghan — who got married in May 2018 — are parents of Prince Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3. In the interview, the pair spoke about their “amazing” children and how they influence their work.
“Our kids are young, they’re 3 and 5,” Meghan said. “They’re amazing. But all you want to do as parents is protect them. As we can see what is happening in the online space, we know that there’s a lot of work there and we’re just happy to be part of a change for good.”
Harry added about the role of a parent, “At this point we’ve gotten to a place where almost every parent needs to be a first responder, and even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tells the signs of possible suicide. That is the terrifying piece of it.”
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