The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Jane Pauley, on CBS Sunday Morning, aired yesterday. We knew from the preview clip that the interview would be about parents who have lost children to online bullying and online harm. The Sussexes ended up announcing the launch of their new initiative, The Parents Network, through Archewell. It’s part support group and partly about providing parents with resources and tools for helping their children navigate everything online. You can see Archewell’s package on The Parents Network here – they’ve included stories from parents. Here’s the CBS interview:
The part of the interview which has gotten a lot of attention is when Pauley brings this Archewell initiative back to Harry and Meghan’s personal experiences. Pauley played a clip from the 2021 Oprah interview, where Meghan described her own suicidal ideation. In 2019, when Meghan was pregnant with Archie and she was victim to a national hate campaign – by the media and the Windsors – she was suicidal, and she reached out for help within the institution. They did not help her at all but she was able to get through it, and she and Harry escaped the institution less than a year later.
Meghan said she was surprised that Pauley brought the conversation around to her experience but Meghan understands that there’s a throughline between her suicidal ideation and the issues of online harm, bullying, etc. Meghan said: “When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey — certainly part of mine — is being able to be really open about it. 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. If me voicing what I have overcome will save someone or encourage someone in their life to really, genuinely check in on them and not assume that the appearance is good so everything is OK, then that’s worth it. I’ll take a hit for that.”
“I haven’t really scraped the surface on my experience.” Yeah, I think that’s true. She was in survival mode for several years, and then she was in “let’s just look ahead, not backwards” mode. Something I think about a lot is that… I cannot imagine how f–king traumatic it was for Meghan to be stuck in the UK for over two weeks around QEII’s funeral. I imagine that was a really triggering experience for her, and I wonder if that made her question if she had really dealt with everything those f–kers put her through.
Screencaps courtesy of CBS.