EXCLUSIVE: THE
MUCH LOVED FAMILY
ON PAPER, a British prince and an American actress might not seem the perfect match. But as the country awaits Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding on May 19, they have already proved doubters wrong. And as these exclusive extracts from Harry & Meghan – The Love Story by show, they could have been destined for each other from the beginning… Meghan Markle and Prince harry share many things but one of the most important is they both had to deal with the impact of their parents splitting up.
But, just like the prince, both of Meghan’s parents had an active role in making her the person she would become and provided a childhood that enabled her to mix with people from all walks of life. Her mum Doria and dad Thomas split when Meghan was six, although she maintained a good relationship with both.
She did her first work as a social campaigner at a young age, too.
“I started working at a soup kitchen in skid row of Los Angeles when I was 13 years old and the first day I felt really scared,” she said in The Game Changers, a book by Samantha Brett and Steph Adams.
“I was young and it was rough and raw down there, and though I was with a great volunteer group, I just felt overwhelmed. I remember one of my mentors told me that ‘life is about putting others’ needs above your own fears’. That has always stayed with me.
“Make sure you are safe and never ever put yourself in a compromising situation but once that is checked off the list, it’s really important for us to remember that someone needs us, and that your act of giving/helping/ doing can become an act of grace.”
She continued to live with her mum and, in so doing, developed a sense of adventure, travelling the world from a young age when Doria worked as a travel agent.
She said: “I got the travel bug quite early. My earliest memories are of going to Mexico twice a year and Hawaii quite a few times.
“We never did conventional family trips like Disney World. Hawaii and Mexico were closer for us than going to Florida or the Caribbean. This is all I knew. Just like being an only child was all I knew.
“I was always aware of how unique and cool it was that my mom got to take me to all these cool places because of her job and connections.
“It was so much fun travelling. My mom never wanted me to just go to a resort and not leave the property and think that was all there was to visiting a foreign country.
“We tried to really get an authentic cultural experience.” Her mum was also a yoga aficionado and would practise with her daughter, who would become interested in it as an adult. Meghan was the only child of her biological parents but had two older half-siblings, Thomas and Samantha, and got on very well with at least one of them. Thomas, 14 years her senior, had children of his own by the time Meghan entered her teens: “She used to like to take us to the park,” her nephew Tyler, Thomas’s son said. “We would feed the ducks and run to the park when she babysat.” Meghan was very confident as a youngster. Aged 11, she was offended by an advert by a soap manufacturer that she felt implied women