Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, reveals she had a miscarriage in July

“I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal,” she wrote.

“Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine, I realized that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, ‘Are you OK?'” Meghan wrote.

“Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few,” she said.

“Despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning,” Meghan wrote.

The Duchess also referred to the human impact of the pandemic and the movement against structural racism and police brutality that have defined 2020. “Health rapidly shifts to sickness. In places where there was once community, there is now division,” she wrote.

And she referred to the proliferation of misinformation and the aftermath of the 2020 US election, adding: “We aren’t just fighting over our opinions of facts; we are polarized over whether the fact is, in fact, a fact. We are at odds over whether science is real. We are at odds over whether an election has been won or lost.”

“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,” she concluded.

Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles as members of the royal family at the start of this year, moving to North America and frequently challenging intense coverage of their lives by tabloid media.