This Meghan storm could have been avoided
The Duchess of Sussex confided in Bryony Gordon about the troubles she was having. As the debate now rages over who is in the right and who is in the wrong, she asks: could there have been another way forward?
Almost 18 months ago, I sat on a sofa with a woman as she told me about the moment she had asked for help for her mental health, only to be denied it. I remember quite clearly the visceral feeling I had in my stomach, as she explained to me what she had been told: and that was to suck it up, essentially. No can do.
The feeling was visceral because, like many people who have experienced mental illness, I know what a colossal task it is to admit you are in trouble. I also know what an absolute kick in the teeth it is to then be dismissed, shut down and denied that help.
As a mental health campaigner, people come to me with these problems quite a lot, but I had never imagined that Meghan Markle would be one of them. I remember the call I received from an aide, one Friday night in October 2019, asking if I might be free to go to Frogmore Cottage and have a cup of tea with the Duchess over the next few days. I’d met her on a number of occasions by this point, and enjoyed a chatty lunch with her where we talked about yoga and shared monkfish.
Arrangements were made. I turned up in Windsor a couple of days later with a box of chocolate brownies and what I hoped was a friendly demeanour. Like Meghan, I love rescuing things.
The most surprising thing about the various meetings I’ve had with Meghan and Harry over the years has always been how very normal they both are. That day, as she shared her mental health issues, things were no different.
Mental health, I have found, is a great leveller – the problems you hear tend to be the same whether you are speaking to a duke, a duchess or a supermarket delivery driver. Meghan told me many of the things she told Oprah on Sunday night, and expressed her dismay and bafflement over some of the responses to her. I felt desperately sad for her, and wanted to offer advice. But I could come up with nothing more constructive than: “Why don’t you jack it all in?”
I had a hug with Archie. Harry gave me a lift to my Uber, waiting at the gates of Windsor Castle, and we spoke about their recent tour of South Africa. Harry spoke lovingly of the impression that his wife made on the young girls
There are no winners here, just a bunch of messy humans trying to do their best
they met, and how she didn’t understand the impact she had. But we also discussed guinea pigs (I had just taken delivery of some for my daughter, and Harry fondly recalled he and William had kept them as pets when they were children).
This to me sums up the madness of life as a royal: one minute you are navigating your relationship with the world’s media, the next you are chatting about small furry pets.
It’s hard to underline how amenable and human I find the two of them, because every time I do this, I am met with eye rolls and pre-judgments that no amount of defending will ever be able to cut through. But my only job is to speak as I find, and what I have always found – from the moment I started working with Harry on the Heads Together campaign back in 2016
– are two convivial, good-natured humans who are trying to do their best, however ill-timed that may look to a public that has perhaps learnt more about the Royal family in the past 24 hours than in the past 24 years.
Words such as “shock” and “surprise” have been bandied about. But for me, as someone who knows people on both sides of this story, my biggest feeling is sadness: sadness for Meghan and Harry, of course, but also for William and Catherine and a family who, for whatever reason, were unable to see a third way through this.
You don’t have to be on any particular side to see that this interview with Oprah is the mere tip of an iceberg that is loaded with endless pain. Are you Team Sussex or Team Cambridge, I was asked recently, by a royal documentary maker. To which my only real answer was: can I be Team Human?
Any woman is vulnerable when she is pregnant, let alone one who has moved across an ocean and given up a career to be with a man whose family you have to curtsy to. There was always going to be a clash of cultures here. Whether she should have been more prepared for the “job” of a duchess can be argued about by experts in royal protocol, of which I am not. But it is clear that in Meghan, the monarchy had an opportunity to move with the times – and for some reason, they decided to let it go. From the start, she was enthusiastic and energetic, buzzing with ideas about charitable causes that could be supported. Here was a woman who had considerable experience of public life, unlike others who had married into the Royal family before her. But, as she said in the Oprah interview, it was suggested that she stayed out of the limelight. “I was everywhere but nowhere,” she explained, before adding, poignantly, that all the drama seemed to be happening “just because I was breathing”.
The sense of permanently being somehow faulty or wrong is one that those who have suffered mental illness will know well. To have admitted that there was a problem – one that she describes as making her feel “ashamed” – was absolutely essential. To have then had that problem dismissed, as she says happened when she asked for help, makes me wince, in the same way I wince when someone in distress tells me about being ignored by their partner, mum, dad or GP. Sadly, it happens to people all the time, and Meghan helps everyone, the Royal family included, by talking about it.
Meghan has now risked being dismissed all over again. She knows her critics will double down, and that they will probably switch from throwing stones to throwing rocks. But to her, that is not a reason to avoid talking about these things – in fact, it’s more of a reason to talk about them.
Within hours of the interview being aired, the usual suspects were pumping out their bullets, describing the interview as “disgraceful”, and even going as far as to accuse the Duchess of lying. I know this will upset her, but I’m pretty sure it won’t surprise her any more. As the couple were told again and again when they asked for help: “This is just how it is.”
It’s this that I find so disturbing. That in the year 2021, our grasp on mental health issues is still so weak that in many quarters it is simply easier to belittle those who talk about having them than it is to feel any compassion for them.
Much of the response to this interview is similar to the one thousands of people experience every day. Pipe down. Know your place. Shut up, stop complaining, and do what you’re told.
During the interview, Harry wondered out loud if we had learnt nothing. By the end of it, I think I had
In Meghan, the monarchy had an opportunity to move with the times
learnt this: that, as is almost always the case with life, there are no winners or losers here, just a bunch of gloriously messy humans trying to do their best.
It’s the same for most people, regardless of money or occupation. I just wish that, like Meghan, more of us were able to ask for help, and that, unlike Meghan, more of us were able to get it. Until then, these “shocking” and “surprising” conversations aren’t going anywhere. And whether they are outside or inside the Royal family, they will always need to be had.